i do agree with parts of that 1637 , and i appreciate your replies , I'm no expert but platinum comes out of the ground as platinum as well , from fines to nuggets , unless you talking high grade ore and black sands with mineral content , I'm talking about flour platinum that is mixed with my flour gold , when i did my research i was able to find a company that does smelting and assay ,and even batch processing , i can send in a 40 lb. batch of material and have processed for $175.00 , so if i have lots of accumulated black sands that i am sure carry good values and have flour gold and platinum mixed in , . it may be worth having an occasional small batch of my best fines processed , if i can see at least a teaspoon of platinum in my pan after running 15% of a bucket , then i can fit a lot of platinum into a 40 lb. batch , platinum is just harder and denser than gold , , so it takes much higher heat and probably a different flux to smelt together , but if the accumulated batch does carry good content then who cares about the 175 bucks , i think anyways ,