Refining Gold mixed with Silver and Copper?

[JadeDragon]

I've found a potential new source of metal. This pawn shop has an xray (or something like that) that analyzes the composition of metals and spits out a report. They also bought a setup to melt jewelry and pour bars. They can produce a receipt that says Gold xgrams, silver xgrams, copper x grams and gives the percentage mix. They are offering these bars at 90% of spot on the gold only.

Does this offer make any sense to buy? Anyone here able to refine these bars into just gold, just silver and just copper? What does the refining and pouring bars cost?

[natsb88]

Seems like there might be enough margin on larger lots to simply buy the bars from the pawn shop and sell the bars to Mike at Market Harmony. He would do his own assay to determine the payout. But be careful that this pawn shop operation doesn't melt garbage into the mix and contaminate the whole bar with something like cadmium.

http://www.marketharmony.net/the-melt-shop.html

[JadeDragon]

MH was my first thought - but wanted to throw this out for discussion. Maybe see if others are doing deals like this, or are interested in these kinds of deals.

[InfleXion]

I've found a potential new source of metal. This pawn shop has an xray (or something like that) that analyzes the composition of metals and spits out a report. They also bought a setup to melt jewelry and pour bars. They can produce a receipt that says Gold xgrams, silver xgrams, copper x grams and gives the percentage mix. They are offering these bars at 90% of spot on the gold only.

Does this offer make any sense to buy? Anyone here able to refine these bars into just gold, just silver and just copper? What does the refining and pouring bars cost?

Gold having such a high molecular density can only be penetrated a couple millimeters before not giving accurate results. I would steer clear of any gold personally unless they melt it, but the x-ray gun is probably fine for other less dense metals. That they are specifically offering the gold at discount makes me leery, but I am skeptical of many things. Platinum is in the same boat as gold on this.

[JadeDragon]

Inflexion, they are melting scrap jewelry and pouring bars of mixed metal. The early samples are not well mixed, you can see obvious gold areas and silvery areas on the ingot. They are putting the metal ingots in a breadbox size box to test it. Not clear on the tech used, but I'll find out.