In one of the biggest automotive recalls in history, General Motors has informed 141,000 owners of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars that they have to bring their cars in to have their batteries replaced.

Last month the U.S. Senate passed a $1.2 billion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. As you have probably heard, this bill (also called the Invest in America Act) has something to do with recycling. But what exactly? And exactly how could it affect precious metals?

Are you making money from your precious metal investments? Should you invest the money you are making in “alternative” investments like bitcoin?

We don’t think so. We believe you should stick with “traditional” investments. In this post, we will explain why.

Hurricane Ida caused unprecedented losses of property and life in its recent rampage across Louisiana up through New England. We don’t know how many people also lost precious metals in the storm, but we believe that losses were probably substantial. Many of the places where people traditionally store precious metals were destroyed, including homes, garages, outbuildings, roadside self-storage facilities, and more.

When you invest in bullion or coins, you know almost exactly how much precious metal they contain – or come close to knowing.

Investing in scrap is another matter completely, as these examples show . . .

Over time, an investor bought about 200 discarded cellphones. He had paid about 50 cents for each of them, so his total investment was about $100.00. When they were recycled to extract the gold they contained, it turned out that each device contained about 0.001 Troy Ounces of gold. In sum, the gold in all those phones was worth about $350.00. So if you do the math, that shows that his investment was a very good one indeed. His $100,00 investment netted him more than a twofold return.

We are writing today about fuel cell cars for a very simple reason . . .

The fuel cells that are found in hydrogen-powered fuel cell cars contain platinum, and could become an important source of platinum for smart investors in platinum scrap

Yet currently, only two fuel cell-powered passenger cars are available for sale in the United States:

Have you been so focused on recycling gold, silver and platinum scrap that you have let the value of other metals and materials slip through your fingers?

It can happen. Investors who focus on extracting gold from electronic devices are one common example. They’ll extract the gold and then toss the rest of the devices, neglecting a variety of materials that are worth something.

What are these extra materials, and what are they worth? In today’s post, we are going to find out.

A man in Connecticut – we’ll call him Pete in this post because he asked us not to use his real name – has a story that might be familiar to you. Why? Because many people end up in situations like his.

Pete has a welding and metal fabricating business that handles all kinds of work. Last year, a university asked him to make a special chair that was needed for a medical research project. Often, people ask him to do small welding projects, like reattaching a trailer hitch that was coming loose from the back of a truck. Pete also does brazing and spot welding repairs on a lot of lawn mowers. Recently, a restaurant asked him if he could help design and fabricate an unusual service counter out of stainless steel – “something like you wouldn’t see anywhere else in the world,” Pete says. Pete employs two very skilled employees, but he shares the work with them.

If you are investing in precious metals, chances are you know that gold is currently trading for $1778.30 on the London Fix. But did you also know that over the last five years, the trading price has increased $434.00? That’s an increase of about one-third. That means this is a good time to sell the gold that you are holding.

This past week, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report entitled, “Climate change widespread, rapid and intensifying.”

If there are people who still believe that global warming is really not happening, we would urge them to spend a little time reading this report. It has a blunt message, which is that we need to act immediately and decisively if we wish to protect our planet, our future, and our children from further catastrophic effects of climate change.

Today, we would like to point out some steps that the smartest investors take to safeguard their investments – and to simply make more money.

Ready? Let’s get going.

If you’ve been following the news this week, you know that President Biden signed an executive order stating that by year 2030, between 40% and 50% of all new cars sold in the U.S. must be electric.

When we dug in and took a closer look at what that order requires, we discovered some aspects of it that are nothing short of amazing.

Did you give your office or place a business a spring cleaning this year? If you didn’t, we would like to suggest that you give it a late-summer tidying up right now. You might discover some items that you can send to us for recycling. Depending on what you and your business do, you might be surprised to find some items like these that you can recycle for cash:

Here at Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners, we are proud that we are helping to protect the environment with everything we do.

When we are processing precious metal scrap of any kind, we use the latest processes that virtually eliminate the release of noxious gases into the air. Although smelting and other reprocessing processes often involve high temperatures, we never release heated liquids or gases into the air or the water supply. We pride ourselves on having a very small carbon footprint. So when you send your gold, platinum or silver scrap to us for testing and processing, you can do so with a clean conscience.

If you’ve been letting your metal detector gather dust, now could be the time to take it out and hit outdoor areas in search of gold, silver and platinum.

Nearly every week, a new story reports on finds of precious metals that have been discovered using metals detectors that are probably no more advanced than the one you already own.

The most recent of these news stories reports something rather incredible. Earlier this year, amateur metal prospectors found more than 100 French silver coins underground in a field in Poland. And like all tantalizing discoveries of hidden treasure, this one is mysterious.

Platinum is a bright, shiny precious metal that has unique properties when it is used as a catalyst in a number of different applications.

When a variety of different gases are passed through platinum-containing powders and wafers, the platinum causes unique things to happen, as we’ll explore in a minute. And the good news for recyclers is that even after those platinum is no longer functioning efficiently, enough platinum is left behind to be worth recycling.

We hear the term “supply chain” often these days. Mostly, we hear it when we are unable to buy products we need because they are stuck somewhere on the supply chain, which can be defined this way . . .

We have been writing lately about cars that are powered not by gasoline or electricity, but by hydrogen fuel cells. They will soon allow you to fill your car with hydrogen that will be available at “gas stations” that offer hydrogen alongside gasoline.

Here at Specialty Metals, we have a long track record of recycling gold scrap, silver scrap, and platinum scrap for our clients. We have helped countless customers make a lot of money in those metals, and we know we will continue to do so in the future.

If you follow gold trading prices, you know that gold prices have risen by more than 40% in the last few years. One reason experts cite is the current distrust between the U.S. and China. And chances are that distrust between our two nations will only rise as the U.S. builds scrutiny of why the Covid-19 virus might have arisen in Chinese laboratories.