Silver Recovery & Selling Advice / Feedback Needed Please:
Although I am relatively new to the Forum, I must say that it is the absolute Best resource for scrapping and the recycling industry as a whole. The knowledge I’ve already gained is truly amazing. Virtually every time that I have read a post / thread I learn something new and/or benefit from seeing other members point of view etc.
That being said I would like to thank each and every forum member that has been actively participating the past couple months.
Moving on to the Silver inquiry: Industrial silver contacts and/or silver plated obtained from General Electric and Allis Chalmers industrial relays and switches. My current knowledge of silver is next to nothing.
Three weeks ago we were clear out a old semi trailer box that was used as a dry and secure storage unit by the former owner of the yard. Once we torched the doors off we were somewhat astonished by all the unique and interesting items that were packed into this trailer box. It was very obvious that he had used this box to store his more valuable junk etc. Keeping in mind that this salvage yard is a State Licensed Auto & Heavy-Industrial / Commercial Equipment salvage yard, so you might imagine what we found in the box. The following day we had finally made our way to the front of the box where we found a very large steel lock box about 7 ft. High, 5 foot wide by 30” deep. Both of us couldn’t wait to cut the lock off and see what was inside, of course my imagination ran wild thinking that maybe it's packed with clean copper bars or precious antiques etc. My brother walks in with the bolt cutter and the lock snaps off and we open the doors...... Both of us were so bummed out because it was packed with these heavy plastic or “Bake-Lite” electronic control switch / relay type parts. (see photo) My brother looks at them and says it's a little brass and that’s about it, if we want to take the time to strip them all down. It was a big disappointment.
Two days ago I happened to walk by the boxes filled with these General Electric components and I grabbed a few of them so I could strip them down to see how many man hours it would take to do all of them because I was considering to offer these two local scrappers the opportunity to strip them all down and I thought that they could take 80% profit and we keep the 20%, maybe even 90 / 10 split. So anyways evening came and I went into my trailer, made a good cup of coffee and sat down with the cordless and pliers and found that it took less than1 or two minutes to completely dismantle the switch plates. I was just about to log onto the Forum when I had one of those magical moments, something clicked.... I stared at the switch relay parts, and that’s when it really clicked..... the color isn’t quite right, and then I suddenly recall reading in the forum about silver relay & switches. The next day I took several of the pieces into a local jeweler, I thought it was worth a try. I handed him the baggie of parts and asked him if he could identify the metal, he looked at them and immediately said Silver plating industrial silver. His co-worker came over and asked if they could cut two of the pieces, of course I said yes. After a few minutes he came back and stated again that it's a high grade Industrial silver plating of some kind. He really didn’t sound to confident.
This may sound crazy, but I have been scrapping for quite some time, I've scrapped many, many things but I have never ever done any kind of silver recovery. Up until I read about it on the Forum, I didn't even realize that silver recovery was feasible for a small operation.
I don’t want to sound dumb about it all, but where do I go from here with it? Does it need to be processed ? Or should I sell it like is ? Is it worth my time and effort to attempt recovery of the silver if in fact it is a quality silver. ? Or should I just turn it in for Brass....... Looking at what I have stripped so far, I realistically estimate that we will have approx. 26 to 31 pounds of the silver pieces.
I would greatly appreciate some feed-back and advice
This in itself is a real testament how “The Scrap Metal Forum” has helped me and our scrapping business, in fact it has already helped us change the ways & methods of our entire business model which of course translates into more company revenue and better eco- friendly scrapping practices.
Truly,
GreenTruckR
Currently in Northern Wisconsin e-mail: metal-removal@hotmail.com
2-photo's of the silver relay / contacts:
http://s1209.photobucket.com/albums/...rass%20relays/
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P & M Recycling - Specializing in E-Waste Recycling. 
Originally Posted by Ballymoss
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