Platinum, silver, and gold wire are most often found among the supplies at companies that make or repair jewelry, such as jewelry stores and jewelry factories. 

Where will you find those precious-metal wires in those facilities?

• As part of generalized scrap, like bench and floor sweepings. 

• In jewelry-making supplies. Often, wire will still be rolled up on spools of unused materials.

“Eureka! After California’s Heavy Rains, Gold Seekers Are Giddy,” an article that Thomas Fuller published in The New York Times on April 22, 2023, reports that the recent heavy rains in California have caused a lot of gold to wash into streams in the state. He profiles one prospector who pulled $100 worth of gold out of a stream after only 20 minutes of hunting. That’s a pretty impressive haul.

Hiding your jewelry and valuables in a place that is not secure, such as a dresser drawer or jewelry box, may not provide sufficient protection. Burglars often target these areas first because they know that jewelry is commonly kept there. 

If you do choose to hide your jewelry in your home, make sure the hiding place is not easily discoverable. For example, do not hide your jewelry in a typical hiding spot like a sock drawer or under your mattress. Instead, consider a more creative hiding spot that is not as obvious.

The good news is, you have scrap gold you would like to sell for top dollar. The scrap could be a batch of old gold-filled eyeglass frames, a box full of sputtering targets that were used in electroplating operations, or even a collection of old gold-plated costume jewelry. 

You might not know how much gold your scrap contains – you need to have it tested. But you do know that you would like to sell it and reclaim the value of the gold it contains. 

Where are gold prices headed?

Before we explore that question, let’s explore another question. What trends have influenced the prices of gold over the last decade?

Overall, the price of gold has experienced significant fluctuations over the past decade, reflecting the complex and dynamic factors that influence the global economy and financial markets. As with any investment, it's important to do your research and consult with financial experts before making any decisions.

People tend to think that recovering the gold from gold scrap is a straightforward process. You heat the scrap to a high temperature and then collect the gold that was in it, right?

Well, it’s not that simple. Recycling gold scrap can also be a complex process, and there are several mistakes that can reduce both the quality and the quantity of gold that is obtained during recycling.

What are the best places to sell palladium and palladium scrap? We will explore that question a little later in today’s article. But before we do, let’s start by answering a few questions first. 

Precious metal refining companies specialize in the extraction and purification of precious metals, such as gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, from raw materials such as ore, electronic waste, and scrap metal.

Remember, gold can be found in various types of ores that occur in nature. Most often, you will find mining companies have set up operations to extract them from the ground. In other cases, those mining companies once had set up operations in those locations to mine gold but have since extracted all the gold they could from the ground and have shut down. 

With platinum currently trading for $940.00 on the London Fix, it is a metal you should definitely not overlook as you make your plans as a precious metal investor. 

But where can you find platinum scrap that we can recycle for you? Let’s review four of the best kinds of platinum scrap you should be focusing on. 

We have written many articles about metal detectors on this blog, and with good reason. 

Metal detectors, even basic models that cost little more than $100.00, are some of the most powerful tools ever devised for finding buried precious metals on beaches, in open fields, on the sites of old buildings and factories, and other prime prospecting sites. 

People are making money – sometimes a lot of it – by using metal detectors. And chances are pretty good that you can too. 

Forty or fifty years ago, men were apparently wearing a variety of small jewelry items that are no longer very popular today. 

In a moment, we will list what some of these items are and how you can recognize them when you go hunting for gold, silver, and platinum items that are worth recycling. But before we give you a list of these items, we would like to mention the following fact . . . 

We recently visited the Arthur Ross Hall of Meteorites at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. What a display!

More than 130 meteorites are displayed there, including the huge 34-ton Cape York Meteorite, also known as Ahnighito.  That monstrous meteorite contains mostly iron. 

That display got us wondering about the metallic content of all those meteorites, all of which had literally fallen from the sky. Did they contain gold or other precious metals?

Iridium, one of the platinum group metals, is worth a lot of money. It is trading at about $6,000 per Troy Ounce. 

That’s a high trading price. But before you go hunting for this white shiny metal, please read our post today. Although iridium is worth a lot of money, it is really hard to find. So our advice to you is to understand iridium, but to place it low on the list of precious metals you are hunting for.

Many people believe that Archimedes (c. 287 – c. 212 BC), the Greek mathematician and scientist, invented the karat system of classifying the purity of gold that is still used today. Although he was an historically important astronomer, engineer, inventor, and mathematician, he didn’t!

The last time we wrote about Pyrite (which is another name for Fool’s Gold) was in a post we published back in 2014. So we thought it would be a good time to write about the topic again and focus on this question . . . 

If you go looking for gold or silver deposits outdoors, chances are good you will find small quantities of those precious metals. All you need is a metal detector, a gold panning kit or machinery, or other basic equipment. You might not find a tremendous amount of those metals during a typical day of prospecting. But you will find something – often enough to make your day of hunting worthwhile.

We have written about sputtering targets before on the Specialty Metals Blog. To review, they are multilayered disks that contain several different metals. When they are secured  inside a plasma plating tank and electrical current flows through them, their uppermost layer of metal (be it gold, platinum, or another metal) is dispersed into the plasma inside the tank.  Due to the flow of electrons, it adheres to the surface of whatever metal object is being plated.

“I have a collection of jewelry that belonged to my grandmother,” a precious metal investor wrote us recently. “It is a mix of costume jewelry and nicer items that are made of gold and silver. I suspect that the value of the collection exceeds the dollar value of the precious metals it contains, because many of the items are interesting historical pieces.”

Let’s start today’s article by asking you to answer this simple question about platinum . . . 

When you go looking for platinum scrap, you should be looking for a bright, white, metal with a shiny surface.   [  ] true [  ] false

You’ll be surprised to hear that the statement above is false!