Practical Uses

Broken gold refers to damaged, deformed or incomplete gold items that no longer serve as jewellery or usable objects and are destined chiefly for the melting pot.

Cutlery silver denotes solid silver flatware with a fineness of at least 800 (80 %), widely produced across continental Europe in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Dental gold is the gold alloy found in dental restorations such as crowns and bridges - usually with a fineness between 750 and 900, often with valuable additions of platinum and palladium.

Dental gold refers to precious-metal dental alloys used in dentistry for crowns, bridges and inlays, which on recycling yield valuable metals such as gold, platinum and palladium.

Gold hammered or rolled into wafer-thin sheets, used in gilding, fine craft and food decoration.

Industrial gold refers to gold used in technical applications — chiefly the electronics industry — rather than for investment or jewellery.

Industrial silver refers to silver consumed as a raw material in technical and manufacturing applications, as distinct from investment or jewellery silver.

Jewellery gold refers to gold alloys used to make jewellery, whose fineness is expressed in karats or in parts per thousand.

Medals are struck or cast metal discs without legal-tender status, produced from precious metals as commemorative, award or collector pieces.

Silver used as a conductive paste in solar cells to carry away the generated current; it now represents the single largest industrial consumption category for the metal.

Scrap gold refers to used or damaged gold items - jewellery, dental gold, coins, and industrial residues - that are melted down and refined to recover the fine-gold content.

Scrap silver refers to used silver from jewellery, cutlery, coins, or industrial goods that is melted down or reprocessed as a raw material.

Circulating silver coins were state-minted means of payment made from silver alloys that dominated everyday money for centuries, until rising silver prices forced their withdrawal and replacement with base-metal coinage.

Solid silver cutlery is made entirely from a silver alloy, whereas silver-plated cutlery carries only a thin silver layer over a base-metal core.

Wristwatches and pocket watches whose case, bracelet or dial is made wholly or partly of gold, silver, platinum or palladium.