"Silver Recover System" Make tons of money!?

User Removed · Oct 8, 2005

I was browsing in a photography catalog yesterday (sorry, dont remember the name) and I found something called The Silver Recover System. You place this small thing inside your tray or bucket of old fixer...and it attracts all the silver out of the fixers into a pouch. Depending how much you print, they claim that you will make tons of money by collecting all this silver! You then take the pouch of pure silver, send it to them, and they send you a check! The machine costs under 50 bucks.

Does anyone else find this really odd and pointless? HAHA!

Ole · Oct 8, 2005

$50 for a pad of steel wool????

User Removed · Oct 8, 2005

haha. No, its a machine that you plug in, and it has a "silver magnet" inside which attracts it into a small pouch.

jim appleyard · Oct 8, 2005

Yes, you can make tons of money, if you go thru even more tons of fixer. The steel in the steel wool swaps places with the silver in the fix (I'll let the real scientists explain that one further; I'm just an Evil Scientist, not a real one) and you collect it and send it to this company or your local scrap metal dealer and you make a few pennies.

It will provide you with a small amount of$ and it's good for the evironment to get the silver out of it.

medform-norm · Oct 8, 2005

We have an Austrian artist friend who won a photography contest (the 1994 Förderungspreis für Fotografie, Land Steiermark) once by submitting a nicely crafted, velvet-lined box with two silver film spools made from regained silver. Can't find any images on the net, but I remember it was well-made and well-thought out. I forgot what the prize was, but surely more than what you get back from the silver recovery merchants...

srs5694 · Oct 8, 2005

Keep in mind that there's no silver in fixer until it's been used; all the silver in the fixer comes from the film or paper. Given that Kodak, Ilford, Agfa, and other manufacturers want to make a profit on their film and paper, they won't be selling it for less than the value of its silver content. Thus, the theoretical maximum you could expect to retrieve using such a system is the value of the film and paper you use. In practice, of course, it'll be much less than this, since everything else in the film and paper costs money, too, and there are distribution costs (profit for the retailer, etc.). I don't know what percentage of the cost of film and paper you could expect to recover using such a system, but I'd be surprised if it reached even 10% of what you spend on film and paper. Thus, to make "tons of money" using such a system, you'd have to spend "megatons of money" on film and paper.

baronfoxx · Oct 8, 2005

hi , how do you recover simular waste products from Digitals??????????

Dave Parker · Oct 8, 2005

I have a silver recovery system, that I paid quite a bit north of $50.00 for, and it still has not made me a dime, when I worked in the photography shop, we had one, that after full year of recovery, and this was a very busy lab, that processed over 200 rolls of C41 per day, we would derive about $500.00 per year, but after ten years they paid for their recovery system, and we were required to have it by the city statute, so I guess if you process alot of film, it would be easy to recover your $50

Dave

Foto Ludens · Oct 8, 2005

I use a silver magnet on every batch of fixer that becomes exhausted. While the silver "recovered" is not much, it makes the fixer that much less harmful to pour down the drain.

So far, I have only done it to fixers used on paper, as my film-dedicated fixer is not exhausted yet. There is a noticeable amount of silver on the machine now (3 gallons of silver, I think). No, I won't make any profits on this, but it gets rid of (some) heavy metals on the fixers I dispose, and it will eventually repay for itself. Even if just in part (and I would use it even if not at all, steel wool may work, but if you throw it away anyway, what's the point?).

Just my 2c

André

Foto Ludens · Oct 8, 2005

Ok, I just realized a typo above. It should read "there's a noticeable amount of silver IN the machine (i.e. Silver Magnet), after 3 gallons of FIXER".

yeah, 3 gallons of silver and I would be RICH. wow, to own silver by the gallons...

Paul Sorensen · Oct 8, 2005

baronfoxx said:
hi , how do you recover simular waste products from Digitals??????????

Reformat your hard drive?

Paul Sorensen · Oct 8, 2005

McPhotoX said:
I was browsing in a photography catalog yesterday (sorry, dont remember the name) and I found something called The Silver Recover System. You place this small thing inside your tray or bucket of old fixer...and it attracts all the silver out of the fixers into a pouch. Depending how much you print, they claim that you will make tons of money by collecting all this silver! You then take the pouch of pure silver, send it to them, and they send you a check! The machine costs under 50 bucks.

Does anyone else find this really odd and pointless? HAHA!

According to the owner of Reed Photo Imaging, the biggest pro lab here in Denver, they don't really make much of anything on their silver recovery unit. I basically pays for itself. They take our fix, and probably do from some other folks as well, but it ain't like they are out buying yachts. This is from a big busy pro lab. You can do the math and pretty quickly figure out that you would be lucky to make pennies a year. I do recommend finding someone locally who will take your old fix so that you don't have to dump it down the drain, however. It really is pretty nasty stuff.

removed account4 · Oct 8, 2005

nope it isn't much money in return, but it pays for itself ...

Ian Grant · Oct 9, 2005

Ok there is loads of money to be made in Silver Recovery from photography, I worked in precious metal recovery for nearly 20 years, until the Spring of this year.

Unfortunately you have to process large volumes of film & paper before it becomes viable and returns a profit. I can assure you that few refiners will actually give you a true return on the silver recovered, and most people get fleeced.

Viable & profitable recovery is mostly large photo-labs, X-ray departments - medical & Industrial. Smaller minilabs could get a viable return with careful monitoring of their throughput & careful choice of refiner.

At a home darkroom level silver recovery won't be very economic, although steel wool is extremely cheap and 50 years worth of fixer/silver might help contribute to a weeks pension when you need it

Ian

Flotsam · Oct 9, 2005

It's true.
Reclaim the silver from processing one box of paper and get enough money to buy two more boxes. I've made MILLION$$$$$ that way.

User Removed · Oct 9, 2005

Flotsam said:
It's true.
Reclaim the silver from processing one box of paper and get enough money to buy two more boxes. I've made MILLION$$$$$ that way.

We could only wish!

"Silver Recover System" Make tons of money!?

Moderator

Privacy & Transparency

Privacy & Transparency