Scrap processing

Hi Everyone,

I've accumulated a nice large pot of mixed scrap (over 1kg in total) and I was thinking of sending it in to Cooksons for processing (need a cash injection!). I just wondered if anyone else has used them and if their prices are fair? I don't have anyone to compare them to but if anyone has any experience or suggestions to share I'd very much appreciate it. I'm in Kent so maybe there's someone local I can take it to but it's such a minefield I thought I'd see if anyone can recommend a company to use before I blindly send it off! The pot contains some hallmarked scrap gold, plus lots of bits of scrap silver and lemel tray sweepings so it needs to be fully refined and analysed.

Thanks in advance, Pod.

First advice is to separate the gold from the silver scrap and keep the lemel separate, then weigh them again and store them in separate packs.
I have looked for Cookson's details on refining and cannot find it, so I don't know their costs and details.
The metals will need assaying at some point, did you know that the London Assay Office does a smelt and Assay service for packs over 120 grams, if they do it you get an ingot with a hallmark so you can sell it anywhere for the best price available. Check out the London Assay Office price list, if I am correct they charge about £30 to smelt scraps into ingots.

James

Thanks James, I'll take a look at the Assay Office and see what they can do (why didn't I think of that?!). From now on I'll try and keep it all separate but it would be very time consuming to separate everything this time around and when I spoke to Cooksons a while ago they said it wouldn't make any difference. I'll call them again tomorrow morning and once I've got some more information on prices I'll post it here.

Hi pod,

Yes indeed we do a melt and assay service, and thank you goldsmith for the recommendation. We do charge £30 up to 9kg for the melt and we can either melt the precious metals separately into different bars after you've separated them out, or you can chuck the whole lot into one bar. Then of course we would need to assay the bars to find out the purity of them, and stamp the bars and produce the certificated report. For gold sampling it's £19 and for silver sampling it's also £19. all prices subject to VAT of course I'm afraid. hope this helps? Guys who buy in precious metals I'm sure do the same too, but with the assay office of course it's totally independent and impartial. We have no financial interest in the outcome of the assay.

When I have used cooksons, it has cost about £40 to process between half and a full kilo. There is a voucher that gets you £10 off if you look at their 123 Scrap deal on your first order.

I've just had a mixed batch back from Cooksons which cost me rather more than that; a good object lesson in keeping scrap and lemel types separate.

What's puzzling me slightly about it is the breakdown - about 80% silver, .85% gold, .19% platinum - and 0.2% palladium. I don't use palladium, I've not had anything in to set that's palladium and assuming it's from a white gold I've been setting, it wouldn't be less than 18k so it seems quite a high proportion of the melt.

I should have said, that was all sterling, but lemel and scraps and all sorts together.
That's a strange one Peter!

think I will be having some lovely words with the assay office. Thanks for the input on this. I do keep clean scrap separate from the lemel, but don't separate old broken pieces with their hallmark. Sending in my own bar for scrap and recycling sounds awesome!