Recycling Gold is an Ancient Tradition

Recently, a commercial on the radio gave the listening public an interesting fact: there is enough gold in 200 cell phones to make a gold wedding band. We have not tested this out to find out if it is true, but what we do know is that gold plays an important role in helping everyday electronics to function. And since the commercial’s main object was to get people to recycle their cell phones, we can also tell you that gold has been a part of the recycling business long before anyone every used the word “recycling”.

Even in biblical times, people were using and re-using gold. There is a story in the bible about how people gave up their gold jewelry—gold bracelets, gold necklaces and gold earrings so these objects could be melted down to create a calf made of gold.

Yes, long before we got into “going green” and being earth friendly, people knew that gold was not the kind of thing that had to remain as it was permanently. Perhaps one of the reasons people get so excited when they find ancient gold coins is that  there are not that many around because many of them were probably melted down to make other gold objects. In times past, people were not as interested in collector’s items. When one ruler died or was no longer in power, gold coins bearing that person’s image lost value. Rather than hold into gold coins that they could not spend, people would melt them so that the gold could be used for some other purpose.

We do the same thing today (although few of us are equipped to melt gold in our own homes). Once the gold we have is no longer valuable to us in its current form, we can sell gold to a gold buyer who can melt it down so that it can be used for something else. Sometimes we sell gold because it is broken or damaged. Other times we sell gold simply because we are not longer interested in keeping it around.