When we answered our phone a few weeks ago, a very nice gentleman told us that he had collected more than 1,000 used printer cartridges that he wanted to recycle. “How can I send them to you to be processed?” he asked. We had to give him the bad news that print cartridges do not contain precious metals. We explained that some of the ink they once contained might have contained tiny quantities of silver, and that some ink cartridges have circuit boards that contain extremely small quantities of gold - but that even in the best of circumstances, he didn’t have enough of any precious metal that we could profitably extract for him. We suggested that he take his cartridges to an office supply store that participates in manufacturers’ recycling programs.

A customer called us recently and asked, “Can you still make money by recycling computers now that the age of desktops seems to be over? It’s not worth recycling laptops, is it?”

We love the convenient shipping that Amazon and other online retailers are offering these days. You place an order and before you know it - sometimes on the same day - a box lands at your door. It’s great, but is the convenience making us overlook the security issues?

We found it at the bottom of a small bin of metal scrap that a client had sent to us for analysis. It was a little piece of gold-toned metal, about half an inch long. It was shaped like a barrel, with ribs running along it from end to end. We thought it was a bead, but it didn’t have a hole running through its middle - the kind of hole that would enable it to be used as part of a necklace. Our best guess was that it was part of a larger piece of jewelry - something that had fallen off a brooch or maybe even a tiara. There were no karat markings or other identifiers, so we figured it was made of base metal that had been covered with a thin plating of gold. But what the heck, we tested it and discovered that it was, in fact, made of 12-karat gold.

We have already written on this blog about strange things that have been made from precious metals over the centuries. (See “Be On the Alert for Strange Objects Made from Precious Metals,” a blog post we published on November 16, 2016.) In that post, we wrote about sterling-silver prosthetic noses, gold-plated iPhone cases and other oddities.

If you have an elderly relative who is about to enter a nursing home or assisted living, chances are you are already working with a counselor who is helping you deal with their financial assets. Today’s post is not meant to serve as a substitute for the expert advice you can get from those counselors, who know the ins and outs of Medicare and other factors that can impact on financial planning for elders.

If you do some searching online for “best places to hide precious metals,” you will find dozens of articles that offer advice on the smartest places to hide precious metals in your residence.

In the early days of 3-D printing, it took several steps to “print” a metal part. If you wanted to print a gold ring, for example, you had to follow these steps . . .

Do you have gold, silver and other precious metals that you would like to store safely away? If so, what are your most secure and loss-proof options?

In today’s post, we’ll discuss some of the popular storage places people choose for precious metals and explore what is good and bad about them.

“EPA Allows Mine Company to Pursue Permits Near Alaska Bay,” an article that Becky Bohrer wrote for the Associated Press on May 12, reports that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of approving a permit for a new copper and gold mine in the Bristol Bay area of Alaska. According to the article, that region produces half of the world’s sockeye salmon. The article reports that the area is also home to a fervent group of environmentalists who vehemently oppose opening a new mine in their pristine area.

If you’ve visited the lightbulb aisle at a home superstore lately, you know a big change has taken place. The old incandescent light bulbs that people used for decades have disappeared and been replaced by a variety of new bulbs, most commonly Compact Florescent Lightbulbs called CFL’s, that work much differently from old incandescent bulbs.

“Dollar in Danger of Weakening for Six Years,” an article that appeared on Bloomberg.com on November 16, sounds these alarms that all investors should heed . . .

A century ago when sterling silver was a relatively cheap metal, it was used much more extensively than it is today to make all kinds of items that were used by people every day. Most every home had silver, or silver-plated flatware, salt and pepper shakers, candlesticks and candelabras, serving plates and dishes, barware and other items for daily use.

What effect will the new tax law have on the value of your precious metals?

The answer is that nobody knows the answer to that question, even though plenty of people are writing their opinions on the topic.

There are many places to look for gold. You can pan for it in Yukon streams, look for it in dresser drawers, or search for it behind the walls in boats that the government confiscated from drug dealers. But today, let’s consider a place where you have a much better chance of finding gold bits and scrap . . .

“EPA Allows Mine Company to Pursue Permits Near Alaska Bay,” an article that Becky Bohrer wrote for the Associated Press on May 12, reports that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of approving a permit for a new copper and gold mine in the Bristol Bay area of Alaska...

Urban legends are stories – usually untrue - that are so weird that people keep repeating them and sending them around via email. They tend to take on lives of their own – some people even think they really happened. There are even urban legends about precious metals. Here are three we have heard…

It is easy to find businesses that are for sale. You will find them advertised in newspapers that are published near where you live. Plus, you can find hundreds of them online on BizBuySell.com and other online listings of businesses that are for sale. Just search online for “businesses for sale” and you’ll soon be looking at hundreds of them. 

Please take a minute to consider this imaginary story… You buy an old retail building that was once home to several stores. One of them was a pharmacy. While you’re exploring there, you open a drawer and find several dozen boxes of old wound dressings that contain silver. You then send those wound dressing to a precious metals refinery like us, we process them, and send you a nice big check for several hundred dollars. It's a nice fantasy, isn’t it? But if you find any, they are not going to contain enough silver to be worth much. Sorry to deflate your dreams of wealth. But let’s look at some other places where silver and other precious metals can be found in the world of medicine. 

If you’ve ever walked around an old industrial site hunting for precious metal scrap, you know that the search can be overwhelming. You examine heaps of dirt, piles of chemicals hiding in the bushes, old steel drums that contain dried or wet sediment, streams where chemicals and byproducts were once deposited, and all kinds of other places that could be hiding precious metal scrap. Although you cannot identify most precious metal scrap just by looking at it, here’s a quick visual guide to some of the materials that can often be refined profitably in our precious metals refinery.