Jackpot! 16 Ounces of Medical-Grade Silver Nitrate! $500+!

[UnderMiner]

Spotted this old amber chemical bottle at the dump today and noticed it was labeled "Silver Nitrate"! A very expensive lab chemical that is easily convertible to pure silver metal! But silver nitrate is worth about $1-$1.50 per gram - MORE expensive than pure silver (and medical grade silver nitrate like this is worth the most)! So cool - I estimate the bottle contains between 400 and 450 grams (as very little appears to be missing)! It may even contain the original full amount - which would be worth close to $500, maybe more! I think I will try selling the chemical in 9 batches of 50g for $60-$70 per batch on Ebay, I'll keep anything left over for my own silver experiments, should I ever choose to perform any. I knew my knowledge of both treasure and chemistry would pay off!


I looked around for more bottles, but this was the only one I could find - just image if I found an entire case of these, I could've bought a new car with that amount of money!

It was made by a company called Mallinckrodt. The bottle is much heavier than it appears as silver nitrate is quite dense - more than twice the density of table salt (4.35 g/cm³ vs. 2.16 g/cm³).


Original advertisement for Mallinckrodt's Silver Nitrate from the 1940's:

 

[Professor of Engineering]

Nice find $$$, congratulations!

 

[ARC]

Make sure in your excitement to "divvy" you don't forget the big red lettering...

The one with the skull and cross bone logos on either side... which are also in red. heh

 

[BigWaveDave]

Your find confirms for me, that I really have no clue about finding treasure.

Hope you can make bank with the chemical.

 

[screwynewy]

That stuff has expired. You can send it to me and I'll dispose of it properly

 

[Gridwalker306]

You found that outside? Amazing the paper label is so nice! Pretty cool find for sure, congrats.

 

[UnderMiner]

You found that outside? Amazing the paper label is so nice! Pretty cool find for sure, congrats.

It was dumped likely just a few hours of me finding it, likely was from someone's house or an old business renovation. This dump is mostly for demolition debris and new stuff is brought in on a daily basis. This is one of the more interesting finds I made from there. I've found lab chemicals there before, including once a bottle of Ferro-Cyanide that was in an old 1950's chemistry set meant for children (accidentally mix that stuff with a little acid and it would've produce enough Hydrogen Cyanide to kill a large room full of people), crazy, compared to that stuff Silver Nitrate is quite safe just as long as you don't eat or breathe the dust.

 

[UnderMiner]

Make sure in your excitement to "divvy" you don't forget the big red lettering...
The one with the skull and cross bone logos on either side... which are also in red. heh

I wonder which came first - the skull and crossbones symbolizing poison, or the skull and crossbones signifying pirates?
I think I will look into that.

 

[Gridwalker306]

It was dumped likely just a few hours of me finding it, likely was from someone's house or an old business renovation. This dump is mostly for demolition debris and new stuff is brought in on a daily basis. This is one of the more interesting finds I made from there. I've found lab chemicals there before, including once a bottle of Ferro-Cyanide that was in an old 1950's chemistry set meant for children (accidentally mix that stuff with a little acid and it would've produce enough Hydrogen Cyanide to kill a large room full of people), crazy, compared to that stuff Silver Nitrate is quite safe just as long as you don't eat or breathe the dust.

Right on, that's quite a score. If I had that I'd probably silver plate everything I own lol.

Crazy about the kids chem play sets from the 50's! There's no way they'd get away with that today.

 

[trapperart]

That's a different find for sure

 

[Agent Green]

You can YouTube it, add a copper pipe to some water(saturated soln) and precipitate the silver...

 

[UnderMiner]

You can YouTube it, add a copper pipe to some water(saturated soln) and precipitate the silver...

I was originally thinking about doing that, that is until I looked up the price of Silver Nitrate compared to pure silver metal, Silver Nitrate is worth 2-3 times more by default, so I will be keeping it in its nitrate form. But I think I will do a few experiments and extract a small amount of silver suing a copper wire in a silver nitrate solution like they do in the school chemistry demonstrations, I never did it before since I never had access to Silver Nitrate. This is going to be fun

 

[Johncoho]

That is a cool find. I remember in 1964 it was used on me as a new treatment for bad burns. I was wrapped in gauze and it was pored over the gauze till it was saturated and then I was wrapped in saran wrap to help remove the burned skin and flesh. I was in the hospital for over a month and the results were quite good. Only ended up with one place where the scars still remain. It probably wasn't worth quite as much then. I believe it was originally used to develop film?

 

[against the wind]

Cool find,, be careful not to inhale that stuff.
Congrats