Your videos have gotten much better over the last several years........ This one is new to me, but important for me to learn how much effort I should put into plated vs. sterling pieces.... Thanks

The little symbol A is a good guide as to the quality of the silver plate. There are tons of different systems and no standard but a century or so ago, many British makers used followed the gradings ... A1 = Superior, A = Standard and then lower and lower grades below that B, C, D, E based on how many pennyweight was plated on. A1 was usually a troy ounce of silver per 12 tablespoons or forks. Also don't get confused with stamped in Old English font which looks like a hallmark. That's electroplated nickel silver and usually pretty thin.

You are the Superman of recovering precious metal videos. Always worth watching and thanks Superman.

My local thrift stores all have piles of old silverplate-no one wants it anymore, and no one wants to polish it,either. I'm always on the hunt for Sterling, and I've found that Sterling items are ALWAYS marked "Sterling" -especially things made in the US. If you are serious about finding Sterling "in the wild", you have to know foreign hallmarks also-they won't say "Sterling" on them, but maybe just a stamped ".925" or something similar. British hallmarks are more involved, but you are always looking for the lion with the raised paw. At every thrift store, I always go through all the silverplate and old silverware-I've found an amazing amount of overlooked Sterling. My most common find are "weighted Sterling" candleholders-I've found dozens of them in the past two years. They are all just a thin skin of silver around a heavy cement or plaster base, but it all adds up.

Glad to see you back on!!!

There is a much cheaper way of doing silver plate. The formula is 19 parts sulfuric acid to one part nitric acid. Heat but only to about 140 F. The silver plate will turn white as it dissolves in the solution. When the white is gone, that piece is done. I use three buckets and a plastic colander. I let one batch drain while the next batch is working in the solution. After a batch is drained, I rinse in bucket number one, still in the colander, then bucket number two, then dumped in an empty bucket. Buckets one and two have two gallons of tap water in them. When the solution is spent, it will be very dark and will not take any more silver. I let the solution cool down to ambient temperature. I pour half the solution in each of the water buckets and add a saturated solution of un-iodized saltwater to turn the silver into silver chloride. Work it into silver metal as you wish. You might want to try it in one of your great videos. You do a great job. I enjoy them very much.

If you undershoot a little bit with the HCl, so you leave just a little silver nitrate in solution. You can filter out your silver chloride, and save the filtrate. You can then use the filtrate to dissolve more silver items, because when you add the HCl you also create nitric acid. You just want to undershoot with the HCl, because if some is left over it will react with the silver and form a AgCl coating keeping the nitric from dissolving it. That way you can save some money on buying more nitric. I actually just did this, it worked out pretty well.

Glad you're back, thanks for the vid!

Love your videos my husband done his first gold recovery from scrap fingers. Thanks for the videos please keep them coming!!!

Yay you're back! I was worried about your wrists at times with that platinum.

I really enjoyed the calculation of the worth at the end there. Would love it if you did that in every video where you yield some precious metal.

Just as plating I would never have imagined you could get that much silver off of that lid. Understand I dont doubt you a bit as I have learned how sharp you really are at this stuff. Im also extremely jealous at how productive you are and could only hope that I could ever do anything like what you do. I dont like toxic chemicals or agents. I would never work in a trade or plant that would put me anywhere near dangerous lab work. I worked in a production machineshop for just under 28yrs but I would bolt when they had painters painting the floor with very toxic paint. Whenever they painted in that building I bolted to get away. One of the painters never wore a mask I couldnt believe it. You would get a headache right away if you were anywhere near it. Im not exagerating. But you I have learned know exactly what you are doing. Do you have a chemistry degree because you work like a Scientist, I do really enjoy watching what you do and most of all when you end up with an incredible bar of Gold and Silver too. I always wonder if you really should be wearing a good mask or ventilator but I think you know what your doing.

Thank you for taking the time and using your chemicals and shop to show us how to do what you do & now we know to just turn it into a recycling center as the base metal under the silver. ❤❤

I started buying junk silver from my area. I cant wait to try to do some refining.

Hello and welcome back :) I'd wish you a happy New Year, but I think it would be nicer to wish you a BETTER year than last year :) And don't think what happened with your stockpot was a disaster...it'll be really exciting and interesting to see how you manage to get all the platinum back. Personally I can't wait to see how you're going to do it :) I'm sure a lot of viewers will agree with me. Thanks for another entertaining video

some companies call it Ultraplate, some call it Extraplate. I only found about it awhile back because my grandma had a bunch of it, than I started looking into it. It is very common, mostly older pieces but some newer ones can be found. Yes you can find several pieces with with very thin plating but thick plating isn't rare

Great video +Sreetips, enjoyed this as always!

glad your back, was concerned you stopped doing videos or something, keep up the good work!

No commercials, I subscribed. love your videos!

Great to see you back again! I was hoping that the stock pot refining disaster did not take the wind out of your sails for continuing your videos.

Glad to see you back. Was worried that the little fiasco sapped your will to make videos. Keep them coming.

Mr Sreetips there is a very easy way to de-plate silver. A tub of salt water with a piece of stainless steel for the negative contact and hook the positive contact to the piece of plated silver. Run a current through it for 10-15 min and the silver will flake off

I'm thrilled that you are making videos again. I was happy to make a small contribution to help continue this awesome content.

Good to see you back!

Watching this now shows how much your processes have changed in the last few years.

I'd say it is a profitable venture seeing where the bidding is, at current time. Quite Profitable if I do say so myself. Great video. Once again you don't disappoint.

Thank you for sharing your calculation and satisfy my curiosity about the costs!

Glad to see you back. That last video was devastating.

Alright, here we go again. When you get to the end, please be careful and don't spill it all. Thanks for coming back to teach us

Welcome back sreetips! I have been waiting for new video... Also looking forward to see new videos in future. Especially platinum refining.

Welcome back. You've bee missed, @Sreetips. I like the addition of the cost vs return calculation in the vids. It's interesting to see the return on investment.

Hey sreetips ! Thank you for all the great content you keep on making ! I have 10kg of silver plated items , it wont make sense to dissolve them in nitric as i will need alot of nitric to do that . I was wondering if sanding the silver off and refining the dust would be a better option ?

Happy New Year to you too!

Thanks for the video. It was very informative and I enjoyed it. 👍🏻

Great video . glad your still active

In your experience, what is the range of silver to total metal? It was 4.6% here but what is the general range? Thanks!

Glad to see ya back Kadriver ,, some of us were going through with draws 🥴

I finally got the store and I have huge silverware & scrap I gotta go through. It's time for me to learn it now. I told you I'd get that pawn shop in negotiations & now I own it😊

I am glad that you recharged and are back at it.

This was fun to watch but from a personal point of view, I believe the dish was more valuable as an attractive silver plate. Thanks.

I wanted to watch this, to see silver recovery I have thousands and thousands of silver contacts. I want to someday process. It looks like it should be one of the easier pm to process, but I'm going to study and study until I'm very confident I can do it. Probably years in the future. Thanks for the GREAT VIDEO!!!

Great video... I have learned so much from your vids...

Thanks I was wondering that ✔️ I appreciate your work ‼️

Thank you for this. I am looking at silver recovery and now know on cost yield ratio

Several other items missing from the cost analysis. Not a very cost effective way to obtain silver, but the chemistry was interesting. I am glad YOU did it.

EDIT!!! EDIT!! EDIT!! HAHAHA! I see you DID mention it at the beginning of the video. Disregard my aforementioned statement. :D You forgot to mention the nitrogen dioxide danger this time. :D I've watched other videos you've made where you did mention the danger so that's how I know you forgot. Love your videos. You are so meticulous I thought for certain you had a background in chemistry. I was surprised to learn that you're a hobbyist! Nice job at being so efficient. I'm a jeweler so that's why I have an interest in precious metals recovery. :)

We are now in 2023 : and It looks like that value is going up. There are three tangible items that will be worth so much after the dollar collapse. Everything else will be digital currency if we get lucky. Thank you for your demonstration it works for me.

Thanks for your great Video, very instructional as always ! One question, It´s possible to "UnPlate" the item, that is, using the appropriate electrolyte can electrically remove the thin layer of silver ? Maybe this way is economically feasible.

Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge, i'm working in a mining lab so we assay gold and silver from ore and pb concetrates. I dissolve the dore button with nitric acid with the purpose to dissolve silver and get a gold button and calculate its content in the samples. I generate a lot of silver nitrate solution every day and I precipitate it with HCl. I will suggest a method based on yours to take benefit of this waste and recover some silver. Greetings from Mexico.

So glad you’re still at it! I was fairly worried. Fail Forward!

I really enjoyed this video and learning more about silver plate. I was surprised by the amount at the end. I also really liked going through the costs and seeing that it is not worth it to separate it. I wonder also though about how much the copper is worth that was in it. 😀😀

Fascinating video. Well done. 👍

Having your wife showing some of her shopping trips with hints would be great. The secret to making this a profitable hobby is a good, steady source of reasonably priced raw materials.

Hi Sreetips, I am a new watcher and you have me hooked. QUESTION: what is the orange gas and would it make the reaction and therefore nitric acid use more efficient if a condenser was used to drop it back into the beaker?

Interesting process. Thanks for sharing 👍

Thank you for this video very informative. I am interested to know what the copper solution is. Is it copper oxicloride?

First time watching! Stumbled upon video while researching Büchner funnel uses. I have a bunch of those Büchner funnels. Are they worth waiting to sell to people on eBay?

Awesome as usual but happy to see u thanks a lot

wow, that was very interesting. thank you for that. now I don't know much about everything you were doing, but I was following u. to my lay understanding. all metals of the periodic table are soluable? is that true or then my spelling.😁

Great video. Would this process be the same if I wanted to recover silver from the waste that I got from my initial gold recovery? To be more precise I recovered gold from CPUs but I know there's silver in the waste. Do I recover this silver like you've done in this video so basically adding distilled water and nitric acid to the waste solution and continuing like u did or is there another way? Would highly appreciate your reply. Thank you so much.

Reed and Barton was (is?) a maker of high quality sterling and silver plate items. They would heavily plate their items-I see some things marked "Quadruple plated" also.

Quick qustion for you chief. If there was some gold also in this solution would adding the hcl cause the gold to come out of solution with the silver?

Thank you for the video. That was a nice find

Glad to see and what is the name of your gloves what type that is

Nice vid, thanks. Do you think buying scrap silverplate is worth it?

I would like to see you do a refining of keyboard mylars & to know if you know how you could incenerate the mylars to recover the silver

I wasn't interested at all in this topic but I watched it all from start to finish lol

Great to see you back bud. I have done a lot of checking on this project. Is it really worth all the process ? I guess the end numbers say it all eh. It will be neat to see the end results my friend. Your chemistry is to be admired my friend.

Great video!!! When does adding borax make sense in process like this?

There he is, I hope the holidays were the best they could have been for you and your family and friends... But, now it is time to get back to work!!!! Lol, just kidding, just excited to watch your new video as there isn't much out here in the interweb, that actually teaches me something, and your channel, I always learn something, if not many things, every video, just even the repetition of of how you pattern how you run your channel, and I think it is so important for the safety factor... thank you for the effort on doing that, as I can only imagine how much more work that is required, but is so worth it, as it has built my confidence in doing these processes.

I just sell my silver plated trays and such to my refiner for $1.75 per pound. Works for me.

Very impressive. btw, how sugar can transfer silver oxide into pure silver?? is it a reduction reaction?

Hello, the greatest chemist in the world, thank you for spreading your experience to the viewers. I have an urgent question. I am working on extracting gold from rocks and stones crushed with aqua regia, and I work on large quantities. I have a problem, which is how do I know that the solution is saturated and will not be able to dissolve more gold and I have to replace it? Thank you

HI! I have a problem about silver recovery from silverplated silverware. The basic metal is zinc, then a thin layer of copper and then silverplating on. First i try to disolve whole spoon in nitric acid, but it starts to boil over the floor. I repead the proces with less concetrated nitric acid, the spoon is disolved, but i have a lot of powder on bottom, the liquid is blueish. So im guesing that zinc is on the bottom like powder, silver is in liquid? or did zinc something else to my silver? Now I will first melt the zinc away and scrap the upper layer down, and i will procced with that nugget forward

Thanks for showing that process. Looks super dangerous!

Awesome, I’m clumsy so I wouldn’t try my ideas myself. I have a box of gold and silver plated jewelry and some 40%coins I’d like to eventually get the gold silver and copper from. are their trustworthy refiners I could send to that don’t charge an arm and two legs for it. But seriously I pretty much can do it but I’d need instruction step by step on paper just so I don’t miss any steps

I have a question? When you melted your silver cement in the wet filter. Did you use any flux like Borax? I know you glazed you dish before melting? Did you add borax to that silver burn? Streetips your my favorite you tube channel. I have learned so much. Never stop doing your vids. Thxs so much

And thank you so much, very informative, subscribed and liked.

"Thick" silver plate is often silver "clad" rather than plate. This is done when the flat sheet of metal is made, already clad in the silver then it stamped out and presses into shape.

Best to melt into a sheet and electroplate the copper out with copper sulfate and sulfuric acid in a cell will get pure copper and anode slimes being able to reuse the acid many times lowering the acid cost

Usually plated will have an “A” or “community plate”

In the UK most silver plated items have the "EPNS" stamped on them. This stands for Electro Plated Nickel Silver.

Hi, love your video's. I have a question about my project. I came into some electronic silver wire pieces from my work. I've followed your refining process to find out that im able to retrieve some silver from the wire but cant get all of the wire to melt all the way. Also while the acid is working the silver wires the mixture of acid, and distilled water turns a light grey and not the blue color. Im thinking the wire pieces are not copper, and silver mixed? Do you have an idea? It does turn blue when im at the next phase of adding the copper pieces into solution. Would appreciate your thoughts

Super sir I m from India you gave a clear idea

I contacted you on eBay. I have a bulk lot of Silverplate. I can sell the items by the piece, but shipping adds too much cost. Their size and shape make it hard to stuff a priority mail flat rate box full of it. I can deliver if you want it.

If I can ask honestly, is it worth it to purchase nitric acid or distill your own? I depleted a fair amount of junk silver but I'm not quite sure what the best way to purify is. If you could comment on what works best for you I would appreciate it.

As always a very good educational video

crumbs.. the chemicals are more than 10 dollars ! a great educational video !

I would really appreciate if you replyed to this. If you were just getting started in metal refining so you have chemicals (I.e. nitric), would you think it safe enough and ok to do everything outside, still with the appropriate equipment and safety stuff but without a fume hood? This is just because I wanted to get some sort of a better insight into this as if you think it unsafe I wouldn't do it. I really appreciate your feedback. Thanks :)

37:32 I assume this is Copper chloride solution with some trace silver chloride some trace copper nitrate and unconverted silver nitrate in that white bucket. Can this be mixed in with your silver waste bucket with the pour offs from regular silver cementation?

Thanks for the breakdown at the end. What about the sodium hydroxide $ what is your time worth and what is the Map gas for melting it down cost $$ all is overhead. so to me, it looks like you might break even at best. Is it any cheaper to just smelt it down from the start ?

like your video. think I would take an angle grinder to that plate inside your containment box and remove all the silver that way then sweep it all into beaker that would eliminate having to dissolve everything and yield per acid used would be much higher

Sreetips what’s your source for nitric at that price? I have been making my own because it’s expensive but $15 a liter is great.

Watching you talk at your desk you remind me of Clark Kent, mild mannered metal refiner. You could be Superman??

Nice video and great way to get pure silver but I have about 100 pieces of silver plated flatware and 20 or so silver plated platters and I am looking for an easier and more economical way to get the silver out of all that. I am pretty sure most of it has a thinner plating than your platter did so I believe nitric acid will just cost too much. Have any ideas that will not require days of labor or cost more than the silver is worth? Have a wonderful day.

Holy S.. we got to see sreetips in the 3rd person!! I pictured you so much different. Fantastic! Now I can picture you and Mrs Ips, when you tell stories about where the scrap gold comes from 😄 Did you dye your hair for this.. if not, I'm jealous.

Where do you get your nitric? I need a good source. I’ve been making my own and it’s just too much trouble. Thanks

Your voice sounds very similar to another youtuber I watch named Dahboo7....can tell the difference, but man!....you guys could do voice overs for each other no problem...lol...love your channel, and all you do!

Very engaging content, thaks for sharing!

The stock pot end was sadder then the last scene of "Old Yeller", I am putting together a small plating shop to do as a hobby, zinc, copper, nickel etc mainly automotive and motorcycle parts and came across one of your videos, needless to say i have been binge watching since. What is the possibility of making gold plating solution for electroplating emblems on cars ect. I see the are getting 180.00 per quart shipped containing 1 DWT, pennyweight of 24k fine gold in one of the listings on ebay. I have seen that there is a process using potassium ferricyanide and gold chloride. Thank you for your videos and you have a new fan.