Hi,
I have about 400 ounces of sterling silver scrap. Mostly pretty clean.
I’m considering getting my silver refined into stamped ingots which make it more fluid for cashing out in the future.
Any suggestions for best place to do this?
Thanks!
I have suggestions, but first I have questions.
How much did you pay for the metal when you bought it? A rough estimate is fine.
How old are you? When do you plan on retiring? What country do you live in. Do you have a reputable refiner? If not, we do have one we can recommend you to. We’ve been dealing with them for 40 years.
Investing in metals is usually a very long game.
Right now gold and silver are at historical highs.
In the over 50 years I’ve been in the trade I have carefully watched the metals markets. When I started Gold was just under $50.00 per oz and silver was about $1.00. When metals were cheap I bought. When the Hunt bros took over the market and sent prices soaring I just sat on what I had because I knew that the bubble would burst. When it went back down to $4.00 per oz I bought $50.00 of silver from the refiners every two weeks when I got paid. Eventually it started to rise again and so I just sat on it. I had planned to cash it in when I retired. But when the crash of 2008 came it went up to $20.00 per oz. So I traded 1/2 of it with the refiners I that use in exchange for gold and platinum. Then when it went up to $40.00 per oz I traded all but 10% for gold and platinum. The reason I chose those metals is because that is what we make and sell most of our jewelry with.
During all of these years I have carefully followed not just metal prices but national and international news.
When things get dicey commodities rise. And most importantly the value of the US dollar falls along with inflation. Any cash on hand right now is falling in value. Right now there is a shit ton of insecurity and crisis. So metals should remain very expensive until things settle down. Right now I won’t go into politics except to say that regardless of who wins the next US presidential election I highly suspect that there will be trouble/protests in the streets. And internationally there is a rise in fascism around the world. It’s a cyclical thing that rears it’s ugly head every couple of generations. then it falls into disfavor. Things could get worse or better. Silver is near $40.00 per oz now. I also do NOT own a crystal ball.
Now all that said, do not sell your scrap to the refiner. Trade it. Just have them refine your scrap to .999 silver or sterling either in casting grain or ingots. Then it’s up to you to decide what to do with it. Were it me, I’d just make more stuff to sell with the metal. After all we keystone the price of our materials when we sell at the wholesale level. The more the metal costs, the more profit we make.
-Jo Who is NOT a professional financial advisor.
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Oh! And another thing. We never take cash or checks for our refined metals. Why? Because it becomes taxable income. It’s our metal that we purchased so why should we pay taxes for something we already paid for?
Jo
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I posted about the same problem I have a while ago… i’ve got about 25lbs of sterling scrap, and about 4 ounces of 18K gold…some of the silver was fire refined by myself to a higher silver content using a oxyacetylene cutting torch with oxygen injection.
I got a list of refiners from the people on this site… I called several of them… charges…to refine and return as cash are about 20% of the total silver content. Discounts apply to large qualities. Insurance and shipping are additional… I asked a couple of refiners about returning the silver as investment grade fine silver bullion. The charge was $4 per ounce… Doing it this way would really incur hefty charges… even though I bought scrap at $2.50/oz, that was in the late 1980’s… inflation and the fluctuating price of silver would lose me money even if there were no charge at all!..Since 1980, inflation has made one dollar into a dime…a ten fold increase in the price of gold or silver only keeps up with inflation, never beats it…taking possession of bullion also makes you lose again when you sell…you’re selling retail, not spot… If I were to send everything off to the refiners, I would be better off getting cash than having it returned as fine silver bars… insurance and shipping charges go both ways… send and getting it back makes you pay twice…if you really want to have investment grade bullion to hold on to, take the cash and buy retail locally… at least you save on shipping and insurance one way…
if you are in business you would have to pay income tax on the capital gain from the sale of precious metals… I’m not, just a retired person. I should pay long term capital gains but my basis is all over…from $1.50 to $2.50 mostly, up to $3/oz… I have no recollection of how much I paid and how much as it’s been 30 years or more and I don’t have the reciepts… I might just not report it… it’s a personal possession after all.
My scrap was melted down into crude ingots… they would have to be remelted to cast into ingots… In addition, some of the sterling scrap was fire refined by injecting oxygen until it became “spitting silver”… copper burned out leaving near pure silver…it’s the same technique that some refiners use…all of that I did myself… I also inquired about electrolytic refining… none of them use that, which gives much purer metal than fire refining.
I think that you are wise to say trade it…especially if in business. I can’t do that… I just want to get rid of all inventory… gold and silver go up and have matched inflation… over the last 40 years they haven’t beaten it…in 1981 the Dow Jones average hit 1000: a milestone, today it’s at 41K… gold went up from $200/oz to 2,400/oz and silver also increased 10 fold… the stock market increased 40 fold. Silver and gold do not gather interest and dividends… capital gains, yes but so do stocks which pay out dividends in addition to creating capital gains…which is why I’ve kept only 5% of my portolio in precious metals. I do hold physical gold in my brokerage account… it’s possible to take delivery… I bought some to use for making jewerly, then bought more for an inflation hedge… sold half of my position to raise cash for high yield income producing assets… If I did take delivery, I would have rent a bank deposit box… average rent is $60 a month… my brokerage charges a storage fee that is 1/10 as much.
I also see by your comments that you have been in the game for a long time… I certainly have also… I do remember the Hunt brothers’ attempt at cornering the silver market… people went crazy melting down heirloom silver and rare Morgan silver dollars… the corner unravelled, rumors were that the Hunts would take delivery to prop up their corner… the price of silver plummeted… gold also did not do well… it spike to 2K an oz then languished and 1K an oz before the most recent inflationary cycle drove it up to where it is today…
What I do remember is when gas cost 22 cents a gallon, bread was 20 cents a loaf, and silver at $1.00/oz… silver certificates were still redeemable in silver. That tells you how old I am… old!.. I also started investing with my first job… I invested first in an IRA… the Dow Jones average was 800 in 1980, hit 1000 in 1981… now it’s 41K… 40 fold increase… gold and silver went up 10 fold along with semiprecious and precious stones… inflation however made one dollar into a dime over the same period… gold and silver kept up with but did not exceed inflation. The stock market, despite it’s ups and downs beat inflation 4 fold…it allowed me to retire. Whatever gold and silver I own is an incidental now. There is substantial risk being in the market… but in the long run it goes up…a lot…however, as John Maynard Keynes, the father of modern economics, wrote “in the long run we are all dead.”…
Wow! That’s not a good deal! Last refiner I dealt with paid ~95% spot x .925 for clean scrap. So about 88% of spot. That was an instant buy as well! Sweeps and dirty scrap he’d refine and send a check later. I wouldn’t know how to demand cash as they are a business as well and tough to keep track of cash deals
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which refiner did you use? I need to find one that won’t rip me off… thanks
please refer me to your refiner… he’s giving out a really good deal… most everyone else is asking too much…