I need help and input finding a refining company

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Stavos314

New member
Joined
Jun 15, 2018
Messages
3
I’ve been buying junk jewelry on eBay for awhile and have a collection that I’m looking to get refined. It’s not a huge amount, probably 50-60lbs. It’s all gone through and separated from gold color and silver color. I know there’s a lot of good pieces and I’m at the point where I’m looking to get everything refined and see what precious metals are contained. The issue I’m having is I’m a single dude and not associated with any business so finding a refining company has proved challenging. To make it harder the thing I’m really looking for is to have the precious metals in my lot returned to me and not just a check. Can you guys help point me in a good direction or have any comments on what I should do...
 
I deleted your other three posts.

Select one place to post on and that's enough.

Göran
 
Sorry I didn’t know about the multiple post thing. To clarify the “junk” jewelry, it is a mixture of everything. Gold filled, plated, karat...etc. same thing goes for the silver.
 
Stavos314 said:
Sorry I didn’t know about the multiple post thing. To clarify the “junk” jewelry, it is a mixture of everything. Gold filled, plated, karat...etc. same thing goes for the silver.

I can't imagine any refiner wasting their time with 60 pounds of unmarked gold plated costume jewelry, which might be worth $300, if you're lucky. If there are no karat or gold filled markings on the gold colored jewelry, the odds are about 1000 to 1 it's very thinly plated. About the only plated exception would be if it were marked HGE, which could run about 20-30 times better than unmarked gold plate.

Unmarked silver jewelry is likely plated and, if so, is essentially worthless. Same with cheap, super shiny, super thin, chrome-looking rhodium plate on nickel plate on copper base - fairly common because it's durable.

First thing I would do is sort the yellow stuff into 3 piles - gold filled markings, HGE markings, and no markings. There will be a 4th pile, if you are super lucky to find even 1 piece of marked karat gold. Then, intelligently resell it all on EBay, assuming you don't want to learn the fine art of refining.

By your description, if you want to end up with more than about a dollar a pound, the last thing you need is a refiner. Read the 3rd item in my signature below.
 
Hello forum,
New to the board, thought id share my 2 cents
I too am having trouble finding not just a refiner, but anyone to buy a decent lot of sorted gold( fingers,pins, connectors, etc) from e-scrap. I've spent hours on sorting through to the best of my ability and knowledge. No online company seemed even the slightest bit honest and had terrible reviews....ive tried eBay however unless your a veteran seller 9 out of 10 buyers wont bother....ive thought about scrap jewelry gold as well but sounds like alot of the same difficulties ...interested to see how it turns out. Any thoughts anyone?
 
NickDurg said:
Hello forum,
New to the board, thought id share my 2 cents
I too am having trouble finding not just a refiner, but anyone to buy a decent lot of sorted gold( fingers,pins, connectors, etc) from e-scrap. I've spent hours on sorting through to the best of my ability and knowledge. No online company seemed even the slightest bit honest and had terrible reviews....ive tried eBay however unless your a veteran seller 9 out of 10 buyers wont bother....ive thought about scrap jewelry gold as well but sounds like alot of the same difficulties ...interested to see how it turns out. Any thoughts anyone?

Try selling it Here, on the forum. Post some pics, provide weights, etc.
 
Thanks for your input and advice goldsilverpro. I know in comparison to larger companies or other collectors that my 50+ lb. collection probably doesn’t seem like much but the quality is definitely there. The majority of my collection came from an old hoarder woman who passed away and there is a lot of real karat gold, gold filled and sterling silver in the collection. Yes there’s some of the cheaper “junk” stuff in there as well along with some stuff that I honestly have no idea what it could be, some old treasures is what I’m hoping for! I’ve thought about selling everything on EBay but I don’t think I’d get more then $700-$800 for everything and I’m willing to bet that the value of the precious metals in the collection are worth more then that, which is why I’m trying to locate someone to do the refining process of everything. I could very well be wrong, but I’m willing to find out if I can locate a trusted source that will do it.
 
Stavos
Your first job is to sort through all your scrap and separate any karat pieces or sterling and also any gold filled putting anything dubious in the pile of possibly rubbish, if you can then weigh and put pictures of what you have perhaps someone here will help out but if you only have plated jewellery you may well not get any bites.
 
Unless you sort it into 3 piles and get the weights of each pile, all you have is 50 pounds of junk. Learn what the markings should be and then sort it into (1) karat gold, (2) gold filled, and (3) plated. Until you do that, any numbers you come up with are worthless. Also, you must realize that, if what you think is karat gold isn't marked as such, the odds are at least 100 to 1 that it IS NOT karat gold. Similar with gold filled and good plated stuff (HGE). Any thing yellow that's not marked is very likely to be junk that's worth maybe $5 per pound.
 
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