An excellent source of quality precious metals (particularly palladium and platinum for our catalysts) can be found in bullion products. There is a huge market for these, both OTC and online. It is completely open, high volume, and completely unwatched, at least below currency reporting thresholds independent of the metal itself. It is also the most cost effective source, by far, which is perfect for bees on a budget.
You can walk in to a coin shop, put down your cash, and walk out with multiple ounces of reagent grade material. For the extra paranoid (you won't need it), you can always mumble something about the guv'mint and inflation. Regular purchasing is not suspicious; rather, it is the textbook profile of the typical customer regularly putting his savings into precious metals every time he gets paid.
It is fairly obvious you are not a photographer when you are a photo supply's best customer for PdCl2 despite buying no other equipment, products, or impure mixtures. Let's be frank: in the closed minds of tyrants, anyone needing a lot of PdCl2 is running Wacker in bulk, especially from a photography outlet. PdCl2 is not technically watched, but we should act as if it were. Short of picking off the low hanging fruit with psuedo, RP, or I2, suspicious PdCl2 patterns would be easy to spot, if anyone were watching. Think about this one for a moment. Small amounts are probably fine, but repeat orders or lone PdCl2 sales to a new customer are textbook examples from a hypothetical turn-in-your-neighbor campaign.
Fortunately, readily available bullion products simplify our lives and save us money, for only a small time investment.
Bullion bars are a mixed bag for purity, although you should expect no less than .9995 with an assay certificate, nor will you have any trouble finding it. Bullion bars are typically sealed at the refiner and left intact, so you should expect nothing but a sealed product.
Canadian Maple Leaf coins are another excellent and popular source. Purity is as follows:
Pd: .9995
Pt: .9995
Ag: .9999
Au: .999, .9999, .99999
Maple Leafs are sealed at the Royal Canadian Mint, although quite a few of them are depackaged.
Be careful of most other bullion coins. The vast majority are alloys.
The advantage of a sealed, assayed product is obviously certainty in its quality.
One big advantage of going the bullion route is cost. Bullion products should be bought no more than a few percent above spot and easily converted to the requisite catalyst. This cuts out all of the middlemen and markups along the whole chain.
Pd and Pt have high melting points so this will be no substitute for well made formed products, like wire or electrodes.
The chlorination of Pd and Pt are relatively simple procedures so UTFSE.
You can walk in to a coin shop, put down your cash, and walk out with multiple ounces of reagent grade material. For the extra paranoid (you won't need it), you can always mumble something about the guv'mint and inflation. Regular purchasing is not suspicious; rather, it is the textbook profile of the typical customer regularly putting his savings into precious metals every time he gets paid.
It is fairly obvious you are not a photographer when you are a photo supply's best customer for PdCl2 despite buying no other equipment, products, or impure mixtures. Let's be frank: in the closed minds of tyrants, anyone needing a lot of PdCl2 is running Wacker in bulk, especially from a photography outlet. PdCl2 is not technically watched, but we should act as if it were. Short of picking off the low hanging fruit with psuedo, RP, or I2, suspicious PdCl2 patterns would be easy to spot, if anyone were watching. Think about this one for a moment. Small amounts are probably fine, but repeat orders or lone PdCl2 sales to a new customer are textbook examples from a hypothetical turn-in-your-neighbor campaign.
Fortunately, readily available bullion products simplify our lives and save us money, for only a small time investment.
Bullion bars are a mixed bag for purity, although you should expect no less than .9995 with an assay certificate, nor will you have any trouble finding it. Bullion bars are typically sealed at the refiner and left intact, so you should expect nothing but a sealed product.
Canadian Maple Leaf coins are another excellent and popular source. Purity is as follows:
Pd: .9995
Pt: .9995
Ag: .9999
Au: .999, .9999, .99999
Maple Leafs are sealed at the Royal Canadian Mint, although quite a few of them are depackaged.
Be careful of most other bullion coins. The vast majority are alloys.
The advantage of a sealed, assayed product is obviously certainty in its quality.
One big advantage of going the bullion route is cost. Bullion products should be bought no more than a few percent above spot and easily converted to the requisite catalyst. This cuts out all of the middlemen and markups along the whole chain.
Pd and Pt have high melting points so this will be no substitute for well made formed products, like wire or electrodes.
The chlorination of Pd and Pt are relatively simple procedures so UTFSE.
) in the 'safrole purity' thread just yesterday!
(yeaah i know,, my bad 
pdacetate.pdf