About to send my gold fill to refining help?

[rodV]

Hi everyone.
First off I'm in Canada. I've selected what seems to be my best option here to send my gold fill for refining. I hope you folks can answer a few questions before I take the leap?
I have about 7000 grams (about 225 ounces) of wrist and pocket watch super clean material. It is 1 tenth 12k typically or better. I have stripped 99 percent of any magnetic material.
That said here's the questions:
They offer 90% on the yield. Can I do better?
They say.they will simply burn it then melt it. Am I losing a significant portion of gold in this process? Is there a better method I should be looking for?
What would my expected yield be?
BIG thank you for your expertise guys!
Rod

 

[4metals]

First off let's talk expected yield. 1/10th 12K means the piece should contain about 11.25 ounces of gold if your weights are correct and all of the remaining metal is gold filled. But assuming you removed 90% of the non gold filled material and magnetics, you are left with 10.12 ounces. Now take out the 10% for the refiner and you are down to 9.11 ounces. At todays gold prices $2,670 you are looking at $24,323 US Dollars in gold. Are there any melt or assay fee's at the refiner you are using?

They say.they will simply burn it then melt it. Am I losing a significant portion of gold in this process?

You should not lose any significant values from melting this material.

My concern would be the fact that gold filled jewelry doesn't usually run 5% because 1. there can be mixed types of gold filled material. and 2. the gold fill is typically on the outside and can wear off in use so by the time you see it there can be less gold there.

The only way to tell for sure is to melt and assay the sample of the melt. If you find a refiner close to you you can request to witness the melt and sampling. Then you are sure that the assay of the gold is real or you are being ripped off. It is totally possible, for the reasons listed above, that the overall assay of the bar ends up around 4% or lower. If you don't see it for yourself you would swear you are getting ripped off and it is quite possible you are not.

As far as 10%, that sounds fair in todays market.

Your issue and questions are questions asked many times here on the forum. The thread I'm linking HERE may be helpful because the potential value of your bar isn't exactly pocket change.

 

[rodV]

First off let's talk expected yield. 1/10th 12K means the piece should contain about 11.25 ounces of gold if your weights are correct and all of the remaining metal is gold filled. But assuming you removed 90% of the non gold filled material and magnetics, you are left with 10.12 ounces. Now take out the 10% for the refiner and you are down to 9.11 ounces. At todays gold prices $2,670 you are looking at $24,323 US Dollars in gold. Are there any melt or assay fee's at the refiner you are using?

You should not lose any significant values from melting this material.

My concern would be the fact that gold filled jewelry doesn't usually run 5% because 1. there can be mixed types of gold filled material. and 2. the gold fill is typically on the outside and can wear off in use so by the time you see it there can be less gold there.

The only way to tell for sure is to melt and assay the sample of the melt. If you find a refiner close to you you can request to witness the melt and sampling. Then you are sure that the assay of the gold is real or you are being ripped off. It is totally possible, for the reasons listed above, that the overall assay of the bar ends up around 4% or lower. If you don't see it for yourself you would swear you are getting ripped off and it is quite possible you are not.

As far as 10%, that sounds fair in todays market.

Your issue and questions are questions asked many times here on the forum. The thread I'm linking HERE may be helpful because the potential value of your bar isn't exactly pocket change.

Thank you so much for your reassuring answers.

 

[4metals]

I refined for the jewelry industry for many years but rarely did we ever see lots made of entirely gold filled material. Our customer's bought gold filled but melted it into bars and mixed them into larger karat gold lots. Their reason was we kept our rates the same for karat gold as long as the assay was above 35%. So they had room to throw in gold filled bars and get the lower karat rate than paying higher rates for gold filled.

We have plenty of members here who have processed just gold filled lots separately, maybe they can chime in with the typical gold percentage recoveries they had.

 

[Dreamer]

HI Rod,

Something smells fishy, they are going to melt everything together and send you back 90%, or are they going to refine it to 999 and return 90% the refined gold?

If they are going to refine it, Take a good representative mix of your material and send them the minimal amount they are willing to refine. This will give you two key pieces of info, their true processing fees and your expected yield on the lot.

If it really is 10% for a full refining, that is fantastic as I'm sure all the frugal refiners on here would agree.

Best Regards~

 

[TBoom27]

If it’s 1/10 12k, and cleaned up so there’s not a lot of non-GF junk I would expect a decent yield, 3.5-4.5% or more. If there is a reasonable amount of lower stuff mixed in, 1/20th or RGP, the yield will definitely go down quickly. Gold filled is always a crap shoot. Wear, mis-marked items, solder weight and all kinds of other things will impact yield.

As others have said, if you send it out, send the minimum first and if the yield seems off, ask questions and look around for a validation point. Local refining and witnessing would be best way to go.

 

[rodV]

HI Rod,

Something smells fishy, they are going to melt everything together and send you back 90%, or are they going to refine it to 999 and return 90% the refined gold?

If they are going to refine it, Take a good representative mix of your material and send them the minimal amount they are willing to refine. This will give you two key pieces of info, their true processing fees and your expected yield on the lot.

If it really is 10% for a full refining, that is fantastic as I'm sure all the frugal refiners on here would agree.

Best Regards~

They will melt then access then pay 90 percent of accused.