Over the years, people have created a story – dare we say a myth – that it is possible to reclaim gold from plants and animals.

That legend usually goes something like this . . .

“The plants and animals that live around natural sources of gold like gold-containing streams and old gold mines absorb quantities of gold. If you harvest sufficient quantities of material from them, they contain gold that can be profitably recycled.”

We want you to make money when you invest in precious metals.

Why? One reason is that if we can help you make money by using our testing and recycling processes, we will make more money too. But that isn’t the most important reason. The most important reason we want you to do well and make money is that we want to support you. Also, the more successful you become as a precious metal investor, the better it is for our entire business sector. That’s another way of saying that when more people make more money, everyone in the universe of precious metal investing benefits.

Gold is a metal that is known for its beauty. So why is it used in so many medical devices that are used where no one can see it – inside the human body?

Gold was trading at about $1,300 in 2018. Today, the price is more than $1,900. Those are the facts. Yet what do they mean if you are someone who likes to invest in gold? Are prices about to level off, rise even higher . . . or fall?

Conspiracy theories seem to crop up about topics and celebrities that people find fascinating.

• JFK? He didn’t really die . . . and conspiracy theorists know he is coming back.

• The walk on the moon? . . . it never really happened.

• The world’s money supply? . . . it’s all controlled by a secret society that’s headquartered in Switzerland or under the Great Pyramid.

Okay, you can doubtless add more conspiracy theories to that ridiculous list. But we want to add some others of our own to it. They are all conspiracy theories, or at least crazy theories, about gold.

The words of a classic rock song by Bob Dylan tell us, “The times they are a-changing.”

They really apply if you invest in platinum scrap, gold scrap and silver scrap. Here are some trends that will cause major changes for precious metal investors in the next five years.

Have you ever seen a stack of squashed, pancaked old cars piled in the corner of an automotive recycling yard, just waiting to be hauled away to a metal scrap yard?

It’s a sad sight. But even sadder is the fact that each of those squashed cars probably contains small quantities of gold that nobody bothered to pull out. And that problem is about to become even bigger because with every passing year, more and more electronics are getting shoehorned into modern cars. Within a few years, cars – especially electric and hybrids – are going to contain bigger and bigger quantities of gold. Remember, every printed circuit board that is found in a car contains small amounts of gold that can be extracted and recycled.

With gold currently trading at $1,787.40 per troy ounce, this is a good time to look for and recycle even small amounts of gold.

Here are some easy-to-overlook places you can find small amounts of gold today – even in your own home.

A man in Delaware emailed us recently to ask, “Are there any scrap gold buyers near me?” He explained that there were plenty of companies in his area that would be happy to buy gold jewelry, bullion, and coins from him if he walked through their front doors. But nobody in his area was in the business of buying the kind of gold scrap he wanted to sell – a bunch of old circuit boards and used sputtering targets that contained gold.

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.

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.

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.

The question that we chose to be the title of today’s post – “What Is the Best Part of the Country for Gold Investors to Live?” – probably seems a little puzzling to you. After all, if you invest in gold scrap (or silver scrap or platinum scrap for that matter), what difference does it make where you live? You can call our precious metal recycling advisors from wherever you live, send us your scrap. And of course, we will send your payment wherever you live.

We don’t know whether you are a big fan of the television series Downton Abbey. But whether you love the show or not, we have noticed that it teaches some valuable lessons for those of us who profit from recycling precious metals. The creators of the show seem to have invested extra effort in historical accuracy, showing wealthy people as they really lived a century ago. Most of the lessons Downton Abbey teaches apply to recycling silver, with fewer applying to recycling gold.

It’s been hard or impossible to travel during the coronavirus pandemic. How frustrated have you been?

Chances are you have been eager to travel again. But frustrating as it has been, we all need to remember that even though we have not been able to travel much in the last four or five months, we have still been able to continue buying, refining and selling gold scrap, silver scrap, and platinum scrap too.

Don’t let valuable precious metals slip through your fingers

A recent trip to our town recycling yard (once called the “town dump”) convinced us that a lot of people are tossing an awful lot of stuff during the time they are staying at home because of Covid-19. They’re cleaning out their basements, attics, garages, and storage rooms. That’s probably a good thing to do. Decluttering and cleaning out are great projects to take on right now. They help us feel like we are making progress and getting organized, in a time when we feel stuck and out of control.

Would you believe that Bob Dylan wrote the song, “The Times They Are A-Changin’” way back in 1964? Ever since then, the times have been changing year by year, and there is no doubt about that.

But today, 56 years later, Dylan’s song seems to have become completely true. Suddenly, the world has changed in ways that we would never have predicted only five or six years ago.