What is 28 pounds of 99.99% pure liquid mercury worth?

[Kurios1]

She made the mistake of asking a city bureaucrat. He recommended a hazmat company and they quoted her $2400. She had the bedroom sealed shut for like 2 months before she found out she only needed to use tape and a zip lock bag.

NEVER involve a government bureaucrat into your personal matters. That's why when I hunt public sidewalks and schools I NEVER go looking for a government bureaucrat for permission. If it's not posted NO METAL DETECTING I hunt it. Flip these puny minded bureaucrats into a landfill and bulldoze them over. Sarcasm.

 

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[SorenCoins]

Not used anymore.

 

[Clay Diggins]

In today's market Mercury sells for about $47 a pound. 28 pounds would bring about $1,300 + on the open market.

Among many other common consumer items using Mercury as a necessary component of their manufacture are fluorescent light bulbs and vaccines.

 

[trdking]

Wow Old thread alert.
For those that want to know. And I believe all panners and miners know already but the question was asked.
Mercury attracts gold like a magnet. It absorbs it into its structure and suspends it. A few drops in a pan of tailings and it will extract all of the gold dust and leave the black sand etc behind. To remove your gold dust from the mercury you must scintillate it. e.g. heat it up. The mercury evaporates and the gold is left behind. Thus the potato near but not in the main fire works. However MERCURY VAPOR IS SERIOUSLY DEADLY. Do not play in your dads shed unless you know exactly how to use the Scintillator Do not HEAT mercury above normal thermometer temperatures. The stuff is no joke. Some of you have talked about playing with small amounts and some of you have heard me speak about my youthful antics (Mayhem) with my best friend Greg. One of the things we did was harvest mercury switches from old heat and air thermostats.We collected a Small Pill bottle size 30ml screw top lab bottle of the stuff and we played with it. Me more carefully than Greg who would roll it around on his tongue and spit it back into the bottle clean as a whistle. This of course was done with repeated warnings from me and I resorted to being a big chicken vs ingesting any of this. Fast forward 11 years to when Greg was 29. Despite if a complete lack of family history, greg was completely certifiably insane. He shot himself the day before his 30th Birthday. I have always blamed that mercury on this event.

 

[missmarta]

After reading this thread, the next read was a story by the Associated Press with the headline, "State recovers 64 pounds of Mercury for sale online". Yup, it was AnIrishBear. He had listed it on Craigslist for $650. He actually got a buyer for a lower price, but it was the EPA who bought it!

https://lacrossetribune.com/news/lo...cle_f66788b6-a02f-11e1-be8c-001a4bcf887a.html

 

[YumaMarc]

It is used by gold "prospectors" and "panners," along with jewelers to recover very small amounts of gold and gold dust. It is also used by those recovering small amounts of gold from gold-plated items and to recover the gold from items that have had "gold leaf" applied. It "amalgamates" gold...it actually disolves gold into itself just like water disolves salt into itself. From what I remember a pound of mercury will "amalgamate" anywhere from 3 to 6 pounds of gold. It is also used in dentistry...it is used in "silver fillings" for cavaties.


Kelly

Ok, a side note on this. As a professional gold assayer over the years I had lots of opportunity to work with mercury amalgam. Please bear in mind I'm not trying to be a "know it all" here, nor to offend anyone, and my apologies if it comes across as such. I'm just relating my own experiences.

Very few things actually dissolve gold, among the best are aqua regia and molten lead. Chlorine solutions, even chlorine bleach, will slowly dissolve gold. But not many other things. Mercury does not dissolve gold but WETS it. If you tried to remove gold leaf from a metallic object all you would accomplish is a mercury-coated gold leaf. Mercury will absorb gold into it's mass, but most everything else will be left floating on top or ignored by it. The tiny bits of gold will actually disappear into the blob of mercury, but they are still the same shape and form within the blob as they were outside. The mercury has had zero effect on the gold particles other than to wet them and absorb them.

When mercury has absorbed all the gold it can hold, it becomes stiff and can be molded like a snowball. It even "squeaks" like wet snow.

50/50 nitric solution is pretty strong to dissolve mercury, but it will work. It's dangerous to drop amalgam into strong hot nitric acid because it will fizz and effervesce, many times boiling over on your hot plate. Best to use a weaker solution and never get it to boiling. And DON'T breathe any red-brown fumes coming off the acid. When the mercury is all dissolved the gold particles are left in the nitric solution, minus any iron or certain other metallic bits that may have been clinging. When cool these can be filtered and washed with distilled water. You will have all the gold that was inside the amalgam.

A safety tip: be extra careful handling nitric acid. It likes to dissolve human tissue with even more relish than mercury. I have numerous scars as proof.

The mercury can be reclaimed from the spent nitric solution by stirring with a copper rod or a piece of bare #8 solid electrical wire.

 

[A2coins]

Yep dispose of properly whatever you do

 

[TheGreenBoy]

The price of 99.999% pure mercury varies from 60 to 80 USD per 1 kg, i.e. 760 - 1000 USD for your amount, if the purity is OK. Extra purified mercury (i.e. polarographic quality) is way more expencieve.

....and the price is riseing over the time......

 

[xaos]

I traded a kid some prized matchbox cars for a small bottle of silver mercury when I was a kid. I knew it was poisonous, and some small amounts got spilled in my room on the carpet and in the basement. I put the bottle in my top dresser drawer and forgot about it. I found it about a year later on its side and half of it was gone. It probably spilled out into my dresser but I could not find any? I cant remember what I did with the rest I may have gave it to my science teacher. I'm not sure if I got brain damage but I'm still alive and that was 35 years ago. Maybe lost some memory.

Was involved in a level A cleanup of a property in Eastern Washington. They had an old spiral mercury thermometer from a ship, stored in the garage.
The dog got into it, broke it, and tracked it through the house.
Kids got sick, and after testing, the EPA was called in.

The entire house was evacuated, all contents, carpet and belongings bagged and tagged for proper disposal. Entire house was demolished.

The family lost everything.

Strange, they had no problem asking us to kill the dog for "testing"

 

[spriyaty]

Kelly:
Since mercury is still used extensively in dentistry, you may wish to contact your dentists and ask him these Qs.
Don.......

I found 28 pounds of medical instrument xender discord omegle grade liquid mercury in my fathers estate. He was also an amateur gold panner and used it for a lot of what he called "tailings" that he brought home that needed "further processing." He had a special shed setup for this work, and never brought it into the field. I want to find a good, responsible home for it (seeing it can be dangerous to persons and the environment in the hands of idiots) and was wondering what this stuff is worth, and where I can sell it. Any help would be appreciated.

 

[RTR]

Its worth FAR less than any human life

 

[Deep1]

I found 28 pounds of medical instrument grade liquid mercury in my fathers estate. He was also an amateur gold panner and used it for a lot of what he called "tailings" that he brought home that needed "further processing." He had a special shed setup for this work, and never brought it into the field. I want to find a good, responsible home for it (seeing it can be dangerous to persons and the environment in the hands of idiots) and was wondering what this stuff is worth, and where I can sell it. Any help would be appreciated.

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Started by AnIrishBear on June 16,2009
This is a copy of original post #1.
Kinda looks like spamming.