Many, many years ago, I worked for a machine shop.
My job was to, among other things, clean the lathes after they had finished an order, tear it down and help set it up for the next run.
One day they got an order for electronic contacts, as part of a military contract I think. Anyway the parts were to be made from 0.99999% silver. I still remember the two pallets with thousands of pounds of silver on them. Of course, back then silver was only worth something like 2 dollars an ounce.
Anyway when the order was finished I asked the owner what he wanted me to do with the silver turnings and he said to just throw it in the scrap metal bins with the rest of the scrap.
I promptly packed all the silver into cardboard boxes and trash bags and loaded the trunk of my car with it.
I ended up with 119 pounds (by my bathroom scale) of silver.
After a while I started melting the silver down and pouring rough ingots with it. I was having a hard time keeping track of 119 pounds of silver shavings and had already lost probably 20 pounds of it when I decided to melt it.
Ive sold a lot of it over the years. I traded some for an M1 Garand, etc.
I still have around 40 pounds...
My job was to, among other things, clean the lathes after they had finished an order, tear it down and help set it up for the next run.
One day they got an order for electronic contacts, as part of a military contract I think. Anyway the parts were to be made from 0.99999% silver. I still remember the two pallets with thousands of pounds of silver on them. Of course, back then silver was only worth something like 2 dollars an ounce.
Anyway when the order was finished I asked the owner what he wanted me to do with the silver turnings and he said to just throw it in the scrap metal bins with the rest of the scrap.
I promptly packed all the silver into cardboard boxes and trash bags and loaded the trunk of my car with it.
I ended up with 119 pounds (by my bathroom scale) of silver.
After a while I started melting the silver down and pouring rough ingots with it. I was having a hard time keeping track of 119 pounds of silver shavings and had already lost probably 20 pounds of it when I decided to melt it.
Ive sold a lot of it over the years. I traded some for an M1 Garand, etc.
I still have around 40 pounds...
