Have you visited your town dump lately?

If you have, you have noticed that people are tossing out an awful lot of electronic items. During this period of sheltering at home, they are cleaning out their closets, basements garages and other places where they have stowed a range of electronic devices that include old and unwanted . . .

Way back in 1977, NASA launched its Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 space probes from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Both of them are now about 14 billion miles from Earth and, incredibly, both are still communicating scientific data back to NASA.

You go looking for gold and . . . you find some! Maybe you go to an antique store and find a piece of jewelry that looks like pure, shiny gold, but you find out later that it is only covered with a thin gold plating. Or you discover a gold nugget and find out that it is only a cheap collectible that has been created to look like the real thing, but isn’t.

What is an appliqué? It is a small decorative piece of silver or gold that is applied to another metal. The word appliqué is French, meaning “applied.” (An appliqué is also a piece of fabric that is sewn onto a garment as a decoration, but that is not the kind of appliqué we are writing about in today’s post.)

“I’ve got a stack of old air conditioners,” a caller told us recently. “They contain precious metals that you can extract and recycle for me, right?”

There are lots of reasons to worry that the trading price of gold could fall. We can start by mentioning the trade wars and tariffs that have been introduced by the current administration in Washington. We could also mention escalating tensions between the US and a number of other nations, including friendly old Canada, which could restrict the flow of gold across borders.

Not long ago, we had a call from a man who had bought a box of 16 rolls of gold-plated jewelry chain at an auction where the assets of a closed jewelry manufacturer were being sold to the public. “I weighed the box,” he told us, “it weighs about 12 pounds . . . so what is it worth?”

Are airplanes great places to look for gold, silver and other precious metals? Granted, the mechanical and electronics that planes hold often contain amounts elements of gold, platinum and silver. But tons of gold? Why would any plane contain that much precious metal?

Gold-plated and gold-covered items look beautiful - and they look expensive. But even though many collectible items have a beautiful surface of genuine gold, some contain only a tiny amount of the precious metal. Over the centuries, tiny amounts of gold have been beaten thin and used to decorate all kinds of items, even buildings.

Tariffs, Trade Wars, Shrinking Tech . . .What’s the best way to invest in scrap gold today?

We have to admit, we have never seen a period when it has been so difficult to pinpoint the biggest trends that will affect the prices of gold. In the past, there were periods of uncertainty when it was possible to consider just one trend, see how it was probably going to affect domestic gold prices, and formulate an investment strategy. You could say, for example, “Looks like trade relations with China are going to be rough for a while, there could be fewer gold crossing borders, so the price of gold that is already in the U.S. is probably going to rise.”

If you have visited the Statue of Liberty or another tourist destination lately, you have noticed that hardly anybody is using digital cameras these days. Five years ago you would have seen all those tourists taking snapshots with small cameras made by Olympus, Sony, and other companies. Today, nearly all those pix are being shot using smartphones.

We are in the business of recycling gold from a number of sources. We work with gold scrap, electrical devices, old jewelry and even ore and sand.  What is our best advice about what you should do today if you have recyclable gold-bearing materials – perhaps materials that you have been holding until gold prices increase?

If you have been waiting to recycle or sell your gold until trading prices rise, we invite you to consider a Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners Pool Account.  Our Pool Account offers significant benefits, including the ability to sell your gold when prices rise in the future.