lazersteve said:
Suppose I have a bar of gold and platinum mixed and you are a buyer and assayer of both.
I have a few questions:
1) How much do you charge to assay the bar for gold and platinum? Depends on to where you send it, the melt and assay fee can be $150-400 depending on who you deal with, or it can be free. Again, it is contingent upon the nature of the sample, not all things are as easily analyzed, but bars are a good start!
2) How long will this take from the time the bar arrives? Depends on when your material arrived and its place in the queue with other customers' lots. If all the equipment is working well, it can be the same day or several days later.
3) How much do you pay for each metal (Au & Pt) in percentage of spot? Depends on the quantity and the quality of the sample. If you send in a material that is exclusively gold and platinum, then there is less chemical work required so you can expect a higher price.
4) How long before I see my total amount due? Depends on if you want XRF or ICP-AES to settle on; XRF samples can usually be prepared in a day (bear in mind that you're sampling platinum, not gold and it's a whole different animal). ICP-AES takes longer as the sample must be digested, ultra filtered, diluted quantitatively etc.
5) Do you have any minimum quantities required? Most people do. Look at JM or other large refiner's lot treatment fees and deductions which are designed to weed out all but the most worthwhile of refining contracts. It's simply not worth the time to buy 10 grams of platinum and have the customer demand a free ICP or even XRF and still pay even 95%. It is not profitable to do and maintain rates that large clients get.
6) Do you charge any other fees on the transaction? Not necessarily, but if it is a low profit transaction, then possibly. If it costs $15 to wire the payment, and the profit is only $80 on an ounce of Pt, then I would charge a wire fee. I don't always do that, but it is not unreasonable that I maintain the profit I desire while rendering a fair service. In any case, whomever I purchase material from will be advised of that possibility, if their lot is that small.
7) Will another Au/Pt buyer honor your assay? That is up to the other buyer and out of my hands.
8) Will you honor another buyers assay of this material? Depends upon the buyer. If it is RMC, Heraeus, JM, Metalor's, and a few others, then yes but with certain reservations.
9) What are your turn around times on mixed Au & Pt that has previously been assayed. This question is entirely dependent on how well I trust the other assay and how long I think I'll be out my own money.
10) What kind of certification/guarantee do I get with your assay. That I will honor it when I purchase the material.
Steve
If I have a client come to me with an assay from a reputable assayer and his material is commercially pure and in a marketable form, then it's a different story than buying scrap material. I even got into trouble recently with a large Pt trading firm over old yet SEALED platinum sponge from Engelhard. I know it doesn't have a shelf-life, but they weren't buying it. If I don't have to refine it, and all I have to do is assay it and pass it on with the next bunch, then I'm willing to pay higher, but my assay must be ICP-AES and it's not going to be same day, and possibly not even the same week. All Pt that goes on to end market users or to the exchanges is assayed in that fashion.
Small quantities of relatively pure Pt, I think 90-94% is plenty fair. Large quantities, I think 95-97,5% is more than fair. That's with no fees, no sampling charge, no lot treatment, no 1/4 ozt deductions. But that's just what I'm willing to pay, based on what I know I have to do. Break down the refining terms from Heraeus or JM and see what it comes to; I have the current schedules at hand. You may see 99%+ on Pt but there's a variable price per ounce processed, lot treatment minimums, then there's the fact that they don't pay you in full for six to twelve weeks (usually a 90% advance with 5-6% interest) and God help you if some cadmium or TSCA-controlled substance sneaks in the refining lot! Long story made short enough, by the time you wade through all the different fees and charges, you're not winning unless you send in hundreds of ounces at a time and witness it yourself.
Let's take Steve's 2 ozt troy bar as a working example.
If he sends it in, I must weigh it, melt it, sample it, XRF it (which I do not really trust at parts per ten thousand precision, especially at the confidence interval requisite to insure that I can not refine it and just batch it with the rest), and if it isn't commercially pure, then I have to roll it, anneal it, roll it, then digest it for several days, filter, rinse, hydrolytically separate it, then reduce, then go after the residual Pt in the waste effluent, which I won't recover for some time. Sounds pretty easy? It's not. It's not as simple as just dropping three times with ammonium chloride (that would take too long for one, although it might get the job done). Now I know Steve to be a meticulous, competent, chemist who wouldn't send something out unless it were a slam dunk, but how am I supposed to trust just any person's "pure platinum powder"? On large lots, it's getting refined. I'm willing to hedge it on preliminary assays at the bottom of the RSD.
Also, people forget that gold is much more cut and dried than Pt, Pd, and Rh. There's much more of a market for gold. It's much easier to sell for a profitable price. It's also just easier to refine.
And, if people with small quantities of Pt haven't figured out yet, the PGM market is basically a cartel run by traders at a select few large firms. All others tow the line.
Another thing to consider is that an XRF reading can be off by 3% for numerous reasons:
1. It's off calibration or just running on an algorithm. The more you use it, the sooner you lose it.
2. It's a handheld, low-power unit that has minimal penetrative capability, especially given how dense platinum is. A 30 second acquisition time is usually not sufficient except on kW power units.
3. You're reading a powder.
4. You're reading a liquid.
5. You're measuring a button that was melted in a contaminated dish and it's contaminated on the bottom, and/or the top.
6. You're measuring a button that has Pt congeners like Ni and Co and Fe, all of which may phase separate in the Pt and not form a homogeneous alloy.
7. You're measuring a button that was torch melted and thus exacerbating problem reason 6--it's not homogenous as it was not stirred and possibly not even melted all the way through.
The fairest shake I can give anyone is to digest the stuff and run it as a refining lot. Unfortunately, that is not always practical for long refining schedule metals like Rh and Ir, but it is for Pd and Pt.
Steve,
I'll gladly buy your triple refined Pt for 93% of spot, the day I receive it. You'll have the wire that very day. I will buy it as if it were 99.9% Pt if you yourself warrant that you refined all of it three times. If you want to send out for 3rd party assay, be my guest. If it turns out that it's commercially pure, I'll make a substantially higher offer. Just remember that a good multielement assay starts at $400.