On Dec 30, 10:11 pm, John Rumm wrote:
On 30/12/2011 15:22, Onetap wrote:



On Dec 30, 3:00 am, John wrote:

The difficulty with many of these systems however is that it assumes the
scrappies are honest and its only the people delivering them stuff that
are bent.

It is strange that this has been going on for decades or centuries
with precious metal scrap but legislation is only being proposed now,
when copper-alloys have become valuable enough to be regularly stolen
and/or the penalties have become an inadequate deterrent.

There are jewellers or pawn-brokers who pay a 'thief's price' for
jewellery, and invariably claim that they had no reason to suppose
that the smack-head/ hoodie vendor may have stolen the items. Any
attempt to trace the loot invariably finds that it has been sold on.
The stolen items are often of immense sentimental value far beyond
their scrap value.

Is there similar legislation covering the sale of precious metals or
valuables?

Handling stolen goods, aka "fencing" etc... as with most of these
specific laws that are proposed, they usually only restate existing ones
with less generality.

aye- "soundbite legislation"??

Jim K