I’m just a humble jewelry designer from NY who is trying to get used to all this stuff! From Natalie in New York, Arkansas

Hi Natalie,

Don’t worry if you don’t pickup on everything right away. It takes sometime to get to know the precious metal industry. Here are some helpful tips that I’ve put together for you and other jewelry designers out there that may have some scrap precious metal to refine.

It’s great that you are learning and researching about this now so you have all the tools at hand. We work with jewelry designers, jewelry sellers and gold party representatives from all over, let us know if you have any questions about precious metal!

Keep in mind that precious metals include: gold, silver, platinum, palladium and rhodium.

Pay attention to where you scrap is going.

From small gold chain links to shavings of silver, try to account for it all. For larger pieces of gold, silver or platinum that you cannot use in creating or fixing jewelry its best to keep them as separated as you can. We recommend working on smooth, dark surfaces so you can see scrap easier.

Don’t throw anything out, it could be precious!

Even your facility that you resize, shape and design jewelry in can contain valuable precious metal scrap. Areas where precious metal can be accumulating include sink traps, floor mats, carpets, rags, floor sweeps and vacuum bags. Think about this when you’re cleaning your facilities. If you regularly clip, size and shape precious metal chances are small pieces of it have gotten away from you. As precious metal refiners we can extract even the smallest amounts of precious metal from these items.

Keep your stones and gems.

As precious metal refiners, we only return payments for metal materials, not stones and gems. To reclaim the value on these items, make sure you remove them before sending them to any metal refinery.