How to make money from this?

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misterno

New member
Joined
Sep 15, 2014
Messages
2
Hello everyone. I've been reading a lot about refining, but not much about how to make money from it.
I'm not sure how this business works, jewelry shops and other gold buyers in my area are paying up to 93% for 14k, and 95% for pure gold. Should I buy gold scrap on my own, refine it and sell pure, or can I refine scrap from "bigger" buyers? Maybe the situation is not the same everywhere, so someone from Europe can give a better advice.
 
there are ways of making money from recovering and refining,
find something people dont want that contains precious metals,
extract and refine
deal with the waste properly
sell the metals.


look for cheap items at junk sales, yesterday at one I got 10 large pewter tankards, I have friends who cast pewter and buy it in ingots, testing is quite simple and so is casting of ingots.

I will dissolve a couple of samples ( 9 of these were from the same maker and had same markings on ) in Hcl and then add a drop of sulphuric and look for a white precipitate to indicate lead.
they all look like modern lead free
here in the UK that should mean 95% tin and 5% bismuth from what I have read.
the older lead based ones I think contain 50% lead so I will avoid that.

I will be asking friends about computer scrap like old memory and CPUs as they are not to hard to deal with.

before you do anything you should read the book by CM Hoke which you can download for free from this site, it was written many years ago before there was much about mercury, cyanide and asbestos and the health hazards they cause.
the book was written for the non chemist and contains a lot of useful stuff.
after reading that read about safety and dealing with waste on this site and then start thinking about what you want to do and how to do it
 
the iron dwarf said:
there are ways of making money from recovering and refining,
find something people dont want that contains precious metals,
extract and refine
deal with the waste properly
sell the metals.


look for cheap items at junk sales, yesterday at one I got 10 large pewter tankards, I have friends who cast pewter and buy it in ingots, testing is quite simple and so is casting of ingots.

I will dissolve a couple of samples ( 9 of these were from the same maker and had same markings on ) in Hcl and then add a drop of sulphuric and look for a white precipitate to indicate lead.
they all look like modern lead free
here in the UK that should mean 95% tin and 5% bismuth from what I have read.
the older lead based ones I think contain 50% lead so I will avoid that.

I will be asking friends about computer scrap like old memory and CPUs as they are not to hard to deal with.

before you do anything you should read the book by CM Hoke which you can download for free from this site, it was written many years ago before there was much about mercury, cyanide and asbestos and the health hazards they cause.
the book was written for the non chemist and contains a lot of useful stuff.
after reading that read about safety and dealing with waste on this site and then start thinking about what you want to do and how to do it
Thanks, but I was thinking of refining karat gold, not computer scrap. You sell tin, if I understood correctly?
I've read Hoke, every sticky thread here, and a lot of other stuff.
 
I will sell what people want if I can get it.
damaged and dented tankards were a cheap buy that I know a customer for
also collecting silver contacts and deplating old damaged silver plated items and going to go through all the very early computer scrap I have around to see what I can get out of it
 
have just looked up the various types of pewter and it seems I was wrong, most likely it is something like approximately 92% Tin, 7.75% Antimony and .25% Copper, thought I better post a correction.
 
Simple answer is knowledge.
More difficult response is read and learn, heard the phrase there's no such thing as a free lunch well that really applies to this business.
 
nickvc said:
Simple answer is knowledge.
More difficult response is read and learn, heard the phrase there's no such thing as a free lunch well that really applies to this business.


Agree, any gain requires work. Even winning a lottery.

Having said that "Think". I to am looking into the possibility of refining as my own business. I've had conversations with our areas waste management personnel, visited a number of facilities, made contacts with local electronic shops and so on. I have had 2 private businesses with Tax numbers and hope to receive a new tax ID shortly and establish a business account for refining.

My neighbor might have a good start for me. He works in the IT department for a major US company. Last week they PAID a man 3k in US $ to take away their outdated and dead electronics. I told him I wish I would have known, I would have come for 1/2 the price. Once I have my new tax ID #, I feel like that company will be a starting point for me. There are other areas that come under the THINK category, hospitals, Cell Phone companies, where people go to get cell phones and so on. All of these are real possibilities for free materials to refine.
 
Aye Joe but when you really see how much IT kit you need to be able to process in order to get a sensible amount of gold you may change your mind about setting up to refine it. Trading it often works out far more profitably.

Jon
 
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