can of silver ingots found

H

hiller

Tenderfoot
Nov 15, 2009
7
1
Hello all, In need of some advice on a recent discovery I made . While cleaning out my deceased father's house I found a old can filled with an estimated weight of 30 lbs. of round ingots that my dad had melted down from the silver electrical contacts in large switch boxes. What I need to find out is what quality silver was used for this purpose and what is the easiest way to test for its purity. I hope I posted this in the correct section of this site . If not, I apologize. Thanks for any advice anyone can provide for me.
 

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Will be interesting to see what others say about purity. A purity of .999 would net you close to 10 grand.

TCK
 

So google searching has turned up a few interesting things...

Silver contacts are often used in rotary and sliding switches because of their excellent resistance to wearing. They are not pure silver as pure silver would be too soft but can often be up to 90% silver and 10% other material, often copper.
Click to expand...
Source (note it is a Canadian site):
How Much Are Scrap Silver Electrical Contacts Worth | Canada Gold Buyers

The article also mentions that silver contacts containing tungsten aren't as desirable.

Here's a refiner quoting $10 - $15 a pound for raw silver contacts (when silver was $22 - $24 an ounce (its lower now)
Silver Electrical Contacts to Refine| Precious Metal Refining Blog

One of the issues with determining the value will be that the ingots are probably made up of different contacts of varying silver content. Hopefully they were all silver + copper.

I guess you need to find a refinery that can smelt the ingots and give you exact value. If it is just copper & silver you may be able to find someone willing to do it? They might be substantially more valuable than $9 - $10 that is offered by the above mentioned refinery.
 

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FC Treasure,

$10-15 a "POUND"? Is that a typo, or does the refining process really take that much value away?

TCK
 

A pound? Yep, I looked it up, 10 to 15$ a pound. What's the deal with that? Too much junk metal in the alloy?
 

Need a metalurgist or student(check local colleges) to check it out. What I find a little strange is usually any electronic silver contacts I have seen are plated or have a good mix of copper in them. If your dad melted these and they where plated , copper has I higher melt temp than silver and would would chemicaly alter any silver if any was left after the heating. So if what you have still have the characteristics of silver ie color, response to light, and density you may be in luck. Know what you got before sending it to a random refinery. May be worth cutting an ingot to do a center test to see purity, chemical tests are cheap online here. Works alot like gold scratch stone test just instead of dissolving it changes color.
 

JunkShopFiddler said:
A pound? Yep, I looked it up, 10 to 15$ a pound. What's the deal with that? Too much junk metal in the alloy?
Click to expand...

It's because they were only coated with silver. The majority of the contact would be a baser metal such as copper.
 

Find a place that can test them for you beyond a acid test. Check any pawn shops or place near you that deals with Precious Metals And see if they have a Analyzer machine

Dig until your arm falls off
 

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