# Are 50% silver coins worth refining to 99.99% pure silver



## mikeote (Jan 7, 2013)

Hi,

As you'll likely be able to tell from my question I'm totally new to refining. I've done some searches on the forums about refining 50% silver coins but couldn't find any results which really answered my question.

Theoretically if I could buy 50% silver coins at spot and could sell 99.99% pur silver bars (once assayed and certified) at spot +15% than would it be worth me learning to refine? Or is the process of refining such a lot of copper/nickle/zink out from silver too impractical for a small scale operation (I currently have 40kg of 50% silver coins which I could refine)?

If removing such a lot of contimant is too impractical is the same true for sterling?

Thanks,
Regards,
Mike


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## scrapman1077 (Jan 7, 2013)

Mike, Save your self the work-

http://www.goldrefiningforum.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=14782

Buying at spot you will loose


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## mikeote (Jan 7, 2013)

Thanks for the link Scrapman. I'de be theoretically selling at 15% so if it cost me 10% to get a mint to refine the coins I'de be 5% up. Ofcourse if I could refine the silver myself and the equiptment cost and % lost in the process were much lower than 10% of turnover than I could be in the money... 

What do you think? Am I dreaming or could a layman (with hard work and a couple of week of learning) acheive a refining set up like that? 

If it can be done a link to the full (easiest and cheapest) process of refining 50% silver to 99.99% would be wonderful, does any one know of a (ideally succinct) resource like that?

Thanks again!


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## mikeinkaty (Jan 7, 2013)

You can sell them for more than spot on eBay so why refine them if you just want profit.


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## mikeote (Jan 7, 2013)

I bought all of my 50% silver coins on ebay at spot or slightly below (I'm in the UK). The ideal situation would be for me to buy at spot from ebay, refine with refining costs of maybe 5% and sell (not on ebay due to fees) at spot +15%.

Cheers


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## etack (Jan 7, 2013)

mikeote said:


> I bought all of my 50% silver coins on ebay at spot or slightly below (I'm in the UK). The ideal situation would be for me to buy at spot from ebay, refine with refining costs of maybe 5% and sell (not on ebay due to fees) at spot +15%.
> 
> Cheers




This is the hard part. How do you sell you silver for 15% above spot? bullion dealers don't sell generic minted rounds for that much over spot. most around 5% and some even better.

remember your money is made when you buy not when you sell.

Eric


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## MysticColby (Jan 7, 2013)

to get to 99.99 you would need to recover the silver first (to 99%), then electrolytically refine to 99.99%.
electrolytically requires very little materials, just a pinch of nitric, some electricity, and time

recovering is usually done by dissolving the impure silver in nitric acid, then precipitating it (best suggestion is to use copper). For 50% silver (assuming the other 50% is copper), this would require about 2.58 ml 70% nitric per gram material. that's 2,580 L per kg. 1 kg = ~500 g silver (50%) which requires about 159 g copper to cement out of solution
Silver is currently at about $966/kg, so 500g = $483. 15% of that is $72.45.
copper is $3.64/lb = $1.28 / 159 g.
That leaves $71.17 for 2.6 L of nitric
depending on your source, it is possible to get nitric cheaper than that. Some people here get it for like $2/L (in 55 gal barrels). Dudadiesel has it at $165/8L = $63.63 / 2.6L (then an extra ~$20 S&H).
It's also possible to recover the copper used to cement the silver (easiest is to cement it onto iron).
Assuming you get these coins at spot and sell at %15 above spot, this is the profit margin you're looking at. It's really hard to make money off refining unless you can get the impure silver at a large percent below spot.


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## nickvc (Jan 7, 2013)

I'm afraid your wasting your time and efforts trying to do this. As you stated proper stamped and certified bars do command a premium but you can't do that and unless you have lots of money you never will. Stick to buying and selling if you want to make money as getting over spot for anything is very hard to impossible these days even refined metals. As the guys have pointed out know what you can sell for and buy below that price and you make a profit so long as the prices are stable or moving up, in today's market which is falling its a lot harder.


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## mikeote (Jan 7, 2013)

Thanks for the doing the math Mystic Colby!

I had a quick look and found that I can by Ntric Acid here in the UK at £126 gbp ($205 usd/ $8 per L maybe $10 per L with shipping) for 25L enough for 23kg/2 = 11.5kg of 99% silver.

Not sure if it's the right kind of nitric acid though?

http://www.reagent.co.uk/nitric-acid-lrg-1-42-sg?utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=free&utm_campaign=googlebase

If the material costs are only roughly $10 (nitric acid) $1.28 (copper) per 500g pure silver from 1kg of 50% than the profit margin on a batch of 40kg 50% silver bought at spot and sold as 20kg of 99.99 silver at spot+15% would be roughly $1613.91 per sale.

I would have it assayed and certified by the London Assay office for £18 ($29). 

The reason I can sell at spot +15% in the UK is because in the UK new silver has VAT applied at 20%, as long as I didn't sell over £77k worth per year I would not have to charge VAT and can offer my customers my bars at spot +15% instead of spot +3% +20% from a normal bullion dealer.

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Edit: It looks like I can get Nitric acid for only £60gbp ($97.5usd) per 45L:
http://www.reagent.co.uk/nitric-acid

Also i think the coins I have can have Nickle and Zinc in them also, does that make the process harder?


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## etack (Jan 7, 2013)

mikeote said:


> The reason I can sell at spot +15% in the UK is because in the UK new silver has VAT applied at 20%, as long as I didn't sell over £77k worth per year I would not have to charge VAT and can offer my customers my bars at spot +15% instead of spot +3% +20% from a normal bullion dealer.



If you think you can rock it than rock it. Just have an out first. this is so your not stuck with 40+ pounds of silver that you over paid for.

Eric


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## Geo (Jan 7, 2013)

according to the msds attached to the listing, its tech grade at 70%. you will need to dilute the acid 50/50 with water.


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## goldsilverpro (Jan 7, 2013)

A few considerations.

The solution to make up a one gallon silver cell will require about 6 to 8 troy oz of silver dissolved in a minimum amount of nitric and diluted to 1 gallon with distilled water. I would also prefer adding about an ounce of dissolved copper/gallon. A one gallon cell will require a power supply providing about 8 amps at about 3 volts and this will produce about 1 troy oz of silver per hour, max. To produce more silver/hour, you would need a bigger cell with more silver dissolved in it and a larger power supply. Unless you want to sleep next to the cell at night, you probably won't want to run it more than about 12 hours per day. A cell requires attention every 4 hours, or less. For the quantities you spoke of, I would probably want at least a 2 gallon (8 liter) cell. I would prefer a Thum horizontal cell rather than a Moebius vertical cell. A 7.5" x 14" x 7" to 8" deep container with a flat bottom would be about an ideal size for a 2 gallon Thum cell. If you get this in 40kg batches and want to get it out faster, maybe a 5 gallon cell. In general, the solution depth of any Thum cell should be 4.5" to 4.75" and the length of the cell about twice as long as the width. 

To make cell bars from the 99% (probably) cemented silver, you need a crucible furnace and molds. The crystal from the cell can be melted and either poured into shot (casting grain) or cast into bars, depending on the demands of who you sell it to.

To dissolve the coins, you need lab equipment (beakers, hot plate, etc., etc.), a fume hood, and, very possibly, a scrubber. You'll need filtering equipment. You'll need decent scales. There are lots of other small things you'll need, like lots of distilled water, some fluxing chemicals, and safety equipment.

77,000BP ($124,000) worth of silver per year is about 4100 oz. That would be 8200 oz of 50% coins. Using 50/50 of 70% nitric, you would generate at least 350 gallons of waste solution/year, not including rinse water, etc. You would either have to treat this yourself or pay to have it hauled off.

All of these processes have a learning curve, especially the silver cell. Something I didn't think of would be recovering the silver slimes tied up in the anode filter cloth on the cell.


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## mikeote (Jan 7, 2013)

Thanks again for the great info, would any one be able to give me an idea of outlay for the most expensive pieces of equiptment?


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## MysticColby (Jan 8, 2013)

wow the scale you have in mind is quite big. Are you sure there's enough 50% silver coins on ebay for that?

MSDS's supplied don't always have the correct %. It's most likely similar, but not necessarily (the MSDS for 30% nitric vs. 70% is nearly identical). And the MSDS for their lab grade nitric is named "NITRIC-ACID-TECH-MSDS.pdf", which is the exact same as their General Use Nitric acid. Since their website isn't clear, I would confirm the concentration of their nitric before you put your profit margin dependence on them. Let me know what you find out and if they ship to the US 
Interesting price breakdown for them:
Nitric (35%) 5L = 28.26
Nitric (lab) 2.5L = 29.17 25L = 125.71
Nitric (general) 2.5L = 29.17 45L = 60.00
Nitric (65%) 2.5L = 33.18
Nitric (analyt) 2.5L = 35.72 25L = 153.91
assuming these are all about the same concentration, I would go with the 45L general use ^_^ wow that's a good price compared to the others (I wish I had 38.5kg of silver to dissolve with that)
common naming practices for lab stuff: "analytical" = ultra pure, maybe 98+%. "reagent" is same as "analytical". "technical"/general = high purity, maybe 95%. For our purposes, technical grade should be fine.
note: % purity is not the same as "65%". "65%" refers to the concentration. purity refers to things besides nitric acid and water that are preset (maybe NOx gasses, byproducts of producing the nitric, dust that fell in, etc.)

The numbers I gave are for 68-70% nitric. 30-35% can be used, it just requires about twice as much (so if it costs less than half the price...)


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## goldsilverpro (Jan 8, 2013)

Mike,

The nitric pricing on that website is very confusing. If my assumptions are correct, this one (general use) seems to be the best deal, by far, but only if you buy 45 liters for 60BP.
http://www.reagent.co.uk/nitric-acid-tech

The MSDS link on that page for tech grade nitric says the nitric percentage is between 60-100%. Also, further down, it says the specific gravity (SG) or density is 1.42. This SG, 1.42, is the standard SG given to designate nitric between 67-70%. The price for 45 liters is therefore $2.15/liter or about $8/gallon. If this is truly 67-70% nitric, which is the best strength to buy, the price is one of the best I've ever seen in less than drum quantities. Tech grade is fine and I think this is the only one on the list that is tech grade. I would contact the company to make sure of the strength before I bought it.
http://www.reagent.co.uk/uploads/documents/NITRIC-ACID-TECH-MSDS.pdf

Compared to the strength of 70% nitric, the 35% (w/w) in 25 liter quantities costs about $80/gallon and the 65% (w/v) in 2.5 liter quantities costs about $124/gallon. I might note that 65% (w/v) is the same as 50% (w/w). The 35% (w/w) is about 42% as strong as 70% and the 65 (w/v) is about 62% as strong.


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## nickvc (Jan 9, 2013)

Mike I'm not sure if your over or under thinking this idea.
Basing any business on any present tax break or band is dangerous as they can be changed very easily.
I'm also not sure you can get 15% over spot for your silver, maybe with small bars but then the assay charges increase as each bar will need marking and testing. If people want to buy silver for investment then they can buy scrap hallmarked sterling or coins both of which are a known quantity under spot with no vat so why buy your bars.
Using your calculations at today's price you can do your deals 5.5 times and then you would have to stop to avoid falling into the vat threshold, that gives you again by your figures £8000 profit less costs and your set up costs could be £2000-£5000 with the most expensive item been a decent hood and fume scrubber closely followed by the cost of a rectifier. 
All your calculations are assuming that the price of silver stays stable or rises, BUT what if they fall, it happens, your profit would be reduced, gone or you could lose money and you still have to do all that work with its associated costs.
My advice is buy silver scrap at below what you can sell on for, you can get 95% of spot or near so if you buy at 90% you have a known profit and material that you can sell instantly, no set up costs, no processing costs and no dangerous chemicals or fumes, for me the whole idea your proposing is to reliant on things outside your control and with far too many suppositions of expected returns.
As a side note be aware that customs and excise are very aware of the use of silver in the scams been carried out to avoid vat and even to be used in carousel scams where the vat dissapears and anyone involved will be under scrutiny, I have been approached numerous times but for me I'd rather sleep at night and most large dealers/ refiners will take the same view.
I'm sorry if I seem negative but I'm just trying to get you to open your eyes and do research before you leap and spend a lot of money and or time on this only to lose it all or have it sitting around not been used. If I'm wrong then good luck and I hope you can make it work and you get your profits.


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## mikeote (Jan 10, 2013)

Thanks again for all of the great info guys, i was away from my computer yesterday so couldn't reply. I've emailed a few precious metel refiners in the UK to see if it will be worth getting them to refine for me, I doubt it will be though. I'de be willing to pay up to 7% I think. Thinking about it I'm a little excited about the adventurous new prospect, the first few batches will be a real novalty.

"Are you sure there's enough 50% silver coins on ebay for that?" Yep there's at least 7kg of 50% for sale on ebay now. I'll make a quick one page website and will advertise with google adwords to buy silver for 10% below spot, if I can do that I'll maybe making a 20% profit...

"Let me know what you find out and if they ship to the US " I'de be happy to ask but would they ship overseas considering it's a dangerous material?

Once I've reached the VAT limit I can teach a friend to do the same and let him use my equiptment / website etc for maybe 40% of the profit, so I think it would definately be worth it in the long run.

Thanks for the advice Nic, I'll be sure to avoid any thing dodgy...


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## mikeote (Jan 11, 2013)

GoldSilver Pro I clicked your book link and read that story about you renewing cpu's, you sound like in interesting fella!

Is it right that a five gallon cell would cement about 5oz of probably 99% silver an hour? Is all of the info I need in your book?

Thanks!
Mike


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