What are the best places to look for precious metals you can recycle for the highest return?

In answer to that question, most precious metal investors think first of gold and gold-plated jewelry, of scrap from industries that use gold and platinum in the products they make, and of hard-to-collect aerospace scrap.

What is the safest and most profitable way to profit from investing in precious metals?

It is to invest in scrap and have us extract the gold, platinum and silver it contains. Why is this the safest and most reliable way to make money in precious metals?

Let’s review some of the reasons . . .

“The EPA estimates that, in 2009, US consumers and businesses discarded televisions, computers, cell phones and hard copy peripherals (including printers, scanners, faxes) totaling 2.37 million tons. Approximately 25 percent of these electronics were collected for recycling, with the remainder disposed of primarily in landfills, where the precious metals cannot be recovered.”

- Source: “Cleaning Up Electronic Waste,” The United States Environmental Protection Agency.

Let’s say that you have just finished pulling the printed circuit boards out of 100 old laptops and you’ve packed the boards up and sent them to Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners to be processed. Or let’s say that you have pulled the circuit boards out of cellphones, old stereo components or even old televisions.

In one of the biggest automotive recalls in history, General Motors has informed 141,000 owners of Chevrolet Bolt electric cars that they have to bring their cars in to have their batteries replaced.

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.

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.

People often call us and ask for advice on how to package and ship precious metals to us for testing and recycling. When they call us, we tell them what to do, based on our years of experience. They follow our advice, nothing goes wrong, and their gold scrap, silver scrap, platinum scrap or other precious materials arrive safely at our facility.

We recently had the opportunity to visit a metal scrapyard – one of those big outdoor places, five acres or more, that are littered with stuff like piles of aluminum windows, with machinery and even with big car and truck engines. It was quite an impressive site. And it made us realize that people can get scared when they start thinking about investing in metals of any kind.

Scrapped electronic devices of all kinds contain gold, silver, and other non-precious recyclable metals like copper and aluminum. And there is no doubt about it, you can make money by starting a business that collects those scrapped metals and sells them at a profit.

If the idea of having an electronics recycling business of your own appeals to you – and it should – here are the basics of how your new business will function.

You’re someone who loves to invest in precious metals. But what have you been doing to keep yourself motivated about your investments while you’ve been logging time holed up at home?

Over the last few weeks on this blog, we’ve suggested some motivational ideas that will work, whether you invest in gold scrap, platinum scrap, palladium scrap, silver scrap, or something else. We’ve suggested, for example, that you inventory your precious metals holdings, review your 2019 tax strategies, or search your home for precious metals you might have overlooked.

Our phone rang a few days ago. A woman on the other end of the line asked a question that seems to be on the minds of many people just now . . .

“I’ve been furloughed from my job and I could use some cash,” she said. “Now would be a good time for me to sell some old items of jewelry, but I can’t find any gold refineries that buy from the public near me. Even those `We Buy Gold’ roadside stores in my area have shut down during the coronavirus crisis.”

Let’s say you have come across something that is made of white metal – a ring, a cigarette case, a laboratory crucible – and you would like to know what it is made of. It could be white gold, silver, or platinum. So, how can you tell for sure what you are looking at?

If you’ve visited the lightbulb aisle at a home superstore lately, you know a big change has taken place. The old incandescent light bulbs that people used for decades have disappeared and been replaced by a variety of new bulbs, most commonly Compact Florescent Lightbulbs called CFL’s, that work much differently from old incandescent bulbs.

How much gold, silver, platinum and other precious metals were in those buildings before they burned? Are those valuable metals ever recovered, or are they still waiting to be found in the ashes and rubble?