Don’t let valuable precious metals slip through your fingers

A recent trip to our town recycling yard (once called the “town dump”) convinced us that a lot of people are tossing an awful lot of stuff during the time they are staying at home because of Covid-19. They’re cleaning out their basements, attics, garages, and storage rooms. That’s probably a good thing to do. Decluttering and cleaning out are great projects to take on right now. They help us feel like we are making progress and getting organized, in a time when we feel stuck and out of control.

Gold continues to hit new highs. We would say that it can’t go much higher. But the fact is, no one knows just what level the price of gold will hit in the current upward spiral.

On your trips to the beach, chances are you’ve seen people using metal detectors. They’re often out there in the early morning or early evening hours, looking for items that people have lost.

What do these modern-day prospectors do after they have found something – a piece of jewelry, a watch or maybe a small stack of coins? That depends. For some users of metal detectors, the enjoyment comes from the “joy of the chase,” meaning that what they really like to do is hunt for valuables using their high-tech equipment. When they find something, they turn their discoveries in at the lost and found counter if they are hunting in a town or public beach or post a notice on a bulletin board.

Over the last weeks and months, people have been logging more time at home. And many of them have been thinking up new ways to spend their time. Some have been attending exercise classes online. Others have been taking piano classes. People are discovering all kinds of new interests and enthusiasms.

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.”

We don’t write often about base metals on this blog. After all, we are a precious metal refining company.

But have we been failing to tell you how you can make a lot of money by investing in base metals like aluminum, copper, and brass? Today, we’ll find out.

If you have precious metal items that you would like to refine for profit, “Where is there a precious metal refinery near me?” is a logical question to ask. The problem is, it might not be the right question to ask. Here are some of the reasons.

Every few months we hear another story about a crime involving precious metals. Another one came along last week, when the Metropolitan Museum in New York packed up a golden Egyptian coffin it owned and shipped it back to Egypt, from where it was stolen in 2011. The Met acquired the coffin in 2017 from an antiquities dealer. The only problem was, it still belonged to Egypt. (You can read the full story in “Ancient Gold Coffin Returned to Egypt from New York as Looted Antiquity,” an article that was published by the Associated Press on September 25, 2019.)

Let’s say you walk into a pawnshop to check out whether there are any gold, silver or platinum items there for sale – items that you can buy for low prices. Or you walk into a coin dealer to see what’s on display.

Let’s also say that you find what seems to be a good deal. It’s a South African Kruggerand that contains 1 Troy Ounce of gold. When you ask the dealer the price, he replies, “$1,505.00, because we sell at current trading prices.” So you go online, check trading prices, and decide that you will be getting a fair deal if you buy that Kruggerand for the asking price. So you go back to the pawnshop or coin dealer, pay asking price, and assume that everything has gone well.

A gold ETF (Exchange Traded Fund) is a gold-based investment you can buy as though it were a stock or mutual fund. And like those investments, you can monitor how well your ETFs are performing, and what prices they are trading for. The companies that create and sell gold ETFs buy a quantity of gold bullion and allow investors like you and me to invest in partial ownership of them. Gold ETFs offer convenience – you can call your financial consultant at Fidelity or another investment company – and say, “Buy me some shares in a gold ETF,” and you are off and running with your gold investments. And because their performance is tied to gold trading prices, it is easy to keep an eye on how well your investment is performing.

A few years ago, a man looked down at the bottom of a stream in northern California and saw something shiny poking out from the sand and gravel that surrounded it. He pulled it out and it was a gold nugget. It was absolutely beautiful!

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?