My postal worker delivered a check to my home recently for $4.65 from Garfield Refining Company. I guess you can say that I’ve been dabbling in precious metals.
Dabbling sounds a little misleading. Actually, I recently had a crown replaced that had capped a bad tooth. After the work was accomplished the dental staff gave me a little plastic bag holding the remnants of my old crown along with a self-addressed cardboard envelope so I could send it off.
Mind you, the postage for delivery to Philadelphia for processing was over a dollar. I wasn’t really expecting much, if anything at all for the speck of grey metal which I enclosed in the mailer.
So, image my surprise when I actually receive a check. Here’s something that I didn’t know; The value of the silver from my tooth was just two cents. The majority of its value was for the palladium; a whopping $4.88 for a total payout of $4.90. Of course, there was an additional cost of a quarter to melt and separate the metals. Add that to my postage and I made about $3.50 for my time to fill out the return envelope which took my about five minutes. Had I had more teeth to process, that would have been about $42.00 an hour.
What’s the lesson to be learned here?
Looking at the size of that chuck of metal, I think many people would have simply thrown it away.
When was the last time you picked-up a penny from the sidewalk; or a nickel, or a dime or even a quarter?
When was the last time you went out to eat and left something on your plate that could have been part of your next day’s lunch?
You don’t necessarily need to be cheap, but sometimes a little thriftiness can add up over time.
Sometimes, you don’t need to go out of your way to mine a little gold, silver, or perhaps palladium.