Chips and Powders: How Even Small Amounts of Jewelry Scrap Can Pay You Back Richly
Have you visited a jewelry factory recently? Or the business place of a jewelry maker who repairs jewelry?
If you have, you have noticed that they are noisy places. Grinders, polishers and other pieces of machinery are whirring away. And do you know what? The specific places where that noise is coming from are the same places where you are most likely to find small amounts of gold, platinum and silver dusts and powders that can be worth much more than you suspect.
Polishers
Maybe a jeweler is holding a ring or another piece of jewelry next to a polishing wheel. Before polishing that item, he has applied a polishing compound to the wheel. And as the ring is being polished, small amounts of the precious metal that ring is made of adhere to the wheel.
The next day, that jeweler might polish another piece of jewelry and the day after that, he or she might polish still another item that is made of gold, platinum, or silver. After a while, that dull-looking polishing wheel can collect as much as one gram of gold, which is worth about $60.00. How do you get your hands on that gram of gold? You send the polishing wheel to us and we extract it for you and send you a check for its value.
Drills, Sanders, Milling Machines and other Shop Equipment
The powder and dust that these machines produce is a bit easier to see than the metal that collects on polishing wheels. You can find it in vacuums and ventilators that are used to carry away the fragments these machines make, inside the machines themselves, and on the floor underneath them.
One of our favorite, and more valuable, varieties of machine-produced scrap are the little wormlike “squiggles” that are produced from milling machines and drill presses. Look in and around these machines, because your search could reward you with more valuable gold, platinum, and silver scrap than you thought possible.
On and In Floor Mats
When workers log long hours in one location – perhaps operating a polisher or other piece of machinery – they usually stand on thick mats that are there to prevent fatigue. These mats, like polishing wheels, can collect quantities of gold, silver and platinum powder. If you roll up these mats and send them to us for testing, you could be in for a very pleasant surprise when our tests reveal how valuable they are.
Under Floorboards and Behind Walls
We have written on this blog before about this. In an industrial setting where metal is being fabricated, a quantity of it ends up under floorboards and wallboards. If you pull off a board and insert a vacuum and send us the powdery dust you collect, you could be in for a very profitable surprise.
In Garbage Receptacles
When a variety of junk is tossed into a garbage disposal unit (be it a can or a small roll-around dumpster-style bin), the metals it contained tend to fall out of the mix and end up on the bottom of the bin. Not all the metals that collect there will be precious metals, but some could be. If you sweep up the metal powders that you find there, send them to us for testing.
Don’t Let Precious Metals Slip through Your Fingers
Call us at 800-426-2344 and talk to our precious metal recycling experts. The information we will share about testing and recycling your scrap will prove profitable.
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