jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

I knew that would get your attention. I watched two odd videos on YouTube last night.

One guy crushed and melted aluminum soda cans. He poured the molten aluminum into small bricks. He needed quite a bit of equipment, and spent a lot of time getting six blocks. At the end, he said the aluminum would come in hand for projects. Odd.

The kicker, though, was the guy "making" gold. He spend hundreds of dollars buying old circuit boards and circuit board "fingers." Then he spent days using an assortment of chemicals extracting the gold from the contacts on the boards. By the end of the video, he had a small ball of gold, maybe twice the size of a BB. I think it weighed one gram. It wasn't completely pure, so he was going to refine it again. At the time he did this, gold was selling for a little over $1,000 an ounce. I don't know how much that one gram of impure gold would sell for, but he would have to subtract the hundreds he had spent on the raw materials and chemicals. And, as I said, it took him days to do this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sZUAprS5KI

Shellback Loc: North of Cheyenne Bottoms Wetlands - Kansas

Gold Prices Today
Per Ounce $1,956.2
Per Gram $62.89

Hope he had a lot of time on this hands...

Bill 45

It taking from one hole in the ground to be put in another hold in the ground.

SteveR Loc: Michigan

Good time to buy.

fourlocks Loc: Londonderry, NH

And what did he do with the hazardous wastes created by the "assortment of chemicals" he used to extract the gold?

Most likely he used a strong acid to leach the metals out, then mercury to amalgamate the gold which he then separated through distillation. The cost of the chemicals, the cost of waste disposal (assuming he didn't pour it down the drain or on the ground) and the cost of the energy to run the process far exceeded the value of the recovered gold.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

In a similar way, it is apparently actually cost effective to extract the silver from old X-ray film, as there are companies that buy old film for this purpose.

clickety

Bob Werre

A couple of comments, First I wonder if his wife knows he's using her cooking ware to do the refining! <G> Next, I think it would be more fun to sit down at a stream in Nevada, Alaska and do some panning. At least you get fresh air.
The company I used to work for saved all our old fixer in a barrel larger than a 55 gal drum. After a phone call the "hypo" guy would come by and siphon our old fixer into his van. the van was so nasty most of the floor was gone! And of course he also bought our old B&W film. Another place I worked at used a lot of litho film and that was especially rich in silver. Also at one time, our city government required a 'sampling well' be dug so a sample could be taken for pollution control--I guess they sampled our waste water from the darkroom film and paper washers. The local photo guild, threw a fit so as far as I know the wells were never used. At one time Kodak would sell a passive collection system for fixer. With a major shift away from B&W must have cut the use of silver recovery. Also at one time--late 70's probably, the Hunt Brothers (typical Texas tycoons I understand) cornered the market on silver, so the price of our films moved like the stock market, till they were knocked off their throne. At both locations I worked at we had 'one shot' processing machines. You mixed chemistry like E3, C22, E6 or C-41 that was stored in containers. Then you loaded film in a tube or drum then loaded into the light tight processing machine. Chemistry (sometimes just a few ounces) was then poured into the machine via an angled tube/funnel. After the time for each chemical expired, the machine would be tilted and the chemistry would be dumped into the city water supply usually! My guess is that ferric bleach might have been the worse chemical typically used. Of course some might remember the Ciba-Chrome process. It was offered in a home use version and I used some of that. You used a tablet of some kind to neutralize the chemistry before discarding it down the drain. You could make some striking images sometimes and the next you could never get right!

DougS Loc: Central Arkansas

Try searching youtube for " pour liquid aluminum into the ants' nest ". Neat sculptures, I think.

Paul Diamond Loc: Atlanta, GA, USA

Due to Covid-19, globally, people became uncertain about their national currency and they began buying gold and silver. Almost overnight, the value of gold rose to $1800, then $1900/ounce. For things like jewelry, buyers cannot find the same pre-Covid quality unless they are prepared to pay 40% to 80% more than the earlier pricing.

Not likely to change in the near future.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

And when there's a possibility of snow, grocery stores are packed with people buying milk and bread.

When society collapses, lumps of gold will be worth about as much as lumps of coal. Actually, as a fuel, coal will probably be worth more.