Sciencemadness Discussion Board

Where to sell precious metals in non-standard forms?

BromicAcid - 4-9-2017 at 14:36

I was thinking about this recently with palladium at such high prices. Several years ago I wanted to buy some palladium but I was having trouble finding it in coin form. After searching online for some time I picked up palladium salts from Alibaba that were the cheapest per ounce of palladium and I have been hanging on to them ever since. I've also picked up quite a bit of rhenium metal as a powder (couple thousand dollars worth) from Alibaba. I don't put a lot of faith in the Certificates of Analysis, in both cases they appeared to come from different companies than I bought from. But no matter the case, I did some quantitative wet chemistry to make sure I was at least sent something close to what I should have got and everything does seem to check out.

Now, at the time I was just looking for an investment to buy into. Now though I am left wondering how to liquidate these. I mean, there is eBay but they will take their cut. But what else is there? With the rhenium I would hope to get close to spot price (though I's not going anywhere anytime soon, the price took a dive right after I bought it) but with the palladium I am at a loss. Do I take a hit because it is in salt form? Or does that mean it is worth more? It's about $10/gram in contained palladium but the salt itself 'sells' online for about $100 a gram from reputable deals.

I figure at a minimum I will have to send them out to be assayed to confirm to any potential buyer. But otherwise I was wondering if anyone where had any experience. This was one of those things that seemed like a good idea at the time but now I'm left wishing I had worked out the details first. I was hoping with members here refining gold and processing catalytic converters that someone might have some knowledge to share.

[Edited on 9/5/2017 by BromicAcid]

violet sin - 4-9-2017 at 17:36

I've only ever been on the buying side of precious metals. One piece of advice: having a friend with an XRF gun is handy! Maybe check some of the bigger pawn shops in your area to see if anyone has such a lovely device. I found the local university and community college to be useless... Even teachers I took years back failed to just respond :( that was lame.

few years back I had invited the pawn shop fella to find me palladium, never came through. Lots of Pt and had no problem trading gold for it. Nice when your making a wedding ring.

I would imagine selling salts of PGM's that bit is a bit like antiques, in that they are valuable in the right circuit. Otherwise they are more of a hassle. And in those circles where the value lies, they deff need all the certification to make them feel warm and fuzzy inside before handing over a big wad of cash. To some people an old car is just an inferior machine guzzling gasoline, while to others it's their whole reason to draw air.


If you ever want to get rid of some Ru, hit me up :D

diddi - 4-9-2017 at 20:59

Pd is very hard to get, as is Rh atm. i had to wait several months to receive my last piece of Rh.

BromicAcid - 5-9-2017 at 03:31

Here is my post on getting my first order of rhenium:
Quote:
I had some personal dealings with a metal dealer in China through AliBaba to buy some ruthenium. Their posting said that the minimum quantity was 100 grams. I asked for a quote for 100 grams and they quoted for 150. I thought, "Fine, I can go with that." So I asked them to draw up a purchase order, the purchase order was for 250 grams! Ruthenium is not cheap and I don't have a ton of money to spend so I didn't want to go that far. When I told them that they informed me that they never sell less than 250 grams and that the quotes before were valid quotes but not for valid quantities. They were a Gold seller, one of the few that I could get a payment to so I bit the bullet and bought the 250 grams. First week it didn't ship, second week it did not ship and when I asked about it they said that I was a small customer and they have other orders to fill first. Out of the blue a package arrived. They had shipped it via EMS air which is about 3 days shipping. They insured my $1100 package for $50 and the customs form on the package said that it was a customer sample of plastic. What the heck was I going to do if that was lost? There was no writing on the powder inside, no CofA. I contacted the seller about the CofA and they assured me it was good material. Then the next day they sent me what looked like a scan of a photocopy of a photocopy.


http://www.sciencemadness.org/talk/viewthread.php?tid=42695

yobbo II - 5-9-2017 at 14:40

Rhodium

http://www.goldline.co.uk/rhodium-bars.page

BromicAcid - 5-9-2017 at 18:10

Rhodium is pretty easy to buy, as you point out, they sell it in bar form. But ruthenium is more niche than that, it's very cheap for a 'precious metal' and it finds use mostly in industry. That is why I bought some ruthenium metal, I figured if the demand was being driven only by utilitarian uses it might be more likely to spike since less people are hording it for value. Still though, I'm mostly concerned with where to off-load these things now that I have them. I have debated on Science Madness, but how many grams of palladium salt am I going to sell here at $10/gram? Not much I would think, we're not a very rich sort for the most part.

Fleaker - 10-9-2017 at 18:28

I can dispose of the material for you, if you like or cert it and you can sell it here or eBay. I have ICP-OES and we move mostly PGMs at work. Re is in the dumps lately.


Ruthenium's price has gone up in recent months on electronics components demand. I expect it will go up considerably if and when it finds greater use in the next generation of super alloys that'll be deployed in turbine blades in the coming decade.

Heavy Walter - 11-9-2017 at 04:54

About reclaiming palladium I would mention my succesful experiences taking it out of damaged hydrogen generators.
There are two technologies involved in H2 generators.
One, using polymeric cells, other using palladium cells (a nickel chamber with 6 or 8 Pd 1/8" diameter tubing).
Typical failure is one of those tubes punctured. So opening the cell with caution as it has a KOH solution and washing it leaves you with a bunch of Pd tubing. I guess it is alloyed with a small quantity of silver.


[Edited on 11-9-2017 by Heavy Walter]

Cryolite. - 11-9-2017 at 10:12

What is the salt you bought it as? It is something standard (chloride, nitrate, sulfate, acetate) or is the anion more obscure?

Also, if you want to offload some of that rhenium, ruthenium, and palladium on me hit me up :D

BromicAcid - 11-9-2017 at 20:14

Quote: Originally posted by Cryolite.  
What is the salt you bought it as? It is something standard (chloride, nitrate, sulfate, acetate) or is the anion more obscure?

Also, if you want to offload some of that rhenium, ruthenium, and palladium on me hit me up :D


Potassium tetrachloropalladate - Not the most common thing in the world but definitely something one could work with.

Fleaker - 2-10-2017 at 13:56

Will happily buy it all off of you.


As for the Pd from hydrogen purification systems--I have run a couple hundred ounces of that PdAg alloy from H2 purification membrane. The material I processed was exactly 75 % Pd and 25 % Ag.

I dissolved it all in nitric acid, precipitated the silver, filtered it off, rinsed the silver free of assay with dilute HCl and precipitated by neutralization with alkali (and boiling to condition). It was filtered, rinsed well and then reduced with boiling sodium formate.

Heavy Walter - 2-10-2017 at 14:23

Hi Fleaker

Glad to know about your recovery procedure and %.

Fleaker - 7-10-2017 at 08:09

Should probably edit for clarity:

rinsed the silver chloride free of Pd(II) with dilute (5% w/v HCl) until filtrate colorless. Then precipitated the palladium as its hydrous oxide.