According to estimates from the Environmental Protection Agency, a million cellphones contain about 75 pounds of gold, 33 pounds of palladium . . . and 770 pounds of silver. That might seem like a lot of precious metal to you, or it might seem like a small amount when you consider that you have to recycle a million phones to access it. But here’s another statistic that makes it seem like it might not be that difficult to get your hands on a million phones:

If you have ever donated a car to a charity, you know the routine. You call to schedule a time when your car will be picked up. A flatbed truck arrives, the driver writes out a receipt, and your old car gets hauled away. A little while later, you get a receipt from the charity that took your car. That receipt should provide a value for the car you donated, which should be what the charity sold the car for.

Why Precious Metal Scrap Makes a Great Holiday Gift

Are you looking for a great present to give to someone special this holiday season? If so, we have a suggestion to make . . .

There’s no doubt that precious metals are waiting to be found in dumpsters.  Alert dumpster divers can find gold, platinum, and silver in dumpsters in locations like these . . .

Not long ago, a man found two 55-gallon steel drums full of gold paint. He was very excited and called us up.

“How much gold do you think they contain?” he asked.

Have you ever sold an unwanted piece of gold jewelry to a jeweler or one of those “We Buy Gold” stores?

It’s a straightforward process. You walk in, the person behind the counter checks your item with a gold testing kit, and makes you a cash offer that you can either accept or reject on the spot. But in reality, the person on the other side of the counter is making a lot of calculations that he or she is almost certainly not sharing with you . . .

There are many legends about people who decided to hide their treasures in wells. One of the most common tales is that at the end of the Civil War, wealthy southern families tossed their silverware down their wells to prevent roaming Yankees from finding it.

We recently found a bottle of “Platinum” skin cream on a shelf at a pharmacy store.

“Wow,” we thought, “they’re using platinum in skin cream?” But when we scanned a list of the ingredients that the cream contained, we learned that it did not contain platinum, only a bunch of chemicals, plant extracts, aromas, and coloring agents. But platinum? No.

It’s no secret that vast numbers of computers are being discarded. According to some estimates, one million pounds of old computers are tossed out every year.

Let’s say that you have an old gold-plated set of silver tableware. As you know, the gold that the set contains is worth much more than the silver. Can’t you throw everything into a tub of some kind of chemical that will dissolve the silver and leave only the gold behind in solid form?

You might have heard rumors that the U.S. Government operates a secret program to recycle precious metals. That rumor holds that the government, unknown to U.S. citizens, is processing vast quantities of gold, platinum and silver.

You have a pile of mixed metal scrap - shavings, powder, scrapings, what have you. You know that the batch probably contains quantities of platinum, gold, silver and maybe even platinum family metals like rhodium and osmium.  And you also have a strong suspicion that your pile of stuff contains small quantities of stainless steel, aluminum, copper and other low-value metallic scrap.

Many people like to invest in bullion and coins that are made of gold, platinum or silver. The predictability appeals to them. They buy a pure piece of platinum, gold or silver that comes in a hard plastic case that they can either open or put in a safe.

After you send your platinum scrap to Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners and we extract the pure platinum it contains, where will that platinum be used?

If you are a regular reader of our blog, you know that we like to offer advice on where to find platinum, silver and gold scrap in old factories. So we thought it would be interesting and informative to profile one such building - the old Tiffany manufacturing facility in Newark, New Jersey, that has now been converted to residential apartments. It is located at 90 Tiffany Boulevard - where else could it be?

Last month, a development firm from New York bought a vacant 50-acre manufacturing complex from Caterpillar in Milwaukee. And in the same month, the vacant 37,000 square foot Vista Pointe Industrial Plaza building in San Diego was sold to a California developer.  

...When You Recycle These Gold-Plated Items

While you’re poking around at the antiques mall you notice a pair of gold-plated earrings sitting in a tray. You could snag them for less than $10.00, but why bother? They are going to contain only maybe 50 cents worth of gold at best. So you walk on by and keep looking for more interesting items.

Gold is a heavy element. A chunk of gold is, in fact, more than seven times heavier than a piece of marble or even granite of the same size. And when gold is in a natural setting, it can be more than 25 times heavier than the sand or soil that surrounds it.

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?

What are the best places to find huge quantities of precious metals?

How to Avoid Myths and Mistakes

Many answers are flying around to that question. Unfortunately, many of those answers are just plain wrong. In today’s post, let’s take a closer look.