u/glenmorenee

Anybody recognize the artist. AI suggests Susan Ford.

A traditional wedding gift for the bride. The one on the right is close to 100 years old. The one one on the left 40-50 years old.

This is my wedding ring. It is soft 24kt and that's my excuse for not wearing it!

From an estate sale. Saw it in the pics and thought if price was decent, I'd get it. Pd $360

The purple Hellenic is a frameset I bought in the 70's but never built up and sold long ago. The other pics are from a bikeshop in Westwood, CA, south of UCLA. They were the only bike shop in Los Angeles that imported Hetchins.

I had accumulated some gold odds and ends and wanted to try and trade them for bullion but had to find the right person.  Finally I came across a guy at a coin show in 2022 and judging by his display I thought he might be interested.

Here's what I had:

1. No pic but I had this gorgeous 10 gm Aussie gold nugget that I got from ebay back in 2002 for $120. 

2. A small vial of gold pickers, 2.23 gms found at an estate sale for a few bucks.

3. At an estate sale of a real dedicated rock hound, I got this collection of gold ore samples and a few natural copper samples.  Most of the gold samples were marked and were indexed to his little notebook where he noted what mine they came from.  All the ore samples had visible gold.  Plus a tin of loose ore that I was able to pick out maybe another 6 gms gold. IIRC I paid $20.

I traded for a 1 1/2 oz of AGEs.

For your viewing pleasure. This a what I believe is a not too common form of crystalline gold, known as leaf gold. I bought it at some random coin show but to much regret later sold it.

This was back in October 2025. I decided to melt 2 partial sterling silver flatware sets that I bought long ago off ebay.  IIRC they were pretty much spot at the time and I paid roughly $1200 for one and $800 for the other.

Sterling flatware is really nice but you really only use it maybe twice a year and the kids don't want it so I figured might as well take advantage of better prices.  I calculated roughly 122 oz. at $48 silver would be in the $5000 area.  

Called 2 local sterling buyers, one a pretty big outfit that seems to buy a lot and they bid $1500.

On the phone with the smelter, the deal is $75 fee and then 95% of silver content.
Knives are $1 each extra charge.  They grab the blade, bash the handle with a chisel hammer on an anvil until it is loose, shake out the glue/cement and add it to the crucible.  This place had a few different sized smelters to handle even larger amounts.  They did wire brush the bar to make it look pretty.  While x-raying, he said sterling always says 925 but that has never happened with an assay.

Results:
Bar weight. 3636.90 gms
X-ray 90.02% Ag
3264.94 gms or 105 oz Ag. You get 95% of this, so {(3264.94 x .95)/31.1] x 49 spot = $4886 - $91 = $4785

I traded the bar for a krugerrand and $710 cash.

Thought I'd try and sell or at least see what the process was to sell scrap gold. Mostly found rings and bracelets, broken jewelry even some dental gold. Mostly 14KT and some 18KT. One ring I found 60 years ago. I calculated it to be almost 32 grams of pure Au. I took it to a gold dealer in the jewelry district and they glanced at it and said to take it upstairs and have it melted and assayed for $35 and they'd comp me the fee.

Here are some pics melting and purifying with borax, drilling 2 small divots in the bar (I understand this to make it easier to X-Ray). Last pic is the bar and the assay results, 29.68 grams!

This is what I gather from the adding machine tape.

Confirmed that 52.95 total grams at 56.05% purity gives 29.678 gms Au.

Gold dealer offered spot minus 2%, leaving me with 29.084 gms Au or .935 oz Au.

Using about $3818 spot, my bar worth $3582.92 plus $35 credit for assay, total $3617.92.

I traded for an AGE, which was spot +$59. So my scrap and $260 cash for the coin.

Addendum. I did this back in September 2025 when gold was a bit lower. Thank you readers for noticing the math! If you surveyed the average public, I would guess those that know what spot is on any given day is in the single digits! I'll also post my scrap silver adventure so you can all laugh at my poor timing.

No markings. It does not appear to be mass produced, more of a one off kind of look. Maybe a determined high school wood shop project?