I’ve communicated with someone from Hoover and Strong and I think I’ll send the rest of my gold scrap to them. They accept personal scrap. Has anyone had trouble with the amount of loss from them?
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When I send in scrap, which isn’t very often, I have sent it to Hoover and Strong. They accept sweeps and polishing duff. I have never had a problem with their settlements. I do live about 140 miles from Elemental in Buffalo and may drive a small amount of 14K scrap to them. Many people speak well of Elemental. Hoover and Strong started in Buffalo, but moved to Richmond years ago. I toured Hoover and Strong with my Dad in 1969 when I was a student at the University of Buffalo…Rob
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who do you recommend? Elemental or Hoover and Strong… I’m out in the boonies… Elemental in Denver is the closest place to go… still 400 miles away… However, I do pass through Denver on my way to Albuquerque… I could drop my stuff off there… there’s a LOT of stuff to get refined… pounds of silver and several ounces of gold.
I am not a real good resource here. I used to do a lot of refining before I purchased what tools I needed to recycle metal and, more importantly, figure out how to do it. Now I send a small bit of sweeps, grinding swarf, polishing duff and small bits of metal to Hoover and Strong every 2 - 3 years. I do have a fair amount of 14K to send in that I may drive to the Buffalo Elemental store. It is only about 120 miles away. You can call any of the refiners and ask about their practices and what they will pay. In the end, it is a crap shoot. Yesterday silver was $30/ounce. Today is is $31. You can drive yourself crazy trying to time it. I once sent a lot of scrap to Hoover and Strong in Richmond because the spot was very high. I made the mistake of sending it in a box that very clearly indicated that wine had been shipped in it previously. While my post office had no trouble sending it, the post office in Richmond would not accept it because it had wine in it previously. It was sent back for me to cross off any evidence that wine had been shipped in the box and then the Richmond Post Office would deliver it to Hoover and Strong. By then the spot for silver had retreated and I missed out on making what I expected to make. Such is our life. Good luck…Rob
Thanks Rob!
I bought silver scrap from a metals dealer. He in turn purchased it from Native American silversmiths…this was ages ago, cuttings and scrap sold for $1.50 to $2.50 per ounce… I bought it by the pound, melted it down into rough ingots…I experimented with “fire refining”… because I had an oxyacetylene cutting torch that had central oxygen jet, I was able to make “spitting silver”… the copper was burnt out into the flux by the oxygen jet. Pure silver can absorb over 20X its volume in oxygen…as it cooled, large bubbles of oxygen would exsolve from the metal making it “spit”…all of this had to be done outside on a tile table top…most of the time the bubbles just popped but occassionally a few molten droplets were thrown out. In addition, I also acquired for free, medical electrodes that were gold plated on a base of fine silver, another three or four pounds more. separating the gold plate from the silver was not cost effective. Reagent grade acids and other chemicals cost a lot more than any gold recovered… I was able to recover a few bits but definitely not cost effective. The rest of the gold was coin gold, alloyed down to 18K… I still have a few ounces… All of it has to go… I’m having everything refined to investment grade bullion. The premiums on hallmarked bullion is steep, however, if exchanged for cash, I’d have to pay a lot of capital gains tax… I can keep the bullion as prices for silver and gold rise… In terms of inflation, since I bought the metals, I’m just going to break even or lose some to refining fees.
one dollar in 1970 is $8.17 today… the price of silver was 1 dollar an ounce in 1968. Silver certificates redeemable in silver at one dollar an ounce were discontinued in 1968…one dollar in 1990 is now $2.41 today… I bought most of my silver in the early 1990’s. assuming the average price was $4/ oz (actuallly lower for scrap at $2.50/oz)…at the current price of silver of $31/oz, I gained rougly 15X the value…assuming a 20% refining fee, less $4/oz selling at retail, less $4/oz for bullion, the net gain would be $16/oz… still 4X the cost of buying…calculations for gold give similiar results…
We can all assume that inflation will continue at an average historic rate of 4% per year…gold and silver will continue to increase proportionately… everything will double in less than 20 years, including the price of food.
Just a follow up… I was able to recover my EIN number but the spelling of my name was wrong. It took 4 months for the IRS to correct it, after multiple written requests…