Maybe I didn't make my point clearly. Let me take a last try. Gold may not machine exactly the same as other metals. However, there are no different dies involved. Its all just cutting tools. Small differences in feed rates aren't that big a deal.In fact, if anything this works in gold's favor on a cost basis. Gold is much softer than stainless steel and conducts heat much better. The conductivity issue causes stainless steel to heat up during machining which makes it necessary to slow down which cost in terms of time and money. In fact, stainless is often held up as example of something which is relatively difficult to machine. Yes, its done all of the time but at slower feed rates than some alternatives. The bottom line is that gold is easier to fabricate than stainless so any increment in selling price cannot be explained by fabricating difficulties.
Gold may be the ideal choice for recycling. Why? First, each little sliver is valuable at hundreds of dollars per ounce vs a few dollars per pound. Second, gold doesn't oxidize so you have no melt loss. If you melt a more reactive metal, you lose some percentage to oxidation. This is the major source of the cost of remelting, not who is doing the processing.
Everyone can judge for them selves, but my conclusion is that the price increment for gold is based solely on the inelastic demand for luxury products. They can soak you more for perceived luxury. Now a salesman may not want to admit this so they can talk about manufacturing costs but the information is just not correct.
: All I said was that the same place that makes
: cases is not going to recycle the gold. Of
: course it's worth money, but it's not going
: to go to the next room and be smelted into
: blanks for the next go round. I work in the
: manufacturing area - we make billions (yes
: billions) of parts a year... we recycle our
: scrap - BUT we don't do the melting - we
: send it out and guess what? It's not worth
: near the same when you do that....
