Developing: X-ray man arrested; film at 11

A friend from high school (late 1970s) started a business collecting used developing fluid from local photo labs and precipitating out the silver it contained. I remember he made something like $100 a week, a lot of money for a part time job for a high school kid in the 1970s.

That opportunity eventually vanished when the price of silver skyrocketed (thanks to the Hunt brothers' attempt to corner the market) and photo labs figured out how much money they were giving away to some dorky kid, a dorky kid who ended up retired by age 30 after a brief but brilliant career in risk arbitrage.

According to Professor Haruo Ishikawa, approximately one-fifth of the silver used each year ends up in X-ray film. After the X-ray film is developed and fixed, it will hold roughly two percent by weight of silver in its emulsion layers that are made of gelatin. While it is possible to remove silver from X-ray film, it is somewhat challenging.

For those who are interested in removing the silver from X-ray film, one would need to buy an electrolysis machine (these can be found on any science supply website). Fill the machine with a caustic solution and power on the machine. Take your X-ray film and burn it, saving the ashes. Place the ashes inside the tank of the electrolysis machine and allow the silver to be extracted by the chemical reactions that are being conducted by the machine. As progress is made, you will begin to notice silver flakes being created on the charger plates. This process can take anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours so patience is key. Once the process is complete, power off the machine and collect your silver.

Not a lot by volume, but that can be made up pretty easily by recycling a lot of the materials. The chemical process is pretty easy for anyone with a 5th grade level of chemistry understanding.

An ounce of pure silver is hovering around an $40 ounce. While it's not gold, it's much better then the $3.30/lbs for pure stripped copper.

My question is who would buy it? Not sure on Silver, but trying to offload pure gold would get you turned away, and possibly a very quick visit by the secret service. Are there really options to launder it now a days?

My father, who worked in a microchip plant, has about 5 ounces of 99.9% pure gold in solution that the plant just literally threw away in a dumpster one day. He told them what it was, and they still just wanted to dump it, so he took it for himself. He did inquire about selling it to the repose guys he's always worked with through the plant, and every one said they would never touch it without a long paper trail of ownership / registration. It's just a nice little keepsake now, and he never planned on selling it, but it was interesting to see how hard it would be to offload theoretically.