Has the volume of customers selling scrap to you decreased? We are hearing that from clients in all 50 states. During the boom in the gold market in 2011-2012, everyone witnessed a huge uptick in people selling gold and platinum jewelry, stainless steel flatware and other items containing precious metals. People scoured every corner for items that could be taken in for melt. Since the precious metals markets have pulled back, and since many people sold everything they could find, we are told that business is slow.
There are other areas where you can realize additional revenue.
One is in the area of diamonds. Did you know that even the smallest melee is valuable and can be recovered by a skilled refining facility? For example, just 5 carats of melee can be worth anywhere from $50 to $1500. Many coin dealers and pawn shops try to remove the stones in house by cutting them out of the jewelry in which they are set. 
This often results in chipped and broken diamonds which are ultimately worthless.
The process of stone remove is highly technical involving the use of controlled chemicals so you want to be certain you are using a refiner that is fully trained in this process. At Dillon Gage, we have developed a state of the art, proprietary process for the removal. To engage our stone removal specialists, simply set aside items that contain diamonds and submit those to us as a separate lot. We will process these in 3-5 days and recover the diamonds. The stones are then sorted and evaluated by one of our diamond experts with over 20 years’ experience in the field. Our customer service representative will call you with a bid. You can choose to sell to us or have the stones removed. Because we are such a large processer of stones, we have clients all over the world who purchase from us which allows us to make very competitive bids on your diamonds.