What should I save for the refiner?

Jewelry Discussion
1

For all you newbies out there who have questions about what should
be saved for refining you should consider this:

I recently sent into one of my refiners three years worth of the
following: floor sweeps, vacuum cleaner bags from vacuuming my retail
space, polishing filters, charcoal blocks, saw blades, used flex
shaft wheels of all types, etc. This included NO clean scrap or bench
sweeps, just basically stuff from my floor and the polishers and
things that wouldn’t normally be dumped into my bench sweeps. Out of
this mess of stuff the refiners pulled 11 ozs of gold, 3/4 oz of
platinum and 3 ozs of silver (I don’t work much with silver). I’m
sure you guys can figure out the math on how much money this
generated for me, even with the $750 refining fee (since they were
dealing with such mucky stuff). So in this case it’s: When in doubt,
DON’T throw it out. It’s all worth money. For that matter I’ve asked
my wife to send my body to the refiners when I die. I’ll probably
still be worth something that way!

Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140

2

Daniel,

I am just curious as to who you used for a refiner. I was just a
little shocked at a $750 refining fee.

Thanks
Rodney

3 
So in this case it's: When in doubt, DON'T throw it out. It's all
worth money. For that matter I've asked my wife to send my body to
the refiners when I die. I'll probably still be worth something
that way!

I love it! The refiners’ll probably want a good deal more than $750
for that job, though.

Noel

4

Rodney,

The refining fee was so high because this was not a normal scrap
shipment. This shipment included carpeting, polishing machine
filters (which have significant amounts of non precious metals in
them), sweeps from my floor, etc. This material is both extremely
difficult to process and has a lot of non precious metals to refine
out (which is more heavily regulated by the government as it happens,
since burning the stuff creates more toxins in the air). It’s not
like I just sent in a bag of scrap gold, or even a bag of bench
sweeps which might have a little bit of metal from a file in it along
with the precious metals. The fee also included pickup of the
materials (about 150 pounds of stuff) from my shop. If you still want
the name email me off list and I’ll provide it.

Daniel R. Spirer, G.G.
Daniel R. Spirer Jewelers, LLC
1780 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02140

5

In all the years I have sent carpet, polishings, sweeps, and burs,
bits, cleaning rags, cloths, etc…without clean scrap I have never
paid such an outrageously high refining fee…maybe you should check
around…even with the assay charges and over 700 lbs. of studio
waste ( including even the sludge from the 5 gallon bucket that was
still damp,) the highest refining charge I have ever seen anyone pay
in 30 + years is around the 250-300.00 range and shipping was part of
that outlay.

RER

6 
I have never paid such an outrageously high refining fee..maybe
you should check around..even with the assay charges and over 700
lbs.

some folks are questioning the assay fee’s of appaling heights i am
wondering if the particular refiner who charges more for thier svc’s
is perhaps practicing a cleaner, greener refining method ? perhaps
this refiner is using methods that are not contributing as much
deadnes to the mississippi delta dead zone ? also the refiner
returned three metals gold platinum & silver

goo

7

And for all that you really know, they may have made up for the
difference.

Just use a refiner that you trust.