Best find ever....Hundreds of pounds of scrap (Pure) silver...

Many, many years ago, I worked for a machine shop.

My job was to, among other things, clean the lathes after they had finished an order, tear it down and help set it up for the next run.

One day they got an order for electronic contacts, as part of a military contract I think. Anyway the parts were to be made from 0.99999% silver. I still remember the two pallets with thousands of pounds of silver on them. Of course, back then silver was only worth something like 2 dollars an ounce.

Anyway when the order was finished I asked the owner what he wanted me to do with the silver turnings and he said to just throw it in the scrap metal bins with the rest of the scrap.

I promptly packed all the silver into cardboard boxes and trash bags and loaded the trunk of my car with it.

I ended up with 119 pounds (by my bathroom scale) of silver.

After a while I started melting the silver down and pouring rough ingots with it. I was having a hard time keeping track of 119 pounds of silver shavings and had already lost probably 20 pounds of it when I decided to melt it.

Ive sold a lot of it over the years. I traded some for an M1 Garand, etc.

I still have around 40 pounds...

Thats a sweet job perk!

That's an amazing story. And to think, you STILL have 8000.00+ worth left.

In 22 years of scrapping, I have never seen silver contact points that were machined on a lathe.  I worked as a toolmaker for 20 years in a screw machine shop and I would like to know how the material came in? Was it bar stock? Blanks? Even at 2 bucks a pound the boss said scrap the turnings? Not on a military contract.

Interesting.

In 22 years of scrapping, I have never seen silver contact points that were machined on a lathe.  I worked as a toolmaker for 20 years in a screw machine shop and I would like to know how the material came in? Was it bar stock? Blanks? Even at 2 bucks a pound the boss said scrap the turnings? Not on a military contract.

Interesting.

It was bar stock.

All machined on a lathe.

The parts were very small, but my specialty was cleaning them up and getting the tooling for the machinists to change them over so I could be wrong about the contacts part, although that's what they looked like to me.

Would this ever happen today.
Never and it exemplifies the meltdown of western society from those post-war heights.

just wondering what the military would be using silver for? electronic contacts? would love to know what they were using it for so i could check and see if any items containing silver might be in the army surplus stores

I've seen silver contacts on 440 electrical switches. On the 50's era machines they were the norm.

amazing

Time to sell......Matt

You were smart in saving it! Good Job!