The Miracle of the Silver - Or Not

Back before we moved to CO, we'd had a jewelry making business, and as part of that had purchased a few hundred dollars worth of silver casting grain. During the fire, we lost it (along with everything else). We often talked about where it might be, but somehow, we had never braved the pile of ash, broken glass and twisted metal to look for it. As broke as we were, I needed to find the stuff. Besides, it wouldn't do us much good if it was in CO while we were in FL. 

Plus there was (and still is) the danger that RY would scour our land for scrap metal to sell while we were gone, despite that we'd told him we didn't want the burned trailer's carcass disturbed. (Specifically because we wanted to find the silver before that happened.)

CK and I also half-joked that we'd return to find out that RY was using our corral and grazing his critters on our land. (Our neighbor now has permission to have him arrested for trespassing if he shows up there - or preferably, shoot at him.

I went out to feed the yaks and while I was there I decided to try finding the silver. I grabbed some gloves, a shovel, a sieve and a couple of buckets to put the broken glass in.

Only twenty minutes or a half hour later I found a big rectangular piece of metal. It sure looked like the silver. It even had the remains of a cardboard stuck to it.

Calling Quantum as soon as I got back to town, I announced the happy news. He found a metal reclaiming company and Monday morning I shipped the stuff out. I nearly fainted at the $25 for postage, more than half of which was for insurance. But we calculated by the weight that it would come to near a thousand dollars at today's silver prices. Enough to pay for a ticket for Quantum to fly back to CO and drive me and the dogs/cats back to Florida.

So imagine my surprise when a week later, I was talking to Quantum and told him I planned to spend the next day up at the farm, packing our stuff..."Actually, I'd rather you spend the day looking for the silver."

Pulling the phone from my ear I looked at it, wondering if it had suddenly started translating to a foreign language. "The silver? I mailed that last week!"

"The company told me they assayed it and it was only base metal."

"I spent $25 mailing base metal? But...I really thought it was the silver. It looked like the silver."

It took me several hours of digging, but eventually I found what is hopefully the REAL silver. Argh! I'm really hoping that I didn't end up mailing base metal again.