Service pins (Hi, I'm New!)

[dizzykitty]

Hello every one! I am new here and this is my first post. I recently became interested in scrapping precious metals and would love some help from you experts.

Recently my mom came across a bunch of US Dept. of Justice service pins. Since the dept. of justice doesn't exist anymore, the government decided they were just going to throw these in the dump. My mother nabbed them on the way out the door while she was at work. We thought these pins were pretty insignificant until i saw that they were stamped 1/10 10k Gold fill.

Right now i have a dixie cup full of them (about 36oz according to my scale). They also have varying amounts of itsy-bitsy diamonds in them. Which brings me to my first question...

How do i go about finding how much these diamonds are worth? I know individually they are pretty valueless, but every single service pin has 1-4 diamonds.

Next, I am not sure if i would make more money selling them whole or separating the materials(gold, diamonds, etc.) I haven't yet looked into how to extract the gold yet, but any tips would be appreciated while i research that.

 

[dizzykitty]

Also, the pins look like this except they are 30-45 year service and contain diamonds in place of stars.

 

[jimdoc]

You would probably do best selling them on Ebay. You may find collectors, or at the very least the gold buying people that seem to overpay for any auction with gold in the title.

Jim

 

[patnor1011]

Diamond or CZ? Did you test?

 

[dizzykitty]

To be honest, my mother said they were diamonds without a doubt and since she is a lady i didn't question her expertise on the matter. However, I don't know a thing about diamonds and my scale isn't sensitive enough to weigh each one. They don't seem to fog up, but it is hard to tell since they are possibly the smallest size diamonds there is( possibly 1 or 3 points?)

I do not have a uv light at the moment to tell you conclusively though. Perhaps I can ask some of my friends if they have one hiding in their closet.

 

[seawolf]

Take one of the pins to any good jewler or trusted pawn shop. They can test the stones and weigh the pin to a gnats fanny to help determine the gold content and value.
Mark

 

[texan]

Your tax dollars at work....everyone of those was paid for by U.S. Taxpayers....and who says the DOJ no longer exists is wrong.

Texan

 

[dizzykitty]

from my understanding, the dept. of justice was consolidated with other dept. after 9/11 to form homeland security? All i know is my mom comes home from time to time with nick-nacks labled INS and such.

I will more then likely stop by a jewler or something after the holidays. Also, i have to agree with the use of tax payer money. this was literally on its way to a dumpster...

 

[texan]

Google U.S. Department of Justice and you will come up with a very active web site. Eric Holder as Attorney General is in charge....

INS got switched over to become ICE...Imigration and Custom Enforcement which are part of DHS (Homeland Security) along with Border Patrol and several other alphabet soup agencies including Secret Service. FBI is still a part of DOJ.

Texan

 

[dizzykitty]

i see i am misinformed. Regardless i got free gold.

 

[texan]

i see i am misinformed. Regardless i got free gold.

Probably 80 percent of the population of the US or any other country for that matter has very little knowledge of the structure of the the government that controls them.

Free gold...the best kind....good score. They are probably worth more as collectables than for the gold content. Some DOJ employee who has lost their service pin maight be looking to replace it.

Texan