Investing in Precious Metals? Make 2019 a Back-to-Basics Year

As 2018 is now in the past, we are sensing a lot of uncertainty about investing in precious metals. Some of that uneasiness is due to recent events, such as our country’s imposition of higher tariffs on imported goods. Another new development is that AMPEX, a major dealer in bullion, is now allowing investors to pay for their purchases with Bitcoin. We don’t actually know whether that will produce big changes in the trading prices of gold, silver, platinum and palladium – after all, every time you buy any precious metal you are paying for it with some kind of currency, right? But paying for precious metals with Bitcoin is making the news, and causing traditional traders in precious metals to ask, “What does it mean?”

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The Changing World of Investing in Old Cellphones

According to estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, a million cellphones contain about 75 pounds of gold, 33 pounds of palladium . . . and 770 pounds of silver. That might seem like a lot of precious metal to you, or it might seem like a small amount when you consider that you have to recycle a million phones to access it. But here’s another statistic that makes it seem like it might not be that difficult to get your hands on a million phones:

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Make 2019 Your Year to Cash in on Palladium Scrap

People confuse palladium and platinum. Both metals are white, lustrous, tarnish-resistant . . . and rare. But if you compare the prices of palladium and platinum jewelry, you will notice immediately that a piece of palladium jewelry sells for about one-third more than a similar piece of platinum jewelry, even though both items weigh about the same.

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Will You Get More Money by Donating Your Old Car to Charity or by Recycling the Precious Metals It Contains?

If you have ever donated a car to a charity, you know the routine. You call to schedule a time when your car will be picked up. A flatbed truck arrives, the driver writes out a receipt, and your old car gets hauled away. A little while later, you get a receipt from the charity that took your car. That receipt should provide a value for the car you donated, which should be what the charity sold the car for.

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Why Gold and Platinum Scrap Will Outperform the Stock Market in 2019

“A bucking bronco” is the best way to describe what has been happening on the stock market in year 2018. On any given day, the Dow Jones can plummet 300-500 points. Then the next day it comes galloping back. And just when jittery investors start to think, “Thank heavens that is over, whatever it was,” the Dow takes a plunge again.

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Tiny Gold Scraps You Should Not Overlook       

Finding a big gold nugget or other chunk of gold is every gold investor’s dream. And it does happen occasionally. It is far more likely that you will find small chunks of the precious metal – and likely that you will overlook some of them when you go hunting for gold in estate sales, antique stores, and even around your own house.

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Don’t Give Precious Metals Away when Recycling Scrap

Gold, platinum, silver and rhodium are called precious metals because they are valuable. You already knew that! Yet some people toss them away anyway.

Here are some tips that can prevent you from literally giving them away without realizing it.

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The Story of “Arsenic Avenue” Highlights the Dangers of Exposure to Chemicals Left Behind by Gold Processing

“Poison fears on 'Arsenic Avenue': Families forced out of their homes as studies find suburban street was built on toxic soil,” an article that appeared in Australia’s Daily Mail on September 6, 2018, points out all too clearly the health dangers that can result when people are exposed to poisons that are left behind near old gold mines.

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Will Cheap Plating Liquids Make It Harder to Recognize Gold and Silver Items?

In years past, it was relatively difficult to plate a bright, shiny new layer of gold or silver onto other items. To do it, you had to either immerse the items to be plated in a plating tank or, in some cases, use an electrified plating brush to apply a thin new layer of gold or silver.

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Why the Smartest Places to Hide Gold, Silver and Platinum Might Not Be So Smart at All

Have you ever shopped online for miniature safes and other “safe spots” where you can hide gold, silver, platinum and other small valuables in your home?

If you have, you know that the variety of products you will discover is nothing short of amazing. When we did some online shopping recently, here are some of the products we discovered . . .

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Why Expert Silver Recyclers Have Specialized Skills No One Else Does

Alchemists were medieval scientists who, legend says, were able to turn base metals into gold. Of course they couldn’t do that. Still, some of their discoveries are still being used today. One is aqua regia, a combination of nitric and hydrochloric acid that is still used today to dissolve gold and platinum.

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Don’t Be Fooled . . . Sometimes “Gold,” “Silver” and “Platinum” Are Only Adjectives

We recently found a bottle of “Platinum” skin cream on a shelf at a pharmacy store.

“Wow,” we thought, “they’re using platinum in skin cream?” But when we scanned a list of the ingredients that the cream contained, we learned that it did not contain platinum, only a bunch of chemicals, plant extracts, aromas, and coloring agents. But platinum? No.

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Can You Save Time and Money by Using Acids to Refine Gold, Silver and Platinum?

Let’s say that you have an old gold-plated set of silver tableware. As you know, the gold that the set contains is worth much more than the silver. Can’t you throw everything into a tub of some kind of chemical that will dissolve the silver and leave only the gold behind in solid form?

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