We’ve written in the past about recycling platinum laboratory equipment. Back in 2014, for example, we published a post entitled, “Bright Shiny Platinum Could Be Hiding in your Dented and Dirty Old Labware.”

Let’s fast forward to 2023. In the video that accompanies today’s blog post, we interview Dan Fried, President and Founder of Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners, about making money recycling platinum and iridium crucibles. 

Whether you’re clearing out or cleaning up a hospital, a nursing home, a testing lab or a medical facility of a different kind, you have good opportunities to cash in on precious metals.

Medical facilities are home to many kinds of supplies and equipment that contain gold, silver, platinum and even cadmium.

Did you know you can search for the term “platinum scrap” on eBay and find mixed platinum scrap for sale? I just tried it, and I found a bag of floor sweepings, said to contain platinum, that I could buy for $500. I found plenty of other items that were said to contain platinum too, including hard disk blanks, catalytic converters, bags of mixed jewelry findings and scrap, and old laboratory testing crucibles. So, could I buy those items, send them to Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners to be recycled, and make a healthy profit? It’s possible. Yet the chances of it happening are probably slim, because…

Although platinum doesn’t rust or oxidize, it can discolor after it is exposed to high heat in laboratories. That bluish patina can be deceiving. You look at a discolored piece of thermocouple wire or a testing crucible or a stand that was used in the lab and think, “this discolored stuff can’t possibly be platinum.” The discolorations that affect used platinum mesh or sponge can be even more deceiving. They can be reduced to a blackish powder that you’d be tempted to sweep up and toss away.