Deal or no deal?

[wisco_gold]

I think I found quite a score at my local Goodwill...a 15 piece Gorham fine china set for $7.99. From my googling it has 24k gold trim. I'm sure I could sit on it and sell it for more, but that's not important to me. I'm looking to refine gold!!!!! From the picture do you think I'll get back more than $8 worth?

 

[galenrog]

After costs of recovery and refining you will lose far more than the eight dollars you spent. If you value your time, even more.

Time for more coffee.

 

[cejohnsonsr1]

I think I found quite a score at my local Goodwill...a 15 piece Gorham fine china set for $7.99. From my googling it has 24k gold trim. I'm sure I could sit on it and sell it for more, but that's not important to me. I'm looking to refine gold!!!!! From the picture do you think I'll get back more than $8 worth?

The short answer is no. Nothing plated ever comes close to breaking even.

 

[popslab]

I just did a set of plates very similar and others are correct you won’t even get enough gold to pay for the acid let alone the time you spend. I would try selling on eBay first

 

[wisco_gold]

Well thank you all for the replies. eBay it is then. I synthesize my own acids and while lots cheaper, it still isn't free. I really thought it was a good place to start refining. While I understand the chemistry behind refining, I'm still not ready to dive into refining e-scrap. Just to many variables I don't understand yet.

 

[stella polaris]

Eat you dinner on them!

If you are in to gold you should eat on proper plates with gold rim. The gold is there. One day they might be worth so much that you refuse to refine them. If you want to be really flashy then serve pizza on them, to your friends. They get impressed and do not know you paid "a pizza" for them.

I have a Middle Eastern tea set. 6 cups with all items around. Its to 50% covered with gold ornaments. Got it for free. No one in Norway like the style. If you come to my workshop I serve you coffee in it. Think its suitable when scrapping gold. : )

 

[Golddigger76]

If you want gold to refine put up a add on Craigslist wanting to buy gold filled, karat gold or even broken gold jewelry.
Before you do you need to have a very good understanding about how to test and what it's actually worth.
This is something you can do to score a little or even a lot.
It sounds like you are already making your acid and hope know how to safely refine, if not study first.

 

[galenrog]

Stella is very astute in this case. And a bit humorous. I, too, have gold embellished tableware, mostly inherited patterns of indeterminate, but likely Eastern European origin. Most far older than those who passed them to us.

Few recognize the items as being a century or two old, but guests always comment. No, the grandchildren are not permitted to use these items.

Coffee for guests, however, is served in decorative tourist cups that can be had in Iceland or Faroe Islands.

 

[wisco_gold]

If you want gold to refine put up a add on Craigslist wanting to buy gold filled, karat gold or even broken gold jewelry.
Before you do you need to have a very good understanding about how to test and what it's actually worth.
This is something you can do to score a little or even a lot.
It sounds like you are already making your acid and hope know how to safely refine, if not study first.

Thats a good idea; do you have any suggestions on how to learn what fair prices for different grades of jewelry, scrap etc are? I haven't actually refined anything yet, but I know what it costs me to make the acids (nitric, sulfuric and hydrochloric). Ive made some ferrous sulfate ( mainly for fun, but also because I thought I would've been confident enough to start refining by now). I have yet to purchase smb so don't know the price of that, but my main concern would be accurately estimating yields. The only thing really holding me back from refining is the ashing processes(s).

I've been collecting e-scrap for a short while now and it's become kind of cumbersome planning how to refine the different types, while still learning what I'm all looking for. I think I've been sorting things appropriately. Capacitors, oscillators, plated pcbs, plated connectors/pins, ic chips, fingers and ribbon ends. I have some jewelry I think is gold plated but not sure. The chemistry part comes fairly easy to me, it's the rest that is intimidating. I just figured the china would be an easy place to start but as others have recommended, I'll keep it and use it or toss it up on ebay and see if there's any takers.

 

[Golddigger76]

You can Google the current price per gram for each karat, there's plenty of web sites that have the information, mainly online gold buyers sites.
That is a good place to start, then you need to figure out how much you can pay according to what your costs are and what your time is worth.

 

[wlearly]

I have to chime in with a question. I have been setting on around 60 lbs of gold plated chains that was part of an estate donation to a non profit I do some work for. I asked them about them, they had boxes and boxes of them. All still on the wire they were plated on. Long story short they gave them all to me, the chains are ferrous so stainless possibly. I thought about cleaning with a Aqua regia .do y’all think it’s worth while and what the yield might be thanks

 

[orvi]

I have to chime in with a question. I have been setting on around 60 lbs of gold plated chains that was part of an estate donation to a non profit I do some work for. I asked them about them, they had boxes and boxes of them. All still on the wire they were plated on. Long story short they gave them all to me, the chains are ferrous so stainless possibly. I thought about cleaning with a Aqua regia .do y’all think it’s worth while and what the yield might be thanks

Rule #1 is - when it looks golden, there is also chance that it isn´t gold. Just saying one dip in nitric acid will tell you if it is real gold plated.
If it is on stainless is hard to say, altough it would be very advantageous for you to have it on some relatively low reactive substrate. Then you can easily strip the gold. With that quantity, I will do a test run (to see if you are onto something). There are several possibilities - I2/KI, cyanide, sulfuric stripping cell (maybe). And many more.
Yes, you can dissolve it all in AR - that is also an option, but if I were you, I would firstly try to not dissolve the base, if it isn´t necessary With 30kg of material, there would be ugly ammount of acids used and in turn waste generated.

 

[grainsofgold]

They are good for target practice at the gun range.

 

[Rreyes097]

I have to chime in with a question. I have been setting on around 60 lbs of gold plated chains that was part of an estate donation to a non profit I do some work for. I asked them about them, they had boxes and boxes of them. All still on the wire they were plated on. Long story short they gave them all to me, the chains are ferrous so stainless possibly. I thought about cleaning with a Aqua regia .do y’all think it’s worth while and what the yield might be thanks

I would use reverse electroplating cell.

 

[Rreyes097]

But if one were to place an ad on craigslist what would be a good price to pay for rolled gold/gold filled?

 

[wlearly]

Rule #1 is - when it looks golden, there is also chance that it isn´t gold. Just saying one dip in nitric acid will tell you if it is real gold plated.
If it is on stainless is hard to say, altough it would be very advantageous for you to have it on some relatively low reactive substrate. Then you can easily strip the gold. With that quantity, I will do a test run (to see if you are onto something). There are several possibilities - I2/KI, cyanide, sulfuric stripping cell (maybe). And many more.
Yes, you can dissolve it all in AR - that is also an option, but if I were you, I would firstly try to not dissolve the base, if it isn´t necessary With 30kg of material, there would be ugly ammount of acids used and in turn waste generated.

Oh there gold plated all right and in 14, 18, and even like 22k idol right off I came across a box of gold fold that so,e one before me missed, yeah these old women said we use to have twice that many of those heavy boxes, they think the janitorial company they were using 10 years ago threw them out, yeah right just tossed them my a** I thought. And a lot of silver plated chains they missed. I have the different grades of nitric for testing. Ive had heavy metal blood poisoning 23 years ago during the y2k boom. I sure wish this was around then. I use to haul about 5k of old IBM cards to Dallas 4 time in a year, selling to middle man getting bent… well I will keep my composure here lol anyways not a complete rookie but compared to some of y’all on here I feel like an a rookie, I had to learn it all on my own. I had guys working for me on tear down. “The bone yard “ it was called an old oil field yard I had leased for 10 years, I’m pretty sure to this day there has to be a huge hole in the ozone above that place, been 12 years now and haven’t really played with anything until now been in the Army those years, that’s a whole other book. So just the gold filled scraps they left I traded to. A local silver and gold guy who is now a good buddy 4 10 oz Engelhard silver bars, I tested the wires that there bundled up with like the used for plating them and they are much heavier plate but there is only a dozen maybe. All I’ve even played with was the nitric and hydrologic fingers in straight nitric, after the blood poisoning I just trucked it all to Dallas , I made a vent hood from hell to like 8 rakes of 4 each of the big muffin fans from the bottom of some main frames lol but being careless I hade stuff outside in 5 gallon glass water jugs letting the sun work it’s magic on the reaction, needed agitated every now and then, Dosnt take to many nose hits to kill you with putting all those metals in your blood, any other rookies out there listen to these guys closely on safety with your chems. I didn’t mean to write a book here my apologies just thinking about the old days I hauled minimum 10 k a week into the bone yard, we would burn 6 barrels at a time full of big transformers for A dollar a pound for number one copper, metals market sucked in those days Recession, the y2k could be called a boom in my opinion thanks for reading of anyone is lol

 

[stella polaris]

Stella is very astute in this case. And a bit humorous. I, too, have gold embellished tableware, mostly inherited patterns of indeterminate, but likely Eastern European origin. Most far older than those who passed them to us.

Few recognize the items as being a century or two old, but guests always comment. No, the grandchildren are not permitted to use these items.

Coffee for guests, however, is served in decorative tourist cups that can be had in Iceland or Faroe Islands.

I like the Russian hand painted tea cups. Beautiful and perfect for tea.