Looking for a refiner to sell to directly for E-waste

Originally Posted by happyisthealero

Looking for a refiner to sell to directly for E-waste, would I make more than I would if I dealt with one rather than deal with anyone locally?

That would depend on many different factors.

How do you sell locally? Are you selling to a scrap yard, or are you selling to a processor or refinery? Each one has their advantages or disadvantages. Before you can compare selling directly to an individual refiner, you have to be able to answer these questions for yourself. And if you are selling to a processor/refiner, are you even getting a fair price, are you representing your material properly?

What would be the cost to you to sell to an individual refiner, shipping, insurance? It might be better for you to sell to an individual refiner, it might be better to have them toll refine for you, or in some cases it might be better to sell on ebay. I was recently asked by a couple of people if I would refine some material for them. I told both people honestly, that the type of material they wanted to refine would bring more selling on ebay. In some cases, this is the better option.

If you have someone toll refine, that means they are refining for a percentage of the yield. So how much material becomes a valuable point. For example, if wanted someone to toll refine fingers for me that generally yield between 1-2 grams, and I only have a lb but I'm asking for them to refine for 10% of the total yield, even at 2 grams for the lb, we are only talking about $8-9 dollars to the refiner. No refiner that is in this as a business is going to toll refine for that amount, it wouldn't cover even the labor involved let alone the cost of the chemicals, melt costs, electricity, etc. But if you have 100 lbs of material it becomes a totally different proposition and that same 10% becomes more reasonable. Larger quantities will get you a better toll refining fee.



Same goes for selling material. I had someone offer me 5 lbs of fingers at a price that I would only make about $15 on the yield side. I understand they were looking for as much money as they were able to get, but there is no way it would be worth my time, effort and energy to process. I would be loosing money. If it were 50lbs, it might have worked. That same lot of 5 lbs though might sell on ebay for the amount he was asking. On ebay, there are hobby refiners who purchase material just to process, because it's their hobby. Many times it costs a hobby refiner more to process the material than what it's worth, but as a hobby people spend money on their hobby, and don't usually do it to make money.

These are just a few things to think about and mull over. If you have any questions, or anyone else for that matter, and want to post them on this thread, I'll try to answer as best I can. I think this thread has value to people looking to get the most value out of their material. These are the types of posts I get myself into trouble with, with other refiners. I do this because I believe if people who are selling their material understand things from my point of view, as a refiner, that they hopefully will want to deal with them more fairly, and share whatever profit there is to make accordingly.

Scott