Precious Metals
The holy grail of metals, so to speak, is the precious metals. These metals, most you probably know about, are gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. These are the top dollar items. Finding these metals, as you can imagine, is not easy.
Gold
Gold is very valuable and an excellent metal to pick up, if you can get your hands on it. Jewelry is the best source but don't expect it to be free. Instead, in my e-scrap post, I mentioned that electronics parts like RAM sticks and cell phones are excellent sources to begin looking to collect gold. You will collect very little per item so the time working to collect it may or may not be worth it depending on how hard you work and how much you can get.
Silver
Silver, while typically much less valuable than the other metals, is more abundant than the other metals. Silverware, pins, jewelry, old awards, medals, coins, plaques, and some decor items like old candle sticks can be silver or silver plated. Check to make sure it is either ".925" or says "sterling" to assure you have valuable silver.
Platinum
Platinum is another precious metal but less commonly know than gold or silver. Mostly, you would think it as a plating on some jewelry but there are many surprising places to find it. Catalytic converters and electroplates are more common sources. A great and more extensive list can be found here.
Palladium
The largest place palladium is used is in catalytic converters. Palladium is also used in jewelry, in dentistry, watch making, in blood sugar test strips, aircraft spark plugs and in the production of surgical instruments and electrical contacts. Palladium is also used to make professional transverse flutes. The source for this is here.
... Rhodium too
Ok, so rhodium didn't make the short list. It may or may not make it on your list of metals but rhodium is quite rare and has many uses. This rarity and utility means it is expensive and usually alloyed with platinum in catalytic converters or alloyed/plated on jewelry to help prevent corrosion. You won't stumble on a large cache of rhodium but a little work finding it will pay off as the rarity makes it pricey.
