Read and Learn from Our Most Popular Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners Blog Posts Published in 2022

As 2023 kicks off, we would like to share a list of the most popular, most-read posts that we have published in the last year. 

Thank you, readers, for making our blog one of the top-performing, most often-read advisories in the precious metal industry. 

A 1948 Packard weighed about 3,800 pounds when it rolled off the assembly line. No wonder. It was powered by a straight eight motor that was about the size of a refrigerator. A 1948 Lincoln Continental, which was powered by a V-12 engine, weighed about 4,000 pounds. 

What do cars weigh today?

Where should you invest in 2023? You have a lot of options, of course, including stocks, mutual funds, municipal bonds. But if you are looking for investments that will produce an above-average return on the dollars you invest, you need look no further than these choices . . . 

Is there a precious metal investor on your holiday shopping list?

If so, we have some great gift suggestions for you. 

If you are a regular reader of the Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners blog, you will remember that we published some gift suggestions just a year ago to help you with your 2021 holiday shopping. For today’s post, we have revisited some of those gift suggestions and we are updating our list to reflect the fact that some prices for these gifts have fallen and some great new gift items have just been introduced. 

Question: When is a precious metal not a precious metal?

Answer: When it’s titanium.

Why isn’t titanium a precious metal? After all, it has come very unusual properties . . .

Churchyards and cemeteries are good places to find coins, jewelry, and other items that people have lost over the years. But do you have permission to search for them? be sure to ask before you take your metal detector out of its carrying case and start hunting in those locations.

“Global Precious Metal Market to Grow at a CAGR of 8.1%, during Forecast Period,” a report that BlueWeave Consulting published on September 6, 2022, makes some very encouraging observations about the strength of the market for precious metals.

Here's what the report has to say about coming growth in the Compound Aggregate Growth Rate (CAGR) for precious metals:

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.

If you are cleaning out a house, don’t make the mistake of tossing items that contain gold, silver, or other valuable metals. Here’s a checklist of the places you should be sure to look.

When you consider making any kind of investment, you need to balance several important considerations. You might not realize you are balancing these factors, but you are.

Potential ROI (Return on Investment) – If you invest in something that offers high potential ROI, there is a chance that you can double, triple the money you invested, or maybe do even better. If you are investing in something that promises a lower potential ROI, you are willing to accept a lower potential profit from the money you invested.

When you are making any investment – in gold, silver, platinum, or anything else – will you be able to sell it? And will you be able to sell it for the most money possible?

Your ability to sell an investment and to sell it for a good price are defined as liquidity.

Here are two stories that show that liquidity is a more critical consideration than you might realize.

Here at Specialty Metals, we are big fans of precious metals. Why? Because we have had the privilege of helping customers realize remarkable profits by reclaiming gold, silver, and platinum from precious metal scrap of all kinds.

Yes, we are enthusiastic about investing in precious metals. But our enthusiasm stops short when we hear from clients who have gotten carried away and bought precious metal items and scrap that they shouldn’t have.

Here are some categories of precious metal items that are unwise investments because they promise very little, if any, return on the dollars invested.

A recent article in Metals Focus points out that demand for platinum, palladium and rhodium (all platinum group metals) grew 5% in 2021 and is expected to hit a record 11% increase in 2022 alone.

What is causing the surge?

Metals Focus points to these two trends:

At Specialty Metals Smelters and Refiners, we are in the business of making it as easy as possible for you to determine the value of precious metals and precious metal jewelry, be it karat gold, silver, platinum and even palladium and rhodium. If you send any item made of precious metals to us, our lab technicians can quickly determine what it is made of and tell you its value at current trading prices.

If you’ve been reading the Specialty Metals Blog over the last year, you know that we have been monitoring the increasing acceptance of hydrogen fuel cell cars, which promise to create greater demand for platinum. (Why? Because platinum is used to convert hydrogen to electricity that is used to power the cars.)

If you have been reading our posts, you also know that up until now, you have only been able to buy fuel cell cars in Hawaii and California, the only states where it is possible to buy hydrogen at a filling station.

What is the most powerful small metal detecting tool you can carry in your pocket? It’s your smartphone.

Only five or six years ago, we would have advised you to carry a small digital camera with you on your prospecting adventures. Now that is no longer necessary, thanks to the powerful cameras that are now built into phones.

But there are many more apps you should install on your phone, if you haven’t already, including:

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 . . .

. . . But Here’s Why You Should Carry One Anyway

Gold, platinum, and silver are the three precious metals that we write about most often on this blog. And as you know, a magnet will not be attracted to them. Why? Because they do not contain iron, which attracts a magnet. That’s another way of saying, gold, platinum, and silver are non-ferrous metals. (“Ferrous” means that they contain iron.)

There is a story behind every business that closes and liquidates its fixtures, equipment, supplies and assets. Sometimes the story is sad because a business failed. Sometimes it was in an industry that was no longer profitable. Sometimes the owner retired, and that is not a sad story.

When someone mentions devices that clean exhaust gas, chances are you think, “I know what they are . . . they’re catalytic converters that are installed on cars.”

But there are other kinds of exhaust gas purifiers that can be recycled profitably – varieties that you might not know about. They too can contain platinum, rhodium, and even palladium. We’ll give you a quick course on what these other kinds of exhaust gas purifiers are and how you can make money reclaiming them by having us recycle them for you.