Will refiners buy cement silver/ gold “mud?”

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Joined
Feb 11, 2021
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16
Noob here, planning to refine silver in the spring and trying to determine my initial costs for equipment...

Just wondering if I’m able to sell cement silver precipitated out of silver nitrate and/or gold precipitated out of aqua regea. Would refiners buy it or would I have to sell it on eBay (and is there a market for it)? I’d prefer not to lay out money for a forge or an oxyacetylene torch set up, and I really have no experience with either.

Any advice appreciated
 
Sorry I cannot help with your questions about selling your products or metals, as I really have not been much of a salesman of these metals.
I am sure other members will give you good advice on that.

In my opinion, the real cost is your time and how much time you take in educating yourself.

With time spent educating yourself, you can learn to recover and refine these metals with a minimal cost of supplies, (costs of chemicals) making some of your own reagents at times, purchasing second hand kitchenware for the lab, or making many of the tools, or equipment, starting out without spending much to melt a few ounces of gold like a three dollar melting dish, eighteen dollar torch head and some dollars on some flammable gas...

You can start a business with good education and almost no money.
Or
You can start a business with good intentions and a whole lot of money and no education or no ideas of what you are doing...
The real key or treasure map for the gold seems to be educating yourself.

The education of learning about these metals alone is worth the time studying, you will profit from the gained education in many areas where these metals are involved, even if you never picked up a gold pan, a beaker, or a melting dish in your life the education is where we profit the metals come along for the ride as far as I can tell.

If you jump in without spending the time needed to learn the basics, then you will spend way too much on scrap, not understanding its value, spend too much money on chemicals and lab equipment or furnaces you will not need, have one difficulty after another not knowing if you are losing more gold or money than your gaining, or even know where the gold or value is.

This is a field of study you can spend a lifetime at and only learn a portion of it because it is so vast, or you can spend less time concentrating your time in a specialized field of a certain scope of recovery or refining, either way, the more you learn the more you can earn or grow, and the less you will spend to get there.

So I say the question I would ask is not how much money to get started (because you could begin with a shoestring budget), but how much of your time are you willing to put into doing the work to learn these skills.

Depending on the type of scrap many times it does not make sense to try to recover the metal or try to bring the metal to a higher purity (take a 14k gold ring for example) it has a recognized value, and it can be tested for that value in gold, if you refined it to 999 pure (24k gold)and melted it into a button, you could find it harder to get full price for the gold content, most buyers cannot test the purity and would only pay you for what they can test the button to, so they then would only pay you for 22K gold. you would not make much headway there and if you had not educated yourself on what the scrap ring is worth, or you could not test the karat you could lose money both on purchase and on sale, not even considering the cost of refining... Again an education pays.

Marked sterling and coin silver also have a recognized value, sometimes whether to refine or not becomes a decision you have to make on your own from your own education. Some buyers are not always educated in the same way a refiner maybe, he may just buy your legally stamped silver or something he can recognize for its value, another buyer may have better testing methods and will pay you a higher price for it...

Refiners will usually always buy your silver or gold, what you get for it may be another question.

If this is what interests you, and this is something you are willing to devote your time to learning (a whole lot of time), and you do the work you will profit, the more educated you are the more you can profit, if you jump in head first you could endanger yourself and put holes in your wallet.

I say these are a skill that takes years to learn, just like any trade, like other trades the more you put in the more you get back, you can learn to be a good mechanic or just learn to do tune-ups, the more skill and understanding the more you can do or profit.

I also would not look at this as a way of making much money, at least not at first, or a way to pay the bills, there is a fairly steep learning curve (for most of us anyway), so I would not quit my day job just yet.

You may not make much money at the beginning but spending your time educating yourself can pay you well in the long run.

If I was wanting to sell some silver I would make rings, jewelry has a much higher value than the metals alone (100's of times more sometimes) I made a few rings out of my refined silver (although I took my refined silver and added copper to make the rings), although I have not tried selling jewelry, although it takes a bit of equipment and tools but if you like to work with your hands and can, I feel this would bring the most from your metals, solders, and soldering or other silver pastes or specialty items may be another way to get the most from your metals, well I not much help when it comes to selling metals as I like digging holes in the ground and burying my metals.
 
Thank you for the thoughtful response, I appreciate it.

I’m fascinated with the processes, and I want to give it a shot and see if it’s something I enjoy and can at least not simply throw money away- i.e, have something valuable at the end that I can either hold onto as an investment or sell and recoup some of what I paid out.

I’m not looking to start a business by any means, I place a higher value on experiences, and sometimes I just have to know if I can do something. Is the learning and experimenting the biggest draw for most refiners, since it sounds like refining is less profitable than simply reselling sterling and jewelry?
 
Then I feel as long as you are willing to put the time in to learn, you will prosper in this education.
It is a very interesting hobby or can even turn into a business or industry, for me, it is the education and being able to hold onto some of what I have earned with my hard work.

If you do spend your time in the learning process then you will prosper in more ways than just by putting back a few metals in the safe, and have loads of fun doing it.

Again the more you study and learn before jumping in head first the easier it will be, and the less money you will need to get started, the more you will understand the values of metals, the problems involved with processes the reason certain things are normally done in certain ways, you will even have a better understanding of what your learning, whether watching a video or reading about a process your education will help to keep you out of the way of many of the problems involved and make it easier for you to succeed at your goals.

I feel you will love learning these skills if you like to use your mind, and do not mind doing some fun work to learn it, you will profit from it in maybe many more ways than just stacking some silver.

Welcome to the forum, SerialHobbiest, I think you will enjoy learning and sharing what you learn with us on the forum and I also am willing to bet that you will have a grand time learning about moving electrons around with silver and its atoms.
 
I think for most people selling gold is easier when melted. I primarily use oxy/propane but do have acetylene as well as a propane fired furnace that can be run on oxy/acetylene as well. Even a small furnace can be had at a reasonable price or with minimal effort be built. My preferred method is a torch and melting dish using a handle for the dish. A dish and handle can run under $30 for a pretty good set. My furnace was made from a bit of left over high temp (3300* degree) cement from a friends project. He used used the left over and made this small furnace for me as a birthday gift. I have used it off and on for over five years now.

SANY0137.MP4_snapshot_00.01.716.jpg


It uses an A2 crucible and max's out with about 2 pounds of copper in it. It is small enough to fit in the palm of one hand.

I found a torch kit at one of those cheap tool stores new for $100, spent $75 for an oxygen bottle, filled, and used a propane bottle I already had on hand. I went ahead and bought a propane tip for the torch at a local farm store for another $25. It is a medium duty kit, but for refining it is more than enough and I have been using it for 7 years now, making the cost pretty minimal.

Once melted you have more options when selling and have some basis (with an acid/stone test kit) to have a very good basic knowledge with some proof that you know what your trying to sell. There are some really good people buying gold, but also many not so good ones. Your knowledge and ability goes a long way in protecting your time and money investments.

Good Luck with what ever way you go.
 
Any serious refiner/buyer-broker will buy your cemented PMs as is, including Ag, paid on sampling/assaying. They will melt again anyways to get an homogeneous bar/button for sampling/assaying.

Expect some melting/weight loss in the process since you might have other impurities in your cemented Ag that will be oxydized when the buyer melts it with some flux.

If you can withness the weighting/melting/sampling and grab your personal sample it's great.

I personaly always ship my Ag cemented, no point of burning gas and time to melt it if it's going to be melted again for sampling/assaying. But I do have a very good relashionship and lots of trust in my buyer.

If you are new at this, it's always fun and beneficial to go trough the whole process in order to learn and understand what's happening.
 
Thank you everyone for the responses!

I just wanted to add that, while I’m not making a business of this, limiting my monetary loss is part of the challenge and the fun for me. Can’t wait for some good weather, and getting finished with rehabbing my bum knee so I can get out and try refining some silver!
 
I can barely wait to see the progress and learning more along with you.

Wish I could be there the first time you cemented your silver or seeing the amazement on your face when you sit for hours in amazement as you watch the silver cell, expression of satisfaction and joy while melting the silver.
Sounds like the adventure begins now, with gaining the understanding and preparing yourself for success.
Welcome to the forum.
 
edited for a nighmare scenario

Just another rule of thumb when selling precious metals, only sell melted weighted metal if you don't really know your buyer. Preferably assayed.
Otherwise you will get the kind of following answers from your buyer :
- we had a huge melt loss from your powder dude, here's your money (after the buyer skimmed your cheddar)
- Dude, we had tons of impurities in your powder, probably you did not wash it properly, we can only pay you X (getting fatter from the excess goodness he took from your cheddar)
- any other stupid reason to steal from you since it was not melted (all crooks trying to get your cheddar)

Unless you withness the melt, get your cemented values in shinny metal form. Get your metal assayed.
No point Husstling that hard to recover and refine to get skimmed at the end. Go the little extra step, melt it.
 
And for buyers, getting powder and melting can give you several percent in weight loss from moisture trapped in the powder. Even if it's looking dry there can be quite a lot of moisture locked up in gold powder. Getting accused of stealing non-existent gold isn't fun either.

It is only for PGM:s that the preferred form is in powder, or "sponge" as it is called. It's a lot easier to dissolve platinum as a powder than as a solid piece of metal.... I've been told.

Göran
 
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