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.

 

[Dreamer]

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

I hope I'm wrong. 90% of spot on an ingot of 5% Au seems unbelievable from a business perspective, for a hobbyist yeah maybe. The chemicals, labor, equipment depreciation, and cost of capital etc. of below 10% for handling anything less than Karat and bullion does not seem realistic.

The highest volume and largest refiner of Karat and bullion breaks even at just above 98.5%. I've always been told that the very top of the industry survives on a 3% spread. ~1.5% below spot to buy and ~1.5% above to sell (the buyers and sellers premium).

Maybe some of the high volume refiners can chime in on this.

I can't imagine anyone can touch this for less than 10%. So just a friendly warning, chasing that last 1-2% will expose you to a world of regret. Proceed with caution!

 

[nickvc]

For a large refiner or processor 10% is a great deal as they will simply add this material to lots of karat scrap which can be refined very easily they do not need to refine this separately, as a small processor then 10% would be needed to make it worth the time and costs and leave some profit.
For the OP I would try and get the material melted and sampled before sending it to the refiner failing that pray you have an honest one.

 

[4metals]

There is an overwhelming idea that commercial refiners pay the same ridiculous prices for nitric acid that small refiners and hobby refiners do. It simply is not so. 10% is indeed a profitable rate even for 1/2% material.

 

[Dreamer]

There is an overwhelming idea that commercial refiners pay the same ridiculous prices for nitric acid that small refiners and hobby refiners do. It simply is not so. 10% is indeed a profitable rate even for 1/2% material.

Forgive me for the skepticism. No disrespect, just hard to wrap my head around this. You are saying that I can melt a bar with 99.5% base metals (1/2% Au) and sell it to a large refiner at 90% of the spot market value of the Au and that would be profitable for the refiner?

 

[4metals]

Forgive me for the skepticism. No disrespect, just hard to wrap my head around this. You are saying that I can melt a bar with 99.5% base metals (1/2% Au) and sell it to a large refiner at 90% of the spot market value of the Au and that would be profitable for the refiner?

The refining industry has many many layers. There are the refiners referred to here as the majors, then there are collectors, who ship to the majors, then there are the buyers who ship to the collectors, or if they are big enough directly to the majors.

The majors can refine for a very very low cost. For one, they use a process called the Miller Process which melts the gold

Damn it, I was still typing when this posted, not done yet sorry.

 

[galenrog]

Tap the wrong key? Starting to sound like me.

 

[4metals]

The majors can refine for a very very low cost. For one, they use a process called the Miller Process which melts the gold

as I was saying...... The majors use a process called the Miller Process which uses chlorine gas bubbled through molten gold alloy which produces a bar that contains only traces of Silver, and gold and all of the PGM's. The Silver is skimmed off the top as Silver Chloride and processed further. The resulting bar is processed in an electrolytic cell to produce .9999 gold and collects all of the remaining values in the slimes for recovery when they accumulate sufficiently. Part of a major refiners profits are in the small quantities of precious metals that are below the "payable quantities" which are determined by assay.

Majors also charge a nominal per ounce incoming fee and they have an figure called accountability which is the percentage of the metal in your assay that they recover that they are actually accountable for. They don't lose it but you are not paid for it. Typically that can range between 1% and as low as .3% depending on the amount the customers send in. All payable metals are payed for and the rates vary based on the quantity in the lot and the size of the lot. This of course requires a very good analytical lab to assay all of the samples because once they go into production they lose their lot accountability. And assays are not free, Gold, Silver assays are one price and 4 metal assays (I like that name!) are more expensive. They all use an XRF to get an idea but fire and instrumental assays are king.

This process produces almost no waste so why doesn't everybody use it? For one, the analytical labs are costly to maintain and the potential for theft is high. When refining by electrolytic gold cells, also called Wohlwill cells, the only time you know if everything that went in came out is when a cell is broken down and cleaned out. That can be monthly or quarterly but either way if a worker is taking a hand-full a week it will not be missed quickly. To combat this security is tight. You cannot even go rep wearing clothes with a zipper as the metal detectors will pick that up. So no-one is walking out with metal. That level of security is expensive but it allows the processing methods to work efficiently and cost less than conventional chemistry.

The collectors, who ship to majors, get those very low rates. A collector who gets your 0.5% bar in will save that bar after you are paid and gone, and mix it into composite lots being careful not to dip below the level where the processing is more costly. So in essence they get the favorable rates for the low grade stuff. If they charge you 10% and in essence pay under 2% (or in many cases of larger collectors under 1%) they are doing pretty well.

The gold buyers will probably get charged that 10% so they have no option but to charge you even more.

So the bottom line, is any decent sized refiner, and they are typically smart enough to do this, passes off the gold filled paltry 0.5% assay material to the majors without really telling them. As long as their assays stay above 30-35% gold it goes seamlessly into the system at a major refinery.

I hope this explanation is sufficient.

 

[4metals]

For one, the analytical labs are costly to maintain and the potential for theft is high.

In apology to all of the assayers and analytical chemists out there. What I meant is the cost to maintain a good lab is considerable, and.... because of the time lag between material going into a process and it being accounted for is long the potential for theft is high, hence expensive security.

I did not mean to imply the potential for theft from a lab is high, those employees go through the same metal detectors as everyone else. But the cost of actually operating that lab is high and represents a cost of doing business.