Hello I have 22kt WWF Gold card from the Danbury Mint and 23kt Dale Earnhardt 23kt Gold Cards from the Danbury Mint. I have tried researching if it's possible to smelt these cards but have come up empty. Any knowledge on this would really be helpful. I have 50 cards in total and feel like i may be able to be a decent weight in gold.
22kt Danbury Mint Cards
- Thread starter joshfl
- Start date
Help Support Gold Refining Forum:
grance
Well-known member
Worth more as they are people go nuts over nascar stuff let alone Dale Earnheart stuff. If you dont want them ebay or cragslist maybe ever your local sports memrobila shop. Not sure about the werstling
steyr223
Well-known member
Hi I am curios they are regular baseball type cards
That are gold plated.
How much do they weigh? If you take the weight
of a card and deduct it from total weight.,shouldn't that be the gold weight or is
There other base metals involved?
What's the other kt. ?
Like. The other member said eBay
But I still would like to know an exact weight
And do they all weigh the same
Thanks steyr223. Rob
That are gold plated.
How much do they weigh? If you take the weight
of a card and deduct it from total weight.,shouldn't that be the gold weight or is
There other base metals involved?
What's the other kt. ?
Like. The other member said eBay
But I still would like to know an exact weight
And do they all weigh the same
Thanks steyr223. Rob
acpeacemaker
Well-known member
Http://www.danburymint.com/sports/prod/DB5/22kt-Gold-Babe-Ruth-Baseball-Card_3945-0143.aspx
They claim its a 22kt foil over a thin sheet of paper but doesn't say actually how thin it really is. I wonder if there is an adhesive that also would add weight.
They claim its a 22kt foil over a thin sheet of paper but doesn't say actually how thin it really is. I wonder if there is an adhesive that also would add weight.
Note: I just noticed that your cards are a little different than the ones in the link that I discuss below. I doubt if that makes much or any difference in the numbers. I think all these type items are made the same. I've never seen one that was electroplated. Even if it were plated, the plating would be quite thin. No need to plate it thick. It wouldn't look any different. According to eBay, yours originally sold for about $10 each.
_________________________________________
I have some experience with real gold embossing foil (what they used on those cards) and a lot of experience using real gold leaf. I feel very confident that the embossing foil is made by loosely adhering gold leaf to a paper backing. 22K and 23K are common gold leaf purities. It is applied to the card, using a 3D embossing die, by pressure and maybe some heat. The paper is then peeled off. I don't know if they still do it but, when you bought a new CRC Handbook, they included a piece of paper with gold embossing foil on one side. On the cover, there was a rectangular area. You put the paper, foil side down, in this area and wrote your name on it. Your name was then displayed on the cover in gold. It lasted an amazingly long time.
Gold leaf thickness, no matter what karat, averages about 3.5 microinches (.0000035"). The value of 3.5 microinch thick gold, at today's spot, is about 6.3 cents per square inch. Assuming the area on those cards (2.5" x 3.5") covered (about 90% coverage) by gold to be about 8 in2, the estimated gold metal value per card would be about $.50. To buy gold leaf, you pay about double the gold value. Since embossing foil requires more manufacturing steps, the card manufacturer maybe pays about triple the gold value or, $1.50 per card. On the link, the cards retail for $12.95. Considering material costs, manufacturing costs, marketing costs, salaries, profit, gold waste, rejects, and other overhead, the $.50 of actual gold value per card sounds right in line to me and maybe even a little high. Your 50 cards are worth a total of about $25, and probably less, in gold. I certainly can't see them being worth more than this.
On the other hand, as a product, 50 cards retail for $647.50. Don't you think it would be smarter to try and sell them as cards, even if you only got $2-$4 each? Recovering what little gold is there could be a terribly disappointing (and difficult) experience. If my math is right, $25 worth of gold would make a cube a little smaller than 1/8" on a side.
With gold. novices tend to think they have a fortune without logically examining the facts. When the material is yours, it's natural to get the idea in your head that your material is worth a lot more than it actually is. I am occasionally guilty of this, somewhat. The apparent value of these cards is very misleading to the average person and that is why they sell a lot of them. The buyer sees this large area covered with beautiful rich looking gold and automatically thinks they're valuable. They don't know that thin gold usually looks exactly like thick gold and that the value is totally dependent on the thickness (and the area covered, of course). They don't know that a manufacturer of anything will never, ever intentionally use more gold than is needed to meet their ends. With electronic parts that might experience wear, they need (and use) about 30 microinches of gold. With these cards, all they need is good coverage and a rich shiny gold color. For that, 3.5 microinches of gold leaf is completely adequate. Unless they are rare and have an added-on collector's value, they are a sucker deal for anyone that buys them at $12.95.
_____________________________________________________
Some readers may question why 3.5 micro" of gold leaf is a rich gold color and 3-4 micro" of plated gold looks very pale. The reason is that the average density of plated gold is always less than that of cast gold. When you start plating an object, the plating is quite porous and the density of the gold is quite low, maybe only half of that of cast gold. As it gets thicker, the pores start to fill in on or near the surface and, at about 100 micro" (depending on the type of gold bath used, though), the pores are almost totally sealed, at least on the surface. The pores below the surface never really fill completely because most all types of plating don't "throw" well, especially into blind holes.
On the other hand, gold leaf is made by hammering cast gold very thin. Its density is very close to those values found in the books for that particular alloy.
_________________________________________
I have some experience with real gold embossing foil (what they used on those cards) and a lot of experience using real gold leaf. I feel very confident that the embossing foil is made by loosely adhering gold leaf to a paper backing. 22K and 23K are common gold leaf purities. It is applied to the card, using a 3D embossing die, by pressure and maybe some heat. The paper is then peeled off. I don't know if they still do it but, when you bought a new CRC Handbook, they included a piece of paper with gold embossing foil on one side. On the cover, there was a rectangular area. You put the paper, foil side down, in this area and wrote your name on it. Your name was then displayed on the cover in gold. It lasted an amazingly long time.
Gold leaf thickness, no matter what karat, averages about 3.5 microinches (.0000035"). The value of 3.5 microinch thick gold, at today's spot, is about 6.3 cents per square inch. Assuming the area on those cards (2.5" x 3.5") covered (about 90% coverage) by gold to be about 8 in2, the estimated gold metal value per card would be about $.50. To buy gold leaf, you pay about double the gold value. Since embossing foil requires more manufacturing steps, the card manufacturer maybe pays about triple the gold value or, $1.50 per card. On the link, the cards retail for $12.95. Considering material costs, manufacturing costs, marketing costs, salaries, profit, gold waste, rejects, and other overhead, the $.50 of actual gold value per card sounds right in line to me and maybe even a little high. Your 50 cards are worth a total of about $25, and probably less, in gold. I certainly can't see them being worth more than this.
On the other hand, as a product, 50 cards retail for $647.50. Don't you think it would be smarter to try and sell them as cards, even if you only got $2-$4 each? Recovering what little gold is there could be a terribly disappointing (and difficult) experience. If my math is right, $25 worth of gold would make a cube a little smaller than 1/8" on a side.
With gold. novices tend to think they have a fortune without logically examining the facts. When the material is yours, it's natural to get the idea in your head that your material is worth a lot more than it actually is. I am occasionally guilty of this, somewhat. The apparent value of these cards is very misleading to the average person and that is why they sell a lot of them. The buyer sees this large area covered with beautiful rich looking gold and automatically thinks they're valuable. They don't know that thin gold usually looks exactly like thick gold and that the value is totally dependent on the thickness (and the area covered, of course). They don't know that a manufacturer of anything will never, ever intentionally use more gold than is needed to meet their ends. With electronic parts that might experience wear, they need (and use) about 30 microinches of gold. With these cards, all they need is good coverage and a rich shiny gold color. For that, 3.5 microinches of gold leaf is completely adequate. Unless they are rare and have an added-on collector's value, they are a sucker deal for anyone that buys them at $12.95.
_____________________________________________________
Some readers may question why 3.5 micro" of gold leaf is a rich gold color and 3-4 micro" of plated gold looks very pale. The reason is that the average density of plated gold is always less than that of cast gold. When you start plating an object, the plating is quite porous and the density of the gold is quite low, maybe only half of that of cast gold. As it gets thicker, the pores start to fill in on or near the surface and, at about 100 micro" (depending on the type of gold bath used, though), the pores are almost totally sealed, at least on the surface. The pores below the surface never really fill completely because most all types of plating don't "throw" well, especially into blind holes.
On the other hand, gold leaf is made by hammering cast gold very thin. Its density is very close to those values found in the books for that particular alloy.
Douglas Warren
New member
- Joined
- Apr 17, 2023
- Messages
- 1
THIS IS NOT EDUCATION JUST A STORY DO NOT REPEAT ....Im experiencing the same project , Ive burnt about 200 of the postal stamp 22 23 kt replicas of diffderent sizes but small atleast , I didnt think it threw at the time and put in an electric kiln in graphite crucible and added alot of borax to rid ash impurities . Woww i was so dumb at that time 2 years or more ago. i ended up with a graphite glass ash and gold mess . the borax ate the crucible up the heat had blown out alot of gold paper ashes as i was chasing every black ash particle on my porch like a crack head thinking it was my precious gold .. Years later more educated i boiled that entire mess in stainless kettle and would pour off water and repeat ridding borax . this is an 1kg graphite crucible with the mess in it crushed up by 3 blenders as they would break being plastic . boiled it down for days repeat draining until had black sparkly dust lol prob 50 cent worth but so dedicated i didnt care its all science in the end and fun . this past month i put it all in crucible with a little copper and got a dime sized copper gold prill , it was like a tie dyed copper swirl of gold look . . NOw i have collected and purchased as cheap as possible 10 to 15 of the stamp books adding up to maybe 600 or mre of those and recent the danburry baseball cards much larger but very little of about 200 300 , put about 15 of theme in beaker and was not thinking again and did the 3 to 1 of muriatic and 70 percent nitric .had urea to denox not such good idea . after using so much i saud well what about the smb now , tried it it went from clear dark yellow being filtered from paper of cards the urea made it cludy milky then smb went light brown milky yellow then yellow . way way too much nitric also diluted with water turning all this into around 4000ml of fluids . i split theme up different beakers added 1 in piece of copper tube to one watched it go green and blue and salts appear along with undisolved urea and smb, then i found out about sulfamic acid crystals got that to rid nitric added to all beakers have boilled down one green and other yellow down to 2 beakers consolidated . . glad i have a gas mask cause pheww the sulfer pungent smells of boiling vapors can be intense . you instantly know when a little comes your way and feel in nostrils and lungs . dont recomend doing without a fume hood which i dont have just in garage with no front on it say a bay with circulating air and a fan . I cant believd im even telling this but ya this is a month in too dangerous crazy chase of gold science and now its still boiling down almost to combined 2000 ml between 2 beakers full of urea smb sulfamic crystals and gold and copper dissolved ohh and i would use stanious test by just dropping with dropper straight into solution from a pure stannious powder and hcl and piece of tin bowl seed size to make and used it to test randomly so tin is in their somewhere in small amounts . .. At this point im lucky to still be breathing or not be blown up by urea nitric combo if not already all turned to sufuric acid from sulfamic addition and smb . i might as well take it to be disposed of since im guessing no values are in it anymore . but knowing me im gonna throw some hcl in in woil some more at some point filter the salts and powders dilkute with water and hcl and evap down to smal amount and hcl again with drop by drop of nitric not ml ml ml at a time a ant sized amount at a time and see what happens . Darwin award goes to me . Now for my next real batch im going to burn alll the hundreds of cards and stamps inside of a stell container with heat on outside and small hole for gases to escapeand keep gold foils from floating away until carbonized paper to dust , then i will put it all in 2000ml beaker cover with hcl and slowly add nitric and maybe add 20 ml of water for anything to go into soluable thats organic and for unwanted salts if any that might form . i know you can use oak ash to make a type of lye for soap so if the ashes do react to create something maybe will go into water and able to see . .. filter it all to just gold solution hopefully with no black ash then sulfamic acid mixed up in saturated in water and add little by little until well until it does what it does we will see then add smb and hopefully have something and still alive Side note I advise burning any foilked paper due to the cellulose gunk which will hold yellow color of gold in it and hard to get out by rinse the previous results of gunk stanious test turned it purple black some areas so i wold add hcl and dilutted nitric from mess going on and boil until paper was white and solution gold and filter . took 3 times to be no positive on stanious and still it had a hue of darkness when test but said screw it put on waste bucket of ap solution and coper nitric combo dissolved . anyways kids this is what not to do .. sorry for spelling errors i did not spell check and typing real fast , if delete post i fully understand thanks for reading wish me luck . im smarter than what this perceives me to be one wrong duh moment twirrled into chaos and im pretty sure my neighbors think im cooking meth and possibly on a watch list for list of chemicals purchased that can also be precursers to explosives along with lab equipment bought flaskd beakers hot plate witmagnetic stirer
Welcome to us.
Please use line breaks commas and space in your text.
It is utterly unreadable.
