# Reverse plating



## woodtraps (Dec 23, 2011)

I go to quite a few auctions and accumulate many silver plated items found in box lots. Marked on these items are inscriptions stating Hotel plate, tripple plate,plate over copper and other inscriptions saying it is plated to some extent. The price of silver is now going about $30.00 an ounce and a large piece may contain 1/10 ounce or more in silver I was wondering how hard would it be to electrically remove the silver plate from an item and transfer the silver to maybe a carbon rod using electrolisis then heating the carbon rod and melt the silver off of it. I wonder how hard it would be?
Oh, Many a brass or bronze bell contained as much as 6 to 7 percent by weight in silver to give it a clearer ring. The alloy for the bell was known as bell metal.


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## element47 (Dec 23, 2011)

The consensus here has been that in general, silver-plated items cannot be economically de-plated. There's just not enough silver to offset the amount of junk metals you have to deal with, when you consider the cost of the chemicals req'd to dissolve them. Even when you're using cheap HCl, one of the less expensive chemicals there is. I'd be happy being corrected on this assertion, but I've never read anything on the forum that was encouraging regarding silver plated stuff in terms of reclaiming the silver from it.


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## woodtraps (Dec 23, 2011)

I remember a few years back a gentilman brought in some copperware pots,chargers,ect to an auction I attended.They were polished really nice and sold well at that auction. I asked him about the copperware and he told me he deplated it and then polished the copper or brass that was the base metal and re sold it as decrotive ware. He would not tell me how he really did it. However he did say he got some silver from the process. I have some real heavy serving trays that were plated and some other plateware that would look good as polished copper. I hate selling these things for scrap value while maybe making more money selling these things as decrotive items


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