# anyone near Austin, TX?



## loco (Mar 9, 2008)

check this out guys. This is the guy that use to partner with platinumill/Rob Diller to sell the containers from his supplier in India which they claim as every bit as good as cats here in the states. But for 4+ months been asking on assays and not once will he pull an assay on it.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&sspagename=ADME%3AL%3ALCA%3AUS%3A31&viewitem=&item=230230605516
or if that one doesn't work try this
http://tinyurl.com/2dk22g

the gent selling it knows nothing but the processing of cat material just knows he has new business partners that he had buy this material from him from his supplier from India. and If you ask him about processing he'll be sure to tell you he doesn't need to know, or even care he is just a supplier. and said he has a long list of people asking for material and even one guy offering to buy individual comb/cakes for $60 a piece. 

But they will sell anyone #10 of material for $650 plus shipping if you want to pull an assay on material they have no idea content of pgms and then you can shell out the other $$$ for an assay or 2 on a hope and a prayer that you'd get lucky enough to even break even.

Ok is it just me or does it seem crazy to shell out say $1,100 for material and a couple assays prayin you can maybe break even on an unknown material? and IF you thought you had the "golden calf" (for our indian members it's a cliche here...in the states or at least my area) of pgm materials at that price and were confident of content wouldn't you pull an assay yourself and as long as things checked out even raise the price a bit if you felt it was worth it? 

my thinking is if you knew the average US cat say contained $300 worth of metals and comb was say and comb is just over #2 each. which would be about 1,000 cats worth of material or I would estimate about $300,000 or so in value. why wouldn't someone pay $100,000 to get material to return $300,000. Just makes since to me. Please someone if my thinking is skewed please correct me.


Also anyone close enough to austin, Tx to make a trip down thier setup and check it out?


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## Irons (Mar 9, 2008)

I think these guys are acting as agents for some sweatshop decanning operation. You pay them, they take their cut and the supplier drop-ships it to you.
If they owned it outright, it would be, assuming the values are there, to sell it as a lot to Stillwater or Inco in Canada for reprocessing and not sell it nilly willy to have it trickle back into the system if ever.

Would I lay out that kind of money, sight unseen for a product that doesn't have a bona fide assay? No.


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## Harold_V (Mar 9, 2008)

Interesting. And scary.

Give this some thought. 

Have you wondered why these people don't simply forward the offered material to a recognized refiner, where they _should_ reap the maximum value?

Consider that you may be paying $125 for $100 bills. 

I may be wrong, but there's no chance in hell I'd get involved with a deal like this. It's too easy to get in over your head-----and emotions, especially right now, with a run-away market for precious metals, is giving cause for far too many people to assume they can get rich quick. I don't believe that's true. 

One thing that virtually no one appears to understand is that you are completely out of control when it comes to the pt. group metals. There is NO market for them aside from major refiners, and they are not known for their honesty or generosity. 

Invest only the amount of money you're prepared to lose.

P.T. Barnum said it best-------there's a sucker born every minute. 

Harold


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## lazersteve (Mar 9, 2008)

Loco,

I agree with Harold and Irons, don't take the chance. If the material was worth the price why would the seller not send it to the refinery himself instead of wasting the time to ebay it out and pay all the ebay and paypal fees. 

Steve


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## loco (Mar 9, 2008)

oh I sure hope nobody thinks I was considering this at all. several months back I talked to the guy when he and the platinumill fella were partners and he has been keeping me posted via some instant messages on yahoo. And everytime I ask him about updates on him getting material assayed it's always the same thing. He basicly avoids it and offers to sell the material at basicly what market value is for US cat material and says then I can pay for an assay on top of that.

I have explained to him several times over that without an assay he might as well be selling sand or manure as cat material as without an assay you can not verify content and anyone that would buy it sight unseen is just plain crazy. and also on several occassion I told him for that kind of weight he'd be better off not processing it and instead sending it right off to techmet or some larger smelter. 

IMHO if someone could get up a solid cat processing process it would probably be short term until they had the # of cats to send directly off to a smelter or setup thier own arc furnace setup which is very expensive and send off the metals to be seperated and sold. so IMHO it would be a progessive business. typically on a start-up commercial level it may be done with leaching and processed, and then once the number of cats or weight is achieved on a regular basis sent to a smelter to be processed or if you are a die hard and want to keep processing setup a smaller arc furnace setup.

besides even if he was just a salesman...what salesman doesn't want to know his product better so he can increase his sales, hence fattening his own wallet? And also what salesman doesn't want to know as much as he can as to what the product can be used for or in? I'm not exactly a die hard salesman but seems super elementary in sales to know your product as much as possible to be as effective as you can.


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## markqf1 (Mar 9, 2008)

I agree with you all.
This guy is full of s__t.
If someone is not prepared to show me what they are offering on a scientific level, then I'd consider it to be a scam.

Mark


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## hvyshakes1 (Mar 9, 2008)

yeah, why would anyone in their right mind sell a 100,000 dollar container of catalytic converters when they can triple their money having it sent to a refiner themselves and processed? I told you and David this a while ago. Ive talked to you about this before Rich and its definitely a scam. 

Buy the best Catalytic converters for their street value(foriegns and exotics) only! Process those with the method I have told everyone on the forum. Do not mess with the others. Not worth it. And do not leach the cats for pgms its not going to work Period!


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## hvyshakes1 (Mar 10, 2008)

Rich looks like david bought these cats on a hope that the platinumill was going to be huge. I think what happened here is he got stuck with the cats and knows damn well that those cats in the boxes on ebay are just ceramic combs without any pgm coating on them. There is a big ring of scammers selling these combs out of china and the middle east Do not buy ask for a sample and lets see what he says. Have him send out a few different ones and have them worked. But then again will all of the cats prove the same result? Hmmmmmmmmm??????? Big Gamble here. Offer to have them refined for him and see what he says.


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## loco (Mar 10, 2008)

I totally agree and have encouraged him several times to pull an assay and his consistant responce is why should he pay for an assay to be done? and he'll gladly sell you the stuff and let you pull an assay on it on your dime. and when I explained that the verification of pgm content even if low would make or break the sales of the material to anyone with a brain. But he never would do it which has always sent off RED FLAGS about his business dealings. I mean if I thought I had a product and an assay would make or break the sales of it then I would gladly cough up the $$ to be able to sell it.

Bottom line is despite what david says he has I can't believe he has any real money to invest because until this time when he claims he had 5 guys and himself do a partnership to get these combs over here, he had never bought ANY of it. And even this time he spent thier money and none of his. and just collected his marked up fee of whatever.

Rob diller never had the money and this guy oviously doesn't either or they'd bought them themselves and kept it at least semi quite. It all just seems funny that someone has this wonderful stuff that he claims is good and has a list of people wanting the material. Yet doesn't process any himself, or with that kind of weight send it off to be done. It's got to be a scam.

*Anyone live close enough to Austin ??*to check these guys out. at least one of the guys is suppose to be from that area and is suppose to have been processing cats since the 80's. they are also talking to someone in england on processing for whatever reason.


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## Anonymous (Mar 10, 2008)

maybe they know that ghana guy with all the money. :lol:


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## markqf1 (Mar 10, 2008)

Shakes
This might surprise you, but there are leaching processes out there that have been , and are working.
I suggest you do a little more homework, ...if you don't have the universe figured out yet.
As for all of us opened minded individuals, I say again, this guy is full of it.
If the guy gave you some assay results, they would be false anyway.
Seems to be, the only way to know, is buy some and have it assayed.
Well, I might kick in 20 bucks but thats about all.
Do you think he would sell me 20 bucks worth?

Mark


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## Froggy (Mar 11, 2008)

PAAALLLEEEAASSSEE! get an address and some contact info for Austin, I live 2hrs from there,,, If he had this stuff he would just take it to techemet and have it proccessed, I'm sure its junk!! I really like the $650 for 10 lb scam, mabey thats whats he's trying to do, scam someone just to get $650 bucks for 10lb of aftermarket substrate!! get me more info , And i will look into it a little bit, but I'm not going to waste too much time on it, it reeks!


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## goldsilverpro (Mar 12, 2008)

I toured the Techemet plant when they were a couple of blocks off the south 610 loop in Houston. Haven't been to their new location in Pasadena (I think). I got a good feeling about them but, who knows. If I had a lot of cat material, I would probably send stuff to them. Of course, I would have to do it my way. 

Off the subject, but a common form of scrap catalyst that is prevalent, in tonnage quantities, in the Houston area, is the silver catalyst that is used for the production of ethylene oxide. I think it runs about 12% silver, by weight (~$33/#). An IPMI pub., "Precious Metal Recovery/Refining Seminar", held in Las Vegas in 1997, has an excellent article on processing it. Basically, it was just a simple nitric leach followed by the production of silver chloride, if I remember right. For some reason, most of it is shipped to Africa for processing.


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## starzfan0211 (Mar 12, 2008)

Froggy, have you ever dealt with Techemet? If so, how did they do?


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## Froggy (Mar 12, 2008)

I havnt really done buisness with the direct, but have a few guys that I deal with that do, but as always you have to due your own diligance.. What are you thinking of doing with them? They are snowed in with cats, they are in the proccess of building another plasma furnace.


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## starzfan0211 (Mar 12, 2008)

I am looking for someone down the road to do a bunch of e-scrap for me. Since they are kinda close, I figured I would ask.


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## loco (Mar 12, 2008)

new update on guys in TX I originally posted. Despite previous talks with David and his ebay auction they aren't allowing anyone to see thier setup or processing but the guy with meet up with someone to show material. Said it's for thier security reasons.


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