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Brian,

Nice to see you on here, I hope you'll stay awhile. I certainly agree that Nicki and her boys are honest; I've tested the waters with them before and they were fair. I think what it comes down to is knowing your material before it ships. People (myself included) often tend to overvalue their material.

Everyone else:
For the record, I've done several transactions with Brian's company (Trinity Precious Metals) and have had complete satisfaction with their services. He runs a very professional outfit and has MANY years in the business. They have been, in my experience, both prompt in their turnaround time, and quite fair on assay. I've been happy with my diamond sales to them as well.
 
Welcome to the forum Brian.
I don't want to start an argument but there's holes in your theories about PGMs. While no doubt many refiners buy in PGMs in mixed metal bars which they can release the gold from easily, you forgot to mention the free PGMs that are accumulated by any large refiner from the volumes of karat scrap refined which are basically free and I'm sure recovered and sent to JM along with the PGMs purchased. There's nothing wrong with making a profit that's what all business is about but the 80% return I could beat hands down and I'm no longer an active refiner, perhaps with the exception of Rhodium or Iridium which is rarely encountered in karat scrap, and payment would be within 24 hours. I'd be happy to offer 90% returns on reasonable amounts and still make a good profit.
 
Nick,

That's a legitimate concern, but really, how often did you find a platinum ring in your karat scrap pile? How much difference in assay did some platinum prongs from a setting make in terms of profit? I think you'll be unlikely to see that much of a bonus out of it; if anything, palladium in white gold might be the biggest boon you'll find. It's also a pain in the butt to separate from gold, and tenaciously contaminates any electrolytic silver (or gold) cell.

The bulk of platinum and sister metals coming into the average refiner's door is either old jewelery, or from dental.

I don't know of any small refiner (i.e. less than 5000 ozt per week refined Au) that pays out on Ir, or Ru, or Os; do you? The first two are heavily accumulated from old jewelery.
 
In honesty Lou I do very little refining now...have a play and do some recovery work for a few people but from reading 4metals posts about large refiners not collectors that there is Pt and Pd in karat scrap and in the case of a setup like ARA who I assume are one of the largest independents in the US they must be accumulating fairly large quantities just on the volume of karat gold refined. I'm no expert on PGMs and will agree with anything you say regarding them but surely if the waste solutions after the gold precipitation are cemented with copper any PGMs will be collected and can thus be recovered and melted with any stock held from purchases.
With regards to what I have dealt with in PGMs my experience has been mainly platinum, rhodium, palladium and iridium just once and can get prices for all the rest of the group I'm sure if reasonable quantities were available.
Please understand that I'm not trying to be unfair to any refiner but I'm sure that they do recover reasonable quantities of PGMs if they are doing volumes, a small % maybe of the overall metals, but like most in this business they work on a small % of a large turnover to make their profits and a small % of a large volume of karat scrap can be a decent amount of PGMs.
If this is wrong please correct me as I said I'm trying to be fair to all.
 
Palladium is very scarce to begin with, in anything other than dental, and most, like class rings, is kept isolated to be purchased as a PGM. With induction and gas furnaces kept at the minimum temperature required to melt the gold without dissipating the silver, the platinum, if any, usually doesn't melt. Also, when we do stone removal and/or refining, the platinum usually doesn't dissolve. We find the pieces in the silver chloride with the stones or in the case of melting, in the pieces in the flux that don't melt. We create a platinum lot and purchase it seperately for the customer. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. What little bit that might escape into the spent acid is recovered at the end of the year, but the majority of that is absorbed in fees for processing such. If you were a car dealer and specialized in Cadillac and I brought you two Cadillacs and an AMG Pacer and said, "Come on, just buy it so I don't have to make two stops". You would, but you wouldn't pay top dollar either...you would do it to make the deal go through. We pay more for PT, so I'm not defending the price, but rather the reasoning.
 
Brian I think perhaps it's two different market places we are discussing as here in the UK palladium is far from scarce it's in virtually all British 18k white golds from 5% - 15% by content plus the dental alloys and the now ever increasing palladium jewellery been produced. If as you say, which I'm not doubting, it's scarce over in the US then I can see your reasoning and ARA,s but I still find the price paid low but again it might well be as I said in the beginning just a different market as here in the UK we are close together and have several large players which perhaps drives competition. If I remember correctly even Hoke mentions that at one stage large jewellers were shipping sweeps to the UK from the US as prices were better, perhaps this is now the case with PGMs.
 
I just got off the phone with ARA, and in no uncertain terms did they say they will not accept any gold derived from electronic waste. I had the representative double check, and they confirmed that even a refined button or pure precipitate will not be accepted. I realize that gold is gold, but this attitude shocked me. Has anyone else had a similar experience?
 
Crosswire3 said:
I just got off the phone with ARA, and in no uncertain terms did they say they will not accept any gold derived from electronic waste. I had the representative double check, and they confirmed that even a refined button or pure precipitate will not be accepted. I realize that gold is gold, but this attitude shocked me. Has anyone else had a similar experience?
Click to expand...

And if you send them a refined button, how would they know where it came from?
 

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