In this episode of the What Sold podcast, Matt and Brandon discuss the intricacies of the precious metals industry. They delve into how pawn shops and refineries operate, the process of selling inherited or unwanted jewelry, and the potential profits involved. Matt shares his first-hand experience visiting a gold refinery and explains the importance of having a business license and a precious metals dealer permit. The discussion also touches on how specific pieces of jewelry can be more valuable when sold on platforms like eBay versus refineries. Additionally, the episode explores the realm of collectible items, highlighting a recent find of Lego mini figures that could yield significant profits. Listener notes include tips on dealing with quartz and manual wind watches, and insights into precious metal markings and values.
00:00 Welcome to the What Sold Podcast
02:09 Diving into Precious Metals
02:39 Understanding the Jewelry Resale Market
08:56 The Refinery Process Explained
19:56 Navigating Legalities and Business Opportunities
24:40 The Value of Precious Metals in Technology
25:15 Identifying and Profiting from Precious Metals in Jewelry
26:28 The Process and Profit of Refining Metals
29:05 Calculating the Worth of Gold Jewelry
30:51 Selling Jewelry: Refinery vs. eBay
39:55 Understanding the Value of Watches
45:01 Exploring the Market for Collectible Toys
46:58 Conclusion and Upcoming Topics
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:38):
Welcome back to the What Sold
podcast, a place where magic happens,a place where dreams come true,
lives are lived, and men are fierce.
And women.
If you ever happen to, to spy.
A unicorn and it allowsyou to jump on its back.
Well, no, you jump on its back,you're like, where am I going to go?
(00:59):
It's going to fly you right to our studio.
This is where you come.
Of course.
Congratulations.
Oh, we have our daily visit.
Greatest place on earth.
Yeah, we have our dailyvisit by the unicorn today.
Oh, look, it's carrying someone today.
That's right.
Exciting.
Absolutely.
Matt and I are doing this little series onthings you find in your house and rather
(01:20):
ironic because somebody recently was like,I hate podcasts where they just talk for
15 minutes and then get into the subject.
That is the very nature of our show is forMatt and I to filibuster for 15 minutes
so that you slip off to the dulcet tonesof our voices into a nice afternoon nap
and then you wake up with some good.
Information at the tail end, but todaywe are going to just take a brief
(01:41):
pause from what we've been working on.
I don't even know what wewere going to talk about next.
I do know it wasn't gonna be the atticor the basement because everything
happens in the attic and the basement.
We all know that.
So maybe it was going tobe the bathroom closet.
I don't know.
But instead, Matt and I called him.
He's literally driving down the road.
It sounds a little bit like rusty.
It's like the windows are openbecause the AC is broken type thing.
(02:03):
And he's just like, ah,I'm heading to Charlotte.
And so tell us, so we're goingto be doing a whole show today.
In fact, this will probably be intwo shows, but today's main topic is
going to be precious metals industry.
You made your very firstvisit to a smelter.
I don't even know what we would call that,but I am excited to hear about the trip.
(02:23):
I'm excited to hear aboutwhat you've found out.
I'm excited.
Smelt.
The, no, this is a, I guessyou would call them a refinery.
They melt metals.
They refine them into the properimpurities and they sell them
back into the jewelry industry.
So anyone out there who's wondering like,why does a person want to buy this or
why what are these pawn shops and coinshops doing with my coins or my jewelry?
(02:49):
Once they've bought them from me.
That's a great question.
I'm going to pull the veil back a littlebit today and I'm going to reveal.
Oh, I like when there'sa veil pulling back.
That's always fun.
I'm going to reveal the wizard of Ozand you're going to see him and you're
not going to be impressed with whatyou see in compared with what if you
don't know, Oh no, well, I'm just sayingit's all very cut and dry, but I want
(03:12):
people to listen very carefully becausethis is what the common person does.
Okay.
The common person.
They, at some point in their life, theyinherit something, or they are given a
gift, or they buy something that they nolonger want to use, and, or the style or
the fashion changes, oh, you know what,I don't really like wearing white gold
(03:35):
anymore, I want yellow gold, but I've gotthis white gold thing or whatever that is.
You inherit some jewelry, this is verycommon, you inherit some jewelry from
your mother or your grandmother, and.
It was definitely hot in 1935,but it is not hot now as far
as the way that it looks.
Not so attractive.
Depending on the fashion.
(03:56):
Or, when would I ever wear, I hearthat a lot, where would I wear this to?
I'm not going to a gala, or I'm notgoing to some really ritzy corporate
executive party or something.
So I don't need this.
But they don't know what to do with it.
They've never sold on eBay before,they've never sold on Etsy, they
have no interest in doing it.
In fact, the only thing they'veheard is someone they know who
(04:16):
did it and they got ripped off andthey're never going to do it again.
Sound familiar?
Sound familiar.
Yes.
I'll never do it again.
But at the end of the day,you know it's jewelry.
Maybe it has a diamond init or a sapphire, ruby.
It's a ring.
People buy rings.
People still wear earrings.
They still wear necklaces.
They're buying them all day long.
So you go into a local pawn shop.
(04:37):
So you go into a pawn shop with youritem and you take it up and you say
I'm interested in maybe selling this.
And they say what do you want for it?
That's the first question.
And you don't have anyidea how to answer that.
Oh, I didn't even, I don't know.
I don't even know what it's worthor if it's even gold or not.
You need to tell me.
So they go back, maybe in front ofyou, maybe they take it in the back.
(04:57):
And they're going to do a littletest for very basic places.
They have a scratch test kitwith a little bit more money.
You can get some sort of a device that.
Involves gel and it has a way of testingcarat purities on gold, or they have
even a step above that, a machinethat they can stick it in and it's
(05:19):
going to x ray it or do what it does.
And it will tell youwhat it's made out of.
They're going to comeback and say, Oh it's 3.
5 grams, 14 carat gold.
And today gold is 60.
3 per gram.
And it's three and a half grams.
The spot value on it is about180, 200, something like that.
(05:39):
Maybe a little bit more.
We typically pay they'll offer you.
Usually what I see around here in WesternNorth Carolina is between about 61 and
65 percent of spot value paid for gold.
Now they don't tell you that ifyou walk in like, what's your rate?
They're like, ah it depends.
It depends.
It doesn't depend.
If it's basic metal, they're going topay you 61 to 65 percent of the metal.
(06:03):
They offer you that they say I cangive you 120 bucks and you're shocked.
What?
This is several years old.
It's got a, it's got ahalf carat diamond in it.
And then they're going to tellyou about how corrupt and horrible
the diamond industry is and hownobody's buying diamonds anymore.
And they're a diamond dozen.
You can get them anywhere.
(06:24):
No one's buying them.
Yep.
And they go, we just pitch them.
We don't pay you for the stone weight.
It's too hard.
It's too, the industry is too convoluted.
We just pay you for the metal.
Yeah.
Take it or leave it.
That's what you're going to face.
And so most people may noteven get that far into it.
They're just like whatever amount ofmoney they're like you're in the industry.
You would know I don't.
So I guess, and you leavea little bit defeated.
(06:48):
Yeah, you got some money in your pocketnow, but you're bummed, even if you have
no attachment to it, because it just,you have this nagging feeling that it was
worth more than what you were offered,and that's because it is worth more than
what you were offered and, but thesebusinesses, they want to make money now.
Why did they sell, or buy rather,things at such a low cost, at that much
(07:08):
below, 40%, 35 40 percent below spot?
The reason is.
First off, if it does in fact happen tobe something that has decent value because
of the uniqueness of the piece, because ithas some sort of a precious gemstone, That
I would say is usually a carrot or more,because that's the standard right now.
If you think about women wanting.
(07:29):
You can tell me what you think,Brandon, from back in your younger
years, but even when I was younger,it was like, you was known if you
can get her a carrot or higher in adiamond, you're, that's pretty good.
But if it's below that, it's just causeyou, you're either cheap or you're
young and you don't have any money yet.
That was me.
I didn't have any moneywhen when we got married.
That quarter carat yougave Flo, it's beautiful.
(07:50):
It's, it really catches the light.
That's right.
It does.
And it catches a lot ofthe yellows in the light.
That's what it does.
It turns out later on,it's not even a diamond.
It's just like a citrine, like a palecitrine, like the least precious.
But no, seriously, they mightactually have something behind the
scenes where they have somebody whocomes in and buys the gemstones from
(08:11):
them and they get secondary money.
That is one way that someplaces make some money.
But if it is valuable enough tobe sold on its own without the
metal, they're going to do that.
They're not going to shipthat off to be melted.
They're going to try toturn around and sell it.
Or they've got a buyer, someonelike me who has connected with
them somewhere along the way.
And they say, Hey, when you get stuffin that isn't scrap, but it's worth
(08:32):
more, they're going to pay you listener60 to 65 percent of the spot value on
that gold, and then someone's going tocome in and they're going to pay them
an extra 10%, 15 percent on that piece.
To buy it.
And then they're going to turnaround and sell it and make who
knows how much on it pending.
But if it's just the metal, theyare going to sell, they're going
(08:54):
to take that to a refinery.
And that's what we're talking about today.
A refinery is a place that takes metals,bullion, coins, bullion in any form.
And then also jewelry, fine jewelry,and they're going to melt it.
They're going to assay it and they'regoing to melt it into pure forms of
10, 12 or 10, 14, 18 carat, 22 carat.
(09:14):
Yellow golds, white golds,there's different types of gold.
There's what they call greengold and there's yellow gold.
And what that really indicates isthat the type and percentage of
whatever other alloy is mixed inwith it, that gives it its hardness.
Cause you know, gold,pure gold is quite soft.
Pure gold is not something, and even22 carat gold is not commonly worn
(09:34):
as jewelry because it's too, Easy toget dented or banged up or damaged.
And if it's got a prong holding agemstone, forget about it because
that prong is much more likely tobend and move and drop that stone.
So they're going to get it all fixed upand then they're going to sell it back
to the jewelry industry as pure gold.
So that can then be turned intoanother piece of jewelry and
(09:56):
then sold back into the market.
And that is the circle of lifewithin the jewelry industry.
Wait a second.
Let me go back a little bit.
My image was you drive up to thisplace, they take the gold, they
melt it into like bars of gold.
And they have like mass dudeswith machine guns and security.
You're saying that's not what happens.
They're not putting it into bars of gold.
They're just, what are they doing?
(10:16):
What's it look like whenthey're done with melting?
They can certainly can melting andthings into bars or coins even.
It depends on what the refineryis and what they're willing to do.
Some places will take apercentage and then they will.
So there's two different things.
There's refiners that buy directlyfrom someone and they pay them
and they take the metal and thenthey do what they want with it.
(10:37):
There are other places that willtake the metal and you say, Here's
my gold, I want you to melt itinto a whatever, an ingot for me or
whatever, and then I want it back.
They'll do that, but they charge you afee, a processing fee for doing that.
So in the case of what I experiencedyesterday, and we'll talk about it in
a moment, I was just bringing jewelry,they weighed it, and then I can tell you
(10:59):
the rest of that, but I wasn't wantinganything back other than the money.
The monetary value of it.
So these pawn shops, coin shops, whatthey're doing is they, if it's got value,
they're going to turn around and sell it.
Now I've tested this out before.
There's a pawn shop.
I'm not going to name it because Idon't want to speak badly of anyone
directly online, but there's a pawn shopin Asheville that I once sold a piece
(11:21):
of jewelry and I knew it was decent.
It cost me essentially nothing.
I paid 5 for it.
There was large value andI wanted the money quick.
So I knew what I was getting into and Iwas fine with that price, but I did it
just because I wanted to see how quicklythat ended up out on the floor to be
sold because I knew it was nice enough.
They weren't just going to melt.
This particular place has a largepawn shop area, and then they have
(11:46):
same inside the same building, butseparated by a wall and entire jewelry.
They have jewelry specific employees.
They have their own gemologistthat will appraise things or test
things or repair jewelry, createjewelry out of stuff that comes in.
My ring that I sold was out there within48 hours and it was, a hundred percent
(12:08):
markup from what I sold it to them for.
So you just have to knowthat's what happens.
If you don't care, it's fine.
But if they're going to pay you solittle for it, they are going to
turn around and sell that as an item.
They're not going to even touch it.
They're just going to reprice itand stick it out on the floor.
But if it's a precious metal, theywill either directly take it or
they will ship it to a refinery.
(12:29):
And now we're to the point of thestory where I talk about yesterday.
It was interesting.
I was turned on to a refineryin the Western North Carolina.
Yeah.
By someone that I have developeda relationship with through
being a customer of theirs.
And then we started tradinginformation and referrals.
(12:50):
Referring people to one another,I would continue to buy from him.
And then in a conversation notlong ago, he turned me onto the
place that he sells his scrap.
And I was delighted becauseagain, the price that you're
going to get for gold is usually.
61 to 65%.
And it may be about the same for silver.
The place that he told me about offers 98percent on gold and 90 percent on silver.
(13:18):
Now that's on, if we're basingit off of pure gold, but most
jewelry isn't pure, right?
It's 14 carat or it's 18 carat.
So you have to do the mathor you have to look it up.
What is one gram of 14 carat gold today?
And you can find that information online.
Then you just weigh it.
Oh, it's 3.
9 grams.
The day 60.
30. So you multiply those two togetherand that's how much it's worth.
(13:43):
Okay.
And they give you 98 percent of that.
They will give me 98 percent of that.
So I wanted to test this out.
He said he'd been sellingwith them for 15 years.
The price had never changedand the turnaround time
was the most amazing thing.
If you bring it there in the day, youwill have money direct deposited in
your account by the end of the day.
Oh, nice.
(14:04):
As an alternative to eBay, whereI might do a seven day auction,
okay, it ended in seven days.
Takes that buyer three days to pay for it.
Okay, now we're at ten.
Then I ship it, let's say the next day,then three days after that, it arrives.
Now we're at 14 days.
Now eBay doesn't release my funds untilone to three days after it has arrived.
(14:26):
Okay, three days has gone by.
They didn't do me any favors.
They took the whole three days.
They pay me out.
And now I'm two and a half weeks in.
I still have a week and a half.
I can't spend that money becauseI have a 30 day return window.
And at the 11th hour,somebody could return it.
So all of a sudden, I've turned.
A sale that would have taken me two and ahalf weeks or a month to have the money.
(14:47):
Also, if I sell it on eBay, someone whobuys it, if it's not, if it's common
or if it's not super exciting, theywant to pay me 20 percent below spot.
So they'll pay me 80 percent below spot.
But then I lose 15 percent to eBay.
So I make more money selling to thesepeople and I make it the same day
(15:08):
or the day after if I mail it in.
So this sounds like a win win.
Very intriguing to me.
So I took a trip yesterday.
I drove to this town.
I went in, I met them.
I dropped off.
Now hold on.
Hold on.
I know you're getting to the seriouspart, but I imagine that you driving, I
imagine you driving down the road causewe were talking, you're in your red truck.
It looks like the back.
(15:28):
Nope.
I'm in the white rusty.
Don't ruin it for me.
Okay.
My point is you're in a truck and inthe back is if you saw Moana When she
goes into the cave of the crab creature,he's got all the gems and jewels.
Oh, yeah That's what I'mimagining just Tomatua or Tamatoa.
Whatever's falling out of the backof your truck I just imagine that's
what you were taking to this cave.
Is it close to that?
That's exactly right.
(15:48):
Okay, literally crowns and swords.
Yeah old, large gold crownswith jewels popping out of them.
I wish, man, I wish.
That's hilarious.
Wouldn't that be a great sight though?
That would be great.
Anyway, all right, so you did, if I'm justimagining you pull up to the refinery and
there's all this exhaust poppingfrom your vehicle and stuff.
(16:09):
They can hear you coming.
No, it was a very legitimate.
You walk in, the guy's very nice.
He's behind bulletproof glass, of course.
Sure.
You've got two of thesebulletproof glass like containers.
You can stick it in.
It's a one way thing, so Ican stick it in and shut it.
Then he opens it fromthe other side, takes it.
He puts it on the scale.
He weighs it.
And he's this machine that willtell you the purities of it.
(16:31):
And he immediately prints me a sort of aninvoice of sorts or, a receipt saying we,
we took this in and this is what it was.
And they go through that wholeprocess, then like right after 430,
the money, I had 3, 600 in my account.
Because that was the value of the goldand the scrap silver that I brought in.
And I brought my own stuff because Iwanted to test this out because the
(16:53):
possibilities of this that I havediscovered that is that there is a world
in which this becomes a new tool for mein the buying and selling world where
not only can I buy and sell antiquesand collectibles or sell them for other
people, I can also sell their jewelry,their coins, their bullion for them
(17:15):
and I can get them paid within a day.
I can pay them, I can still take apercentage for my work and my effort,
and they will still make more money,considerably more money, letting
me do it for them than going to anyof the places around locally that
they could walk in a store to do.
And so that's exciting for me.
I'm happy to see that,but that is what happens.
And the guy told me, he said,listen, almost every day we have
(17:40):
some of these people who run apawn shop or multiple pawn shops.
And he said, I'm not kidding you.
They will come in.
With an, a large plastic tub,like the big tubs you can buy at a
Home Depot or something like that.
Right.
And it is filled to thetop with gold jewelry.
You think of how heavy that would be.
Yeah.
We're talking like a hundred pounds.
(18:00):
So gold is 30, a little over 30, between32 and three to 3, 300 per ounce.
An ounce is roughly 28 and a half grams.
So the watch on your hand mayweigh between 20 and 30 grams.
The weight of that watch.
Is worth 30 to 3, 300if it was solid gold.
(18:21):
And you imagine somebodybringing in a hundred pounds.
Now they're not bringingin solid gold, right?
They're bringing in 10,12, 14, 18 carat gold.
Right.
But they're walking in there andthat's, he's like, and that's
just a week's haul from them.
Because people are coming inday in, day out selling stuff.
They're paying them 61 to 65%.
And at the end of the week,they're walking in and
(18:42):
they're selling all of that.
And they're getting 30 percent return.
And the money comes to them immediately.
No returns.
Wow.
That's how these pawn shops and thesecoin shops make money outside of simply
the things that they sell in store,or if it's a coin shop and it has
numismatic value above the value ofthe metal itself, like a collectible
(19:03):
coin, then they'll sell those for whatthey are, but people will come in with
broken stuff and they want to sell it.
And they offer them, sometimesthey'll even offer them less than
that because they're like, surely theydon't expect to get a huge amount of
money Six earrings that are singlesthat don't have their pairs, because
what are they going to do with them?
And they're just like, I don'tknow, what do you, and that's
why they say, what do you want?
(19:24):
Because of what the person says thatthey want is less than 61 to 65%.
They don't even go into that.
They don't even test it.
They don't even weigh, they'll weigh it.
And then they can know very quickly,just a very quick mental calculation
that I'm going to pay them lessthan the spot I normally pay.
That's a immediate.
Deal right there that they're going to do.
So this was really exciting.
(19:44):
This is how the preciousmetal world works.
And by the way, if you have abusiness, you can do this too.
If I was just an individual.
Running around, hustling and stuff.
It's technically illegal for me to bebuying and selling precious metals.
It's illegal.
It is illegal unless you have abusiness license and I had to fill
(20:06):
out paperwork with this refinery thatincluded my business license number,
my tax ID number, my driver's license,my home, or my, my business address,
which is my home address, cause I'mjust a single LLC and they approved me.
But see, they report these sales andthis money that goes out to the IRS.
And so they want to know who's gettingit because of course it's expected
(20:27):
that I'm going to be paying my taxes.
And so I have to keep trackof that stuff as well.
But the only other thing that I needto have, and I'm in North Carolina,
it's different from state to state.
So before you get excited and decide tojump into this, please do your research.
I have to have a preciousmetals dealer permit.
(20:48):
Which in the North Carolina the state ofNorth Carolina requires you fill out a
one page form, you get fingerprinted, theydo a background check, and you pay 180,
and that gives you a permit for one year.
And by doing that, I don't justhave to operate out of my home now.
I can go to your home, listener.
I can drive up and downthe coast the East Coast.
(21:09):
For a weekend and buy silver and gold frompeople, I can buy it out of parking lots.
I can go to your home.
I can do whatever I want.
And then I can go to therefinery at the end of that
trip and get the money that day.
So it is a big deal for me to be able tomake a better rate than I used to make
(21:30):
when I sell these things and B get it soquickly with no return window that I have
to acknowledge or be aware of that money.
Once it's in there, it's mine.
The other thing is the guy whotold me about this, and this is
another one of the, I don't, I'm notsaying that I would recommend this.
I'm just simply telling youwhat he has done with people.
He knows he's worked withbefore that trust him.
(21:52):
He doesn't even pay them for the metal.
He simply writes a check.
He endorses a check.
That's a blank check and he handsit to them and then they hand
him their gold or their silver.
So it's not a total riskfor them to give it.
Like he has their item, butthey have a check of his.
And he says, I'm taking this today.
(22:12):
Just wait right in the amount until theyhave figured out the exact periods of
it, weighed it and told me what it is.
And he tells them I'm going to paywhatever percentage he says he pays them.
Then he just takes it in as soonas the money comes in and he has
the invoice of the exact amounts.
He just takes that amountwhen it came down to what
(22:32):
percentage of pure gold it was.
And he multiplies that times,whatever the rate he's quoted them.
If he says, I'm going to pay you 80%,then he takes that number times 0.
8. And that's what he texts themand says, this is the amount.
And then he retains his percentage.
But the beauty of that is he doesnot have to pay anything at all.
No money comes out of his pocketuntil he has earned the money.
(22:55):
So if the money comes in thatquickly, within 24 hours, that
money sits in as a bank account.
Then he tells them theycan go cash the check.
He doesn't have to.
Pay money in through this personprior to going and actually selling it
because that there's a risk in that.
Now, most people wouldn't do that.
You'd have to really trust a person.
So I think if you want to get intothis business and you want to do high
(23:17):
enough volumes, you can make good money.
You're probably going to have eitherdeep pockets of your own, or you're
going to have some sort of a revolvingcredit line or something, because if
somebody walks up and says, Hey, I'vegot 30 double Eagle gold bullion coins.
That are roughly worth 60 to 65,000 and they want me to sell them.
I don't want to have to tell them no,because I don't have 60, 000 at my
(23:39):
disposal, because if I can make 18%,15, 18 percent of 60, 000 with in four
hours time with 10 minutes of work.
I want to do that.
I want to be able to do that,but you have to start small.
I have to start small.
I'm starting with things I personally buy,or I'm selling things for other people
(24:00):
who have already got a contract with,and I'm selling other things for them.
It just happens that to bethat some of those things.
Are silver or gold, by the way, thisrefinery by silver, gold, platinum,
and palladium platinum, by the way,used to be way more valuable than any
of those other metals 20 years ago.
And in the past 20 yearshas increased in value.
(24:21):
The least of all the preciousmetals, it's only gone up about
16 percent in value since 2005.
So in 20 years very little increase goldover 2000 percent increase and iridium.
Iridium is about, is over4, 000 for one ounce today.
Ooh, isn't that because theyuse it in phones and whatnot?
(24:43):
Yeah.
A lot of these precious ores or metals,things like iridium, things like lithium.
They're very sought after becausethey're needed and used in a
lot of advancing technology.
So there are limited resourcesfor mining that stuff.
In fact, lots of multiples of millionsof dollars are put in every year.
(25:04):
To locate land and new mines andtry to buy this land so that they
have these orders so that they cantap and sell into the industry.
It's a huge market.
This is just a little tiny small timejewelry market that I'm talking about
for people who want to test their hand.
Maybe you have a bunch of stuff sittingaround, or maybe, you know, of a really
(25:26):
cool thrift store or a place around youthat tends to get really nice stuff a lot.
And you can buy it and they justdon't realize that it's silver.
They don't realize that it's gold or maybeit says seven five zero on that bracelet
And they don't realize that's the europeanhallmark for 18 karat gold Now if it
said 18k they might have known insteadhere's this bracelet for 10 and it's
(25:49):
worth about two grand because it's gold.
That stuff happens, thatstuff has happened to me.
It happens on bracelets, it happensabout two to three times a year.
I'll buy a solid gold bracelet andthey didn't know it was solid gold.
And that's where you, being armedwith your knowledge and being educated
on here's marks and stamps andstuff will really serve you well.
(26:09):
Particularly with the topic we'rediscussing today with precious metals.
Silver can be not marked.
It can also be marked800, 850, 900, 925, 950.
Those are all just differentpurities of silver.
The 925 represents 92.
5 percent purity.
It's funny that you're talking aboutsmelting plants now, Matt, because way
(26:33):
back when I got out of college, I wentto work for a electrical contractor.
I was one of their kind of salesguys, whatever, and it was a different
lifetime and a different career.
And one of the things that would happenis that electrical contractors deal with
copper, lots and lots and lots of copper.
And they would on the job site,you get these little copper
bits and you would collect them.
And I, when I first got there,I was like, wow, there's these
(26:54):
garbage cans filled with copper.
I'm talking one inch to two inch copperbits, like in the plastic wiring.
And there was a guy that worked for us.
I go, what do you guys do with those?
He goes, Oh, we take them to thesmelting plant and the warehouse
guys get to take the money.
That was the deal with the company.
It was like a little perk for them.
Sure.
So I go, Hey, can I go with you?
So we jump in his work truck and throwthese like literally big giant bins.
(27:19):
Cause I was curious how it worked.
We go to this yard where I'm fairlycertain bodies get sent there, when you
want to remove a body, it was like, therewas Rottweilers on chains and type stuff.
So I was like, Oh, okay.
And it wasn't, I don't think it was akind of place like you're talking about,
but we put the copper up there and thereis a question in this, believe it or not,
but we put the copper up there and itwas like, this was back in the nineties.
(27:41):
It was like.
200 for this big thing of copper.
They melt it down and they use the copper.
And that's the reason why a lot oftimes you'll hear about these buildings,
getting the copper stripped out of them.
Well, of course, we'll take them.
When you went to this smeltingplace is not one of those.
This is just fine metals, correct?
And just specific ones, silver,gold, platinum, and palladium.
(28:02):
Oh, that's why you've heard.
They don't buy it there.
And I can't remember if it'spalladium or what it is or lithium,
but catalytic converters have oneof these precious metals and that's
why people will be climbing undercars and cutting out your catalytic
converter is because they're harvestingthat substance out of it to sell it.
And unfortunately the, where catalyticconverters are located, it's fairly
(28:24):
easy to remove them, which is a bummer.
This place was very legitimate.
It was like, I didn't see anythingthat was going on behind it.
I didn't see how the sausage is made.
You know what I mean?
I just saw how they weighed it.
And he brought it in the back andthey're going to do their work.
But I wanted to give a quick examplefor people who have something of
their own that they think that this,again, you have to have a license.
So if you're going to go intobusiness, buying and selling, I
(28:45):
recommend you get yourself a license.
I'm not an attorney and I'm not a, I don'thave a degree in business administration.
However.
Legally speaking, you should have,if you want to get into selling
with these reputable, legitimaterefineries, you're going to need to
have an account with them and they'regoing to require some information.
So that's something I did.
I have a ring on my finger here andI'm just going to weigh it really fast.
(29:08):
It's a 14 carat band gold ring andit weighs It does not weigh 44.
3 carats.
I've got it on carat instead of gram.
Let me move the mode.
I was That'd be a great big diamond.
Yeah, I was the last thing I wasdoing was actually weighing gemstones
and that's why it was on carats.
Okay.
So this thing weighs 8.
85 grams and today 14carat gold is about 60.
(29:33):
3 60. 30 per gram for 14 carats.
So if I multiply that timesthe weight of my ring.
This ring itself, if I was to sell itfor exactly spot, it would be worth
533, just this little ring becausegold is very, very high in value today.
Right.
Now this is something that because it'sa common size, it's like a size eight,
(29:58):
eight and a half, something like that.
That's a, that's, that's afairly common size for gold.
Eight, nine, 10 for men, for adult men.
And because it's a wide, itwould be considered what they
call like a cigar band ring.
It's wide and it's heavy.
Not a lot of people wantsomething that's heavy or big.
I tend to like it, but all that tosay, if I wanted to sell this, I could
sell this on eBay for more than 530.
(30:20):
In fact, if you look up stuff thatpeople are trying to sell, not as
scrap, but as basic jewelry, oftentimesyou're going to see across the board.
People are trying toprice things about double.
So if I threw this up on eBay, instead of530, I'd be asking about 1, 100 for it.
Now, am I going to sell it for that?
Maybe, or maybe somebody is goingto watch it and I'm going to
(30:41):
offer them 10 or 15 percent off,and then they're going to buy it.
But even if after I lose my percentagefees from eBay, I'm still making money
because it's a usable piece of jewelry.
But let's say you havesomething that's broken.
Wait.
Can I stop you right there?
Because I think it's a for someonethat's out there selling it.
So really the math you're doing, andthis is where the Matt rusty type
(31:02):
knowledge is super important is thatyou have to look at the item and say,
this is what I can, it's interesting.
Cause like you got to say, thisis what I could make on eBay.
So you need to do your research.
And if you can't make more thanyou could on spot value, then
you're going to go with the spot.
So you're juggling where I go.
Exactly.
Okay.
Okay.
Exactly.
Interesting.
(31:22):
And by the way, when you take stuff toa refinery, It's optimal that you remove
as many of the stones as possible.
You want to try to make that batchas quote unquote clean as possible.
So when a person says they'reselling a spot, a lot of scrap
jewelry clean, what they're sayingis there's only the metal there.
There's no stones or anything else thatwill inflate the weight of it, of items
(31:43):
that are not actually made of gold.
So if I have a bunch of silver rings thathave cheaper, semi precious gemstones
in it, I'm removing those stones.
I personally am going to do it ascarefully as possible because I have
a way to sell stones and try to makesome money off that end as well.
But if they're glass or it's arhinestone or something, I don't care.
I'll break that puppy out of there.
I just want to get the metal clean.
But if you're talking about somethingthat's gold, which is quite hard
(32:05):
in comparison to silver is verysoft metal and it has little tiny
diamond chips and stuff in it.
They don't care about that.
They're going to weigh it.
They can approximate.
They know how to do that.
So it's not a big problem, butthe next thing I'm going to
hold up is this little bracelet.
And this is, it's a 14 karatgold bracelet, that's the back
of it, and here's the front.
And all these littlewhite bits are diamonds.
Oh wow.
(32:26):
This bracelet has approximately300 diamonds in it.
Whoa!
They're all really tiny, they're probablyone tenth of a karat, a lot of times, or
smaller, they'll fall in millis sometimes.
By the way, as an aside, ifanyone's ever examining or talking
to you about gemstones, andthey say, Oh, it has 20 points.
And you're like, what does that mean?
(32:46):
They're just talkingabout how large it is.
So a 0.
2. Okay, so 0.
5 is a half carat, 0.
5 is half of a carat.
One is one carat.
So if a person said, Oh, this is, they'relooking at, so this is about 50 points.
They're saying that's abouta half carat size diamond.
That's what they're talking about.
80 points.
That's an, 0.
8 carat diamond.
So this would have a bunchof tiny, tiny, like 0.
(33:09):
1. 1 10th of a diamond or even 120th of a carat of a diamond, but
they're all spread out through this.
Now I'm going to weigh this.
I think that this, I'm tryingto remember this is somewhere
in the 20 to 25 gram range.
And again, I'm getting the weightof the stones as well, right?
Because it's got 300 diamonds in it.
So this comes in at 21.
(33:29):
78. So again, we're goingto go back to that 60.
3. That's how much one gram of14 carat is worth today times 21.
78. And we're looking at this bracelet,just the weight of it, and I guarantee
you that if someone was going topay you spot on this, they're not
going to care about the diamonds.
They're not going to pay you lessbecause it has diamonds in it.
(33:49):
This is worth just the metal, 1, 313.
Holy cow!
Just this bracelet, because of the weight.
Now, if I took this in today, theywould give me 98 percent of that amount.
So I would walk around.
Even if you took it inwith the diamonds on it?
Correct.
I'm not going to remove the diamonds.
Okay.
Now the reason I'm, this is an example ofone though that I'm not going to scrap.
(34:11):
Why?
Because it is a bracelet, it isnot damaged, it can be worn, and
it has a lot of diamonds in it.
So it has some value beyond whatever.
It's also, it's not as common.
It's a little bit of a unique thing.
I have already seen ones, this exactkind, sell for between 24 on eBay.
Okay.
And again, that's double, right?
(34:32):
Cause it's worth 1300 in spot value.
2, 600 is double.
So people are willing to pay up forsomething that's functional, usable,
and that has precious gemstones in it.
So this is an example of somethingI'm going to hold on to until it sells
elsewhere, either privately or on eBay.
I still don't mind losing that 15percent to eBay because even losing
(34:53):
that 15% I sold it for double,what I would get at a refinery.
And so that is the calculation I do.
If I have something even witha stone in it and I look it up.
Are there only 200 ofthese available online?
Maybe that's something I needto sell because it's rare.
Or if I just look up my ring, 14 karatgold, size 8 12, men's wedding band.
(35:14):
Oh, 14 million available.
How about a size 33 ring?
Like on my finger.
Oh, listen.
I'm still working on selling your ring.
It just happens to be two and ahalf pounds cause it's so large.
So you're going to get somegood money out of that.
But this is for people who don't realize.
So if you walk in with abracelet that weighs 21 grams.
(35:34):
And they say, let's do that really fast.
What did we say?
It was around 13, 1, 313.
Okay.
Right.
Times 0.
61. So that's 61 percent to 65 percentis what a pawn shop would pay you.
They're only going topay you 800 for this.
It's worth over 1300.
So you're going to leave with 800 andthey've made 500 in profit off of you.
(36:01):
Then they're going to turnaround with that piece.
And they're going to sellit to the refinery at 98%.
They gave you 800 and theyturned around that same day
and they made 450 off of you.
Doing basically nothing.
Doing almost nothing.
That is how these pawn shops operate.
Now, if you, now that you're armedwith this knowledge, You know how
much it costs to start an LLC?
(36:22):
200. Yeah, you do that one time,you've got a business license now.
Your business address is your home.
You have to file it, you have to getarticles of incorporation in your state.
Just do an LLC, it's a liability,a limited liability company.
If something happens, you're protected.
The business could suffer, the businesscould go bankrupt, but it doesn't
come after your personal assets.
So here you go, if, and some things areworth selling online or at a nice jewelry
(36:47):
store or something, or there are jewelryconsignment shops where they're like,
they are incentivized to sell it for asmuch as possible because they're going to
take a percentage off of the sale price.
So if you go in, they're going totake this, they're not going to
see that it's worth 1, 300 to scrapand offer you 800 on the spot.
They're going to say,okay, our take is 30%.
(37:09):
We're going to listthis for between 3, 000.
They want it to sell for 2, 700.
And even if it, and if it does, andyou lose 30 percent to them, you
are still better off than havinggone in and pawned it, right?
You're not as well off as you would beif you took it to a refinery yourself,
but some people don't have the abilityto do that or know where to go.
And you don't need abusiness license to do that.
(37:30):
So it's, again it's all basedon knowledge of understanding
what's the best possible way.
Of handling this.
Yeah, that's cool.
I think i'm gonna go get myself aprecious metals dealer's license and
just start selling gold Just drivingaround silver and gold Yeah, it makes
me think of that man, who was thatYukon it wasn't Yukon Cornelius it
(37:51):
was Yukon Cornelius yeah, I think so.
Yeah, sure.
All right.
Listen We're going to do anothershow on this because there's some
other interesting tidbits that arecoming out of this But I want to
talk about what's sold this week.
Let's do that real quick It's justbeen a great week for you and me in
terms of Getting a chance to catchup a talk But I want to hear and I
want to see because it's my favoritepart of the show I feel like we've
(38:13):
been a little light on this lately.
I love the magic of what you sell.
So let's see it.
What do we have?
I don't have anythingto show you right now.
This is going to blow your socks off, butthis is, again, going to give an example.
I had a bunch of stuff, man,in the last couple of days.
You don't know what'sgoing to blow my socks off.
You don't know that.
Okay, fair enough.
You might like this.
First thing up here is a sealedOh, this came out of that big lot.
This is a, why this is fat Tony andthe character from the Simpsons.
(38:38):
He's the mafia guy.
This is actually a perfect one toshow because does this not look
like a pawn shop store owner to you?
It's just, it's a guy he's got arevolver, a cigar and a stack of cash.
You want to know a story about Fat Tony.
Fat Tony had.
Yes Please.
He extorted the local elementary school.
He was going to build ADA compliant ramps.
He made it out of like chalk,and it all collapsed, but he's
(39:02):
like hey, I'm gonna get my money.
That's Fat Tony.
That's how he runs.
You can't do that.
You can't do that, and you have to beADA compliant out there people, so make
sure you know your wits of doorways.
Oh, well apparently Fat Tonydidn't think so, but sure.
No, but he's walking around withhis, it looks like a Colt Python.
And a stack of cash and a cigar.
Oh, he's also got like abat like a little, yeah.
(39:23):
So this guy in, in, in thetagline on here says you have
24 hours to give us our money.
That's the quote on here.
If I had ever, if I had paid closerattention to this man, I would
have just paid for this and kept itmyself now that I'm looking at it.
So great.
Okay.
But this sold for 24.
It's a sealed it's from 2000, maybe 1999.
(39:43):
So it's, it's 20 years old sealed.
This was a large group ofthings that I'm selling similar
Simpsons items from a person thatcollected them back in the day.
I think that there'llbe happy with that sale.
Here's another sale of a little watch.
This is a Mr. Wristwatch gota pretty attractive looking
brown leather band on it.
Now the front of it just saysservice excellence and it has a,
(40:06):
this would be called a, like a date.
So if you have a watch thatshows the date, it would be
like a date or a date adjust.
If it has the day and the date,it would be called a date watch.
Real, real complicated, right?
Yeah.
Now this particular, a lot of thecollectible watches out there are
either automatic watches, meaningyou wear it and it moves around with
the kinetic energy is what actuallycauses it to operate or manual wind.
(40:31):
You wind it up and you setthe time you wind it up.
This is a quartz watch and generallyspeaking, quartz watches, which
require batteries are not ascollectible for obvious reasons.
You got to have a batterythat's in it that's operational.
And when they're, when it's not,most people don't really, they just
throw it in their junk drawer, right?
Which we talked about beforeand they don't ever do it.
But the thing that I wanted to sayabout this watch and this watch,
(40:53):
watch sold for 42, not a hugesale, but it's a vintage piece.
You need to look at watchesand you need to look at the
back of them is on the back.
Usually if it doesn't on thefront, it's going to say on the
back who the manufacturer is.
Now if I had just seen this, thereare thrift stores around me that have
watch jars, and it's like 3 per watch.
(41:14):
They don't care what itis, it's just a watch.
On the front of it, it justsays service excellence.
That tells me this was a watchgiven by some company to an employee
for a certain amount of time thatthey worked there as a gold watch.
So yeah, and this isn't, it's goldtone, but it is not actually gold.
But you waited around for the gold watch.
You worked there for 40 years.
There's all kinds of stuff.
Back in the day, they would giveyou like little tie pins, tie
(41:34):
tacks, lapel pins and stuff.
And a lot of those, by the way,are gold filled or solid gold.
In fact, as you would work longer,they would give you one five years,
10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
And the longer you'd work there, thehigher carat purity of the gold would be.
And, or the better qualityor larger the stone would be.
So if it's five years, it mightbe a couple of little synthetic
(41:57):
sapphires or rubies or a CZ.
By the time you get up to 30years, that could be a good
size ruby, sapphire, or diamond.
And so people will buy those forthe gold weight, they'll scrap the
gold, they'll pop out the stonesand they'll sell the stones.
But getting back to the story, youneed to look at the back because had
I not looked, I wouldn't realize thatthis is not just some cheap stone.
Watch that somebody got, this is madeby Hamilton, the Hamilton company,
(42:19):
which have made antique pocket watchesand have some very high end all the
way up to solid gold watches today.
And they're a prettycollectible brand as well.
So if this had not been Hamilton, thisthing might've sold for 10 to 15 bucks.
Big, but because it's a Hamilton,even though the battery's not
working, someone's going to get it.
(42:39):
This brand makes good quality timepieces and this person knew it.
And so I got 42.
So if you're looking at watches, if it'splastic and different stuff and rubber,
like you can probably pass on it, butif it's older and it's metal, give it a
good one sober, look at the front of it.
Is the crystal scratched?
Does it operate?
Can you tell if it's quartz or a manualwind and look at the back, see what
(42:59):
the brand is, because if you turnover the back and it says, Hamilton
or Bolivar or one of these selectablebrands, then it may be worth it all
of a sudden, and you may not havenoted originally last thing I sold.
I'm selling probably, honestlylike 150 orders a week.
That's not individual itemsthat could be a lot of items.
(43:20):
And so I'm doing fulfillmentat least twice a week, if not
parts of three times a week.
So some things are cheaper.
Some things are more valuable.
This next thing is a little handbag.
And it says glam girl cross body pouch.
It's like a little pouch, but it, if youturn around and you look at the back,
it's made by a brand called Brighton,which is a middle range costume to low
(43:42):
end fine jewelry type manufacturer.
They make a lot of stuff.
A lot of times they havecrystal in them or CZs.
But they make good qualitystuff and you may pass a store
at a, an airport or something.
They'll have an entire storethere of merchandise that
they're selling brand new.
But I come across that stuffat stores all the time.
This was new and sealed in the package.
(44:04):
So it's sold for 28.
Again, I didn't buy it.
This was a consignment piece.
But even handbags, pouches,things like that can have value,
particularly if they're anoriginal packaging and aren't used.
You're going to get the bestmoney for something like that.
But, in summary, I think you should beaware that even small pieces of jewelry,
(44:24):
if they're made of certain metals canhave a lot more value than you suspect,
especially if you're not the kind ofperson that's checking the spot prices
regularly on these precious metals.
On the same day that I was outat this refinery, I went there,
took me five minutes and I'm done.
I drove an hour and a half to get there.
So I'm like, you know what?
I'm here.
I'm going to do a little sourcing.
This is outside of my typical.
(44:46):
Geographical region that I work in.
So let me go to a few thrift stores andI sourced maybe on the next episode,
we can talk about some of thosethings I sourced, but that's another
advantage of going out that areas.
I can find some new places, but Icame across this little container.
I'm going to show this.
It's like a full class container, but whatit's full of is little Lego mini figures.
(45:06):
Oh, like little people and I pulled outfive or six here that are all thematic
in the sense that they are all littleStar Wars characters, Jar Jar Binks,
Jar Jar Binks, you love him or hate him.
He is the most polarizing characterin all the Star Wars universe and all
the world, but he's in all the world.
Yeah, here's some others.
We got you got a stormtrooper in some of their ones.
(45:26):
Listener, you may or not be, may notbe aware that there are many figures
out there that sell for over a thousanddollars for one tiny Lego minifigure.
There are several that cansell for hundreds of dollars.
Cause by now there are so manydifferent variations and certain themes.
I've gotten in Jago characters in here.
I've got these star Wars ones, this littlelot of, I've got six star Wars character,
(45:51):
these are probably going to sell.
I could list them individually.
If I want, I'm going to do them as a lot.
This lot of six characters isprobably going to sell for 50 or 60.
Five or six.
That's it.
I have bought How muchdid you pay for 'em?
I paid $20 for the entire container, andthe container holds about 60 figures.
Nice.
So what I did was I came home andI let the little ones Floe's kiddos
(46:14):
look through and pick two or threeout that they wanted themselves.
I know one guy that would be veryexcited about that box for sure.
Yep.
Mm-hmm . Oh, and he was.
He was having a hard timebeing patient last night.
So he got to pull out once, butnow I'm going to sell these alone.
Maybe probably net me, I'llprobably sell 50 to 60.
This entire container that probablyhas 40 in it will probably sell for.
(46:37):
70 to a hundred dollars.
I paid 20 for all of it.
So for 20 bucks, I'm going to doabout 150 bucks, maybe more in sales.
Many figures I've bought entire tubs,believe it or not full of Legos, because
on the top I could see two or threemini figures that I knew were worth it.
Okay.
We are going to stop there because thatshould have been a whole nother show.
(46:58):
That Matt introduced.
Toys.
That is a teaser.
Collectible toys.
Collectible toys.
We should jump into that.
Listen.
We could do more.
We could do a whole serieson collectible toys.
There are so many.
We're going to talk moreabout precious metals.
We're going to talk more about whatyou find in your house, and we're
definitely going to talk more about toys.
We are so grateful you'realong for the ride.
Take some notes when you listen to Matt.
Otherwise, we're going to be backwith a brand new show next week.
(47:20):
We promise.
Yes.
But have a great week, everybody.
We'll talk to you soon.
Take care.
Welcome back to the What Sold
podcast, a place where magic happens,a place where dreams come true,
lives are lived, and men are fierce.
And women.
If you ever happen to, to spy.
A unicorn and it allowsyou to jump on its back.
Well, no, you jump on its back,you're like, where am I going to go?
(00:59):
It's going to fly you right to our studio.
This is where you come.
Of course.
Congratulations.
Oh, we have our daily visit.
Greatest place on earth.
Yeah, we have our dailyvisit by the unicorn today.
Oh, look, it's carrying someone today.
That's right.
Exciting.
Absolutely.
Matt and I are doing this little series onthings you find in your house and rather
(01:20):
ironic because somebody recently was like,I hate podcasts where they just talk for
15 minutes and then get into the subject.
That is the very nature of our show is forMatt and I to filibuster for 15 minutes
so that you slip off to the dulcet tonesof our voices into a nice afternoon nap
and then you wake up with some good.
Information at the tail end, but todaywe are going to just take a brief
(01:41):
pause from what we've been working on.
I don't even know what wewere going to talk about next.
I do know it wasn't gonna be the atticor the basement because everything
happens in the attic and the basement.
We all know that.
So maybe it was going tobe the bathroom closet.
I don't know.
But instead, Matt and I called him.
He's literally driving down the road.
It sounds a little bit like rusty.
It's like the windows are openbecause the AC is broken type thing.
(02:03):
And he's just like, ah,I'm heading to Charlotte.
And so tell us, so we're goingto be doing a whole show today.
In fact, this will probably be intwo shows, but today's main topic is
going to be precious metals industry.
You made your very firstvisit to a smelter.
I don't even know what we would call that,but I am excited to hear about the trip.
(02:23):
I'm excited to hear aboutwhat you've found out.
I'm excited.
Smelt.
The, no, this is a, I guessyou would call them a refinery.
They melt metals.
They refine them into the properimpurities and they sell them
back into the jewelry industry.
So anyone out there who's wondering like,why does a person want to buy this or
why what are these pawn shops and coinshops doing with my coins or my jewelry?
(02:49):
Once they've bought them from me.
That's a great question.
I'm going to pull the veil back a littlebit today and I'm going to reveal.
Oh, I like when there'sa veil pulling back.
That's always fun.
I'm going to reveal the wizard of Ozand you're going to see him and you're
not going to be impressed with whatyou see in compared with what if you
don't know, Oh no, well, I'm just sayingit's all very cut and dry, but I want
(03:12):
people to listen very carefully becausethis is what the common person does.
Okay.
The common person.
They, at some point in their life, theyinherit something, or they are given a
gift, or they buy something that they nolonger want to use, and, or the style or
the fashion changes, oh, you know what,I don't really like wearing white gold
(03:35):
anymore, I want yellow gold, but I've gotthis white gold thing or whatever that is.
You inherit some jewelry, this is verycommon, you inherit some jewelry from
your mother or your grandmother, and.
It was definitely hot in 1935,but it is not hot now as far
as the way that it looks.
Not so attractive.
Depending on the fashion.
(03:56):
Or, when would I ever wear, I hearthat a lot, where would I wear this to?
I'm not going to a gala, or I'm notgoing to some really ritzy corporate
executive party or something.
So I don't need this.
But they don't know what to do with it.
They've never sold on eBay before,they've never sold on Etsy, they
have no interest in doing it.
In fact, the only thing they'veheard is someone they know who
(04:16):
did it and they got ripped off andthey're never going to do it again.
Sound familiar?
Sound familiar.
Yes.
I'll never do it again.
But at the end of the day,you know it's jewelry.
Maybe it has a diamond init or a sapphire, ruby.
It's a ring.
People buy rings.
People still wear earrings.
They still wear necklaces.
They're buying them all day long.
So you go into a local pawn shop.
(04:37):
So you go into a pawn shop with youritem and you take it up and you say
I'm interested in maybe selling this.
And they say what do you want for it?
That's the first question.
And you don't have anyidea how to answer that.
Oh, I didn't even, I don't know.
I don't even know what it's worthor if it's even gold or not.
You need to tell me.
So they go back, maybe in front ofyou, maybe they take it in the back.
(04:57):
And they're going to do a littletest for very basic places.
They have a scratch test kitwith a little bit more money.
You can get some sort of a device that.
Involves gel and it has a way of testingcarat purities on gold, or they have
even a step above that, a machinethat they can stick it in and it's
(05:19):
going to x ray it or do what it does.
And it will tell youwhat it's made out of.
They're going to comeback and say, Oh it's 3.
5 grams, 14 carat gold.
And today gold is 60.
3 per gram.
And it's three and a half grams.
The spot value on it is about180, 200, something like that.
(05:39):
Maybe a little bit more.
We typically pay they'll offer you.
Usually what I see around here in WesternNorth Carolina is between about 61 and
65 percent of spot value paid for gold.
Now they don't tell you that ifyou walk in like, what's your rate?
They're like, ah it depends.
It depends.
It doesn't depend.
If it's basic metal, they're going topay you 61 to 65 percent of the metal.
(06:03):
They offer you that they say I cangive you 120 bucks and you're shocked.
What?
This is several years old.
It's got a, it's got ahalf carat diamond in it.
And then they're going to tellyou about how corrupt and horrible
the diamond industry is and hownobody's buying diamonds anymore.
And they're a diamond dozen.
You can get them anywhere.
(06:24):
No one's buying them.
Yep.
And they go, we just pitch them.
We don't pay you for the stone weight.
It's too hard.
It's too, the industry is too convoluted.
We just pay you for the metal.
Yeah.
Take it or leave it.
That's what you're going to face.
And so most people may noteven get that far into it.
They're just like whatever amount ofmoney they're like you're in the industry.
You would know I don't.
So I guess, and you leavea little bit defeated.
(06:48):
Yeah, you got some money in your pocketnow, but you're bummed, even if you have
no attachment to it, because it just,you have this nagging feeling that it was
worth more than what you were offered,and that's because it is worth more than
what you were offered and, but thesebusinesses, they want to make money now.
Why did they sell, or buy rather,things at such a low cost, at that much
(07:08):
below, 40%, 35 40 percent below spot?
The reason is.
First off, if it does in fact happen tobe something that has decent value because
of the uniqueness of the piece, because ithas some sort of a precious gemstone, That
I would say is usually a carrot or more,because that's the standard right now.
If you think about women wanting.
(07:29):
You can tell me what you think,Brandon, from back in your younger
years, but even when I was younger,it was like, you was known if you
can get her a carrot or higher in adiamond, you're, that's pretty good.
But if it's below that, it's just causeyou, you're either cheap or you're
young and you don't have any money yet.
That was me.
I didn't have any moneywhen when we got married.
That quarter carat yougave Flo, it's beautiful.
(07:50):
It's, it really catches the light.
That's right.
It does.
And it catches a lot ofthe yellows in the light.
That's what it does.
It turns out later on,it's not even a diamond.
It's just like a citrine, like a palecitrine, like the least precious.
But no, seriously, they mightactually have something behind the
scenes where they have somebody whocomes in and buys the gemstones from
(08:11):
them and they get secondary money.
That is one way that someplaces make some money.
But if it is valuable enough tobe sold on its own without the
metal, they're going to do that.
They're not going to shipthat off to be melted.
They're going to try toturn around and sell it.
Or they've got a buyer, someonelike me who has connected with
them somewhere along the way.
And they say, Hey, when you get stuffin that isn't scrap, but it's worth
(08:32):
more, they're going to pay you listener60 to 65 percent of the spot value on
that gold, and then someone's going tocome in and they're going to pay them
an extra 10%, 15 percent on that piece.
To buy it.
And then they're going to turnaround and sell it and make who
knows how much on it pending.
But if it's just the metal, theyare going to sell, they're going
(08:54):
to take that to a refinery.
And that's what we're talking about today.
A refinery is a place that takes metals,bullion, coins, bullion in any form.
And then also jewelry, fine jewelry,and they're going to melt it.
They're going to assay it and they'regoing to melt it into pure forms of
10, 12 or 10, 14, 18 carat, 22 carat.
(09:14):
Yellow golds, white golds,there's different types of gold.
There's what they call greengold and there's yellow gold.
And what that really indicates isthat the type and percentage of
whatever other alloy is mixed inwith it, that gives it its hardness.
Cause you know, gold,pure gold is quite soft.
Pure gold is not something, and even22 carat gold is not commonly worn
(09:34):
as jewelry because it's too, Easy toget dented or banged up or damaged.
And if it's got a prong holding agemstone, forget about it because
that prong is much more likely tobend and move and drop that stone.
So they're going to get it all fixed upand then they're going to sell it back
to the jewelry industry as pure gold.
So that can then be turned intoanother piece of jewelry and
(09:56):
then sold back into the market.
And that is the circle of lifewithin the jewelry industry.
Wait a second.
Let me go back a little bit.
My image was you drive up to thisplace, they take the gold, they
melt it into like bars of gold.
And they have like mass dudeswith machine guns and security.
You're saying that's not what happens.
They're not putting it into bars of gold.
They're just, what are they doing?
(10:16):
What's it look like whenthey're done with melting?
They can certainly can melting andthings into bars or coins even.
It depends on what the refineryis and what they're willing to do.
Some places will take apercentage and then they will.
So there's two different things.
There's refiners that buy directlyfrom someone and they pay them
and they take the metal and thenthey do what they want with it.
(10:37):
There are other places that willtake the metal and you say, Here's
my gold, I want you to melt itinto a whatever, an ingot for me or
whatever, and then I want it back.
They'll do that, but they charge you afee, a processing fee for doing that.
So in the case of what I experiencedyesterday, and we'll talk about it in
a moment, I was just bringing jewelry,they weighed it, and then I can tell you
(10:59):
the rest of that, but I wasn't wantinganything back other than the money.
The monetary value of it.
So these pawn shops, coin shops, whatthey're doing is they, if it's got value,
they're going to turn around and sell it.
Now I've tested this out before.
There's a pawn shop.
I'm not going to name it because Idon't want to speak badly of anyone
directly online, but there's a pawn shopin Asheville that I once sold a piece
(11:21):
of jewelry and I knew it was decent.
It cost me essentially nothing.
I paid 5 for it.
There was large value andI wanted the money quick.
So I knew what I was getting into and Iwas fine with that price, but I did it
just because I wanted to see how quicklythat ended up out on the floor to be
sold because I knew it was nice enough.
They weren't just going to melt.
This particular place has a largepawn shop area, and then they have
(11:46):
same inside the same building, butseparated by a wall and entire jewelry.
They have jewelry specific employees.
They have their own gemologistthat will appraise things or test
things or repair jewelry, createjewelry out of stuff that comes in.
My ring that I sold was out there within48 hours and it was, a hundred percent
(12:08):
markup from what I sold it to them for.
So you just have to knowthat's what happens.
If you don't care, it's fine.
But if they're going to pay you solittle for it, they are going to
turn around and sell that as an item.
They're not going to even touch it.
They're just going to reprice itand stick it out on the floor.
But if it's a precious metal, theywill either directly take it or
they will ship it to a refinery.
(12:29):
And now we're to the point of thestory where I talk about yesterday.
It was interesting.
I was turned on to a refineryin the Western North Carolina.
Yeah.
By someone that I have developeda relationship with through
being a customer of theirs.
And then we started tradinginformation and referrals.
(12:50):
Referring people to one another,I would continue to buy from him.
And then in a conversation notlong ago, he turned me onto the
place that he sells his scrap.
And I was delighted becauseagain, the price that you're
going to get for gold is usually.
61 to 65%.
And it may be about the same for silver.
The place that he told me about offers 98percent on gold and 90 percent on silver.
(13:18):
Now that's on, if we're basingit off of pure gold, but most
jewelry isn't pure, right?
It's 14 carat or it's 18 carat.
So you have to do the mathor you have to look it up.
What is one gram of 14 carat gold today?
And you can find that information online.
Then you just weigh it.
Oh, it's 3.
9 grams.
The day 60.
30. So you multiply those two togetherand that's how much it's worth.
(13:43):
Okay.
And they give you 98 percent of that.
They will give me 98 percent of that.
So I wanted to test this out.
He said he'd been sellingwith them for 15 years.
The price had never changedand the turnaround time
was the most amazing thing.
If you bring it there in the day, youwill have money direct deposited in
your account by the end of the day.
Oh, nice.
(14:04):
As an alternative to eBay, whereI might do a seven day auction,
okay, it ended in seven days.
Takes that buyer three days to pay for it.
Okay, now we're at ten.
Then I ship it, let's say the next day,then three days after that, it arrives.
Now we're at 14 days.
Now eBay doesn't release my funds untilone to three days after it has arrived.
(14:26):
Okay, three days has gone by.
They didn't do me any favors.
They took the whole three days.
They pay me out.
And now I'm two and a half weeks in.
I still have a week and a half.
I can't spend that money becauseI have a 30 day return window.
And at the 11th hour,somebody could return it.
So all of a sudden, I've turned.
A sale that would have taken me two and ahalf weeks or a month to have the money.
(14:47):
Also, if I sell it on eBay, someone whobuys it, if it's not, if it's common
or if it's not super exciting, theywant to pay me 20 percent below spot.
So they'll pay me 80 percent below spot.
But then I lose 15 percent to eBay.
So I make more money selling to thesepeople and I make it the same day
(15:08):
or the day after if I mail it in.
So this sounds like a win win.
Very intriguing to me.
So I took a trip yesterday.
I drove to this town.
I went in, I met them.
I dropped off.
Now hold on.
Hold on.
I know you're getting to the seriouspart, but I imagine that you driving, I
imagine you driving down the road causewe were talking, you're in your red truck.
It looks like the back.
(15:28):
Nope.
I'm in the white rusty.
Don't ruin it for me.
Okay.
My point is you're in a truck and inthe back is if you saw Moana When she
goes into the cave of the crab creature,he's got all the gems and jewels.
Oh, yeah That's what I'mimagining just Tomatua or Tamatoa.
Whatever's falling out of the backof your truck I just imagine that's
what you were taking to this cave.
Is it close to that?
That's exactly right.
(15:48):
Okay, literally crowns and swords.
Yeah old, large gold crownswith jewels popping out of them.
I wish, man, I wish.
That's hilarious.
Wouldn't that be a great sight though?
That would be great.
Anyway, all right, so you did, if I'm justimagining you pull up to the refinery and
there's all this exhaust poppingfrom your vehicle and stuff.
(16:09):
They can hear you coming.
No, it was a very legitimate.
You walk in, the guy's very nice.
He's behind bulletproof glass, of course.
Sure.
You've got two of thesebulletproof glass like containers.
You can stick it in.
It's a one way thing, so Ican stick it in and shut it.
Then he opens it fromthe other side, takes it.
He puts it on the scale.
He weighs it.
And he's this machine that willtell you the purities of it.
(16:31):
And he immediately prints me a sort of aninvoice of sorts or, a receipt saying we,
we took this in and this is what it was.
And they go through that wholeprocess, then like right after 430,
the money, I had 3, 600 in my account.
Because that was the value of the goldand the scrap silver that I brought in.
And I brought my own stuff because Iwanted to test this out because the
(16:53):
possibilities of this that I havediscovered that is that there is a world
in which this becomes a new tool for mein the buying and selling world where
not only can I buy and sell antiquesand collectibles or sell them for other
people, I can also sell their jewelry,their coins, their bullion for them
(17:15):
and I can get them paid within a day.
I can pay them, I can still take apercentage for my work and my effort,
and they will still make more money,considerably more money, letting
me do it for them than going to anyof the places around locally that
they could walk in a store to do.
And so that's exciting for me.
I'm happy to see that,but that is what happens.
And the guy told me, he said,listen, almost every day we have
(17:40):
some of these people who run apawn shop or multiple pawn shops.
And he said, I'm not kidding you.
They will come in.
With an, a large plastic tub,like the big tubs you can buy at a
Home Depot or something like that.
Right.
And it is filled to thetop with gold jewelry.
You think of how heavy that would be.
Yeah.
We're talking like a hundred pounds.
(18:00):
So gold is 30, a little over 30, between32 and three to 3, 300 per ounce.
An ounce is roughly 28 and a half grams.
So the watch on your hand mayweigh between 20 and 30 grams.
The weight of that watch.
Is worth 30 to 3, 300if it was solid gold.
(18:21):
And you imagine somebodybringing in a hundred pounds.
Now they're not bringingin solid gold, right?
They're bringing in 10,12, 14, 18 carat gold.
Right.
But they're walking in there andthat's, he's like, and that's
just a week's haul from them.
Because people are coming inday in, day out selling stuff.
They're paying them 61 to 65%.
And at the end of the week,they're walking in and
(18:42):
they're selling all of that.
And they're getting 30 percent return.
And the money comes to them immediately.
No returns.
Wow.
That's how these pawn shops and thesecoin shops make money outside of simply
the things that they sell in store,or if it's a coin shop and it has
numismatic value above the value ofthe metal itself, like a collectible
(19:03):
coin, then they'll sell those for whatthey are, but people will come in with
broken stuff and they want to sell it.
And they offer them, sometimesthey'll even offer them less than
that because they're like, surely theydon't expect to get a huge amount of
money Six earrings that are singlesthat don't have their pairs, because
what are they going to do with them?
And they're just like, I don'tknow, what do you, and that's
why they say, what do you want?
(19:24):
Because of what the person says thatthey want is less than 61 to 65%.
They don't even go into that.
They don't even test it.
They don't even weigh, they'll weigh it.
And then they can know very quickly,just a very quick mental calculation
that I'm going to pay them lessthan the spot I normally pay.
That's a immediate.
Deal right there that they're going to do.
So this was really exciting.
(19:44):
This is how the preciousmetal world works.
And by the way, if you have abusiness, you can do this too.
If I was just an individual.
Running around, hustling and stuff.
It's technically illegal for me to bebuying and selling precious metals.
It's illegal.
It is illegal unless you have abusiness license and I had to fill
(20:06):
out paperwork with this refinery thatincluded my business license number,
my tax ID number, my driver's license,my home, or my, my business address,
which is my home address, cause I'mjust a single LLC and they approved me.
But see, they report these sales andthis money that goes out to the IRS.
And so they want to know who's gettingit because of course it's expected
(20:27):
that I'm going to be paying my taxes.
And so I have to keep trackof that stuff as well.
But the only other thing that I needto have, and I'm in North Carolina,
it's different from state to state.
So before you get excited and decide tojump into this, please do your research.
I have to have a preciousmetals dealer permit.
(20:48):
Which in the North Carolina the state ofNorth Carolina requires you fill out a
one page form, you get fingerprinted, theydo a background check, and you pay 180,
and that gives you a permit for one year.
And by doing that, I don't justhave to operate out of my home now.
I can go to your home, listener.
I can drive up and downthe coast the East Coast.
(21:09):
For a weekend and buy silver and gold frompeople, I can buy it out of parking lots.
I can go to your home.
I can do whatever I want.
And then I can go to therefinery at the end of that
trip and get the money that day.
So it is a big deal for me to be able tomake a better rate than I used to make
(21:30):
when I sell these things and B get it soquickly with no return window that I have
to acknowledge or be aware of that money.
Once it's in there, it's mine.
The other thing is the guy whotold me about this, and this is
another one of the, I don't, I'm notsaying that I would recommend this.
I'm just simply telling youwhat he has done with people.
He knows he's worked withbefore that trust him.
(21:52):
He doesn't even pay them for the metal.
He simply writes a check.
He endorses a check.
That's a blank check and he handsit to them and then they hand
him their gold or their silver.
So it's not a total riskfor them to give it.
Like he has their item, butthey have a check of his.
And he says, I'm taking this today.
(22:12):
Just wait right in the amount until theyhave figured out the exact periods of
it, weighed it and told me what it is.
And he tells them I'm going to paywhatever percentage he says he pays them.
Then he just takes it in as soonas the money comes in and he has
the invoice of the exact amounts.
He just takes that amountwhen it came down to what
(22:32):
percentage of pure gold it was.
And he multiplies that times,whatever the rate he's quoted them.
If he says, I'm going to pay you 80%,then he takes that number times 0.
8. And that's what he texts themand says, this is the amount.
And then he retains his percentage.
But the beauty of that is he doesnot have to pay anything at all.
No money comes out of his pocketuntil he has earned the money.
(22:55):
So if the money comes in thatquickly, within 24 hours, that
money sits in as a bank account.
Then he tells them theycan go cash the check.
He doesn't have to.
Pay money in through this personprior to going and actually selling it
because that there's a risk in that.
Now, most people wouldn't do that.
You'd have to really trust a person.
So I think if you want to get intothis business and you want to do high
(23:17):
enough volumes, you can make good money.
You're probably going to have eitherdeep pockets of your own, or you're
going to have some sort of a revolvingcredit line or something, because if
somebody walks up and says, Hey, I'vegot 30 double Eagle gold bullion coins.
That are roughly worth 60 to 65,000 and they want me to sell them.
I don't want to have to tell them no,because I don't have 60, 000 at my
(23:39):
disposal, because if I can make 18%,15, 18 percent of 60, 000 with in four
hours time with 10 minutes of work.
I want to do that.
I want to be able to do that,but you have to start small.
I have to start small.
I'm starting with things I personally buy,or I'm selling things for other people
(24:00):
who have already got a contract with,and I'm selling other things for them.
It just happens that to bethat some of those things.
Are silver or gold, by the way, thisrefinery by silver, gold, platinum,
and palladium platinum, by the way,used to be way more valuable than any
of those other metals 20 years ago.
And in the past 20 yearshas increased in value.
(24:21):
The least of all the preciousmetals, it's only gone up about
16 percent in value since 2005.
So in 20 years very little increase goldover 2000 percent increase and iridium.
Iridium is about, is over4, 000 for one ounce today.
Ooh, isn't that because theyuse it in phones and whatnot?
(24:43):
Yeah.
A lot of these precious ores or metals,things like iridium, things like lithium.
They're very sought after becausethey're needed and used in a
lot of advancing technology.
So there are limited resourcesfor mining that stuff.
In fact, lots of multiples of millionsof dollars are put in every year.
(25:04):
To locate land and new mines andtry to buy this land so that they
have these orders so that they cantap and sell into the industry.
It's a huge market.
This is just a little tiny small timejewelry market that I'm talking about
for people who want to test their hand.
Maybe you have a bunch of stuff sittingaround, or maybe, you know, of a really
(25:26):
cool thrift store or a place around youthat tends to get really nice stuff a lot.
And you can buy it and they justdon't realize that it's silver.
They don't realize that it's gold or maybeit says seven five zero on that bracelet
And they don't realize that's the europeanhallmark for 18 karat gold Now if it
said 18k they might have known insteadhere's this bracelet for 10 and it's
(25:49):
worth about two grand because it's gold.
That stuff happens, thatstuff has happened to me.
It happens on bracelets, it happensabout two to three times a year.
I'll buy a solid gold bracelet andthey didn't know it was solid gold.
And that's where you, being armedwith your knowledge and being educated
on here's marks and stamps andstuff will really serve you well.
(26:09):
Particularly with the topic we'rediscussing today with precious metals.
Silver can be not marked.
It can also be marked800, 850, 900, 925, 950.
Those are all just differentpurities of silver.
The 925 represents 92.
5 percent purity.
It's funny that you're talking aboutsmelting plants now, Matt, because way
(26:33):
back when I got out of college, I wentto work for a electrical contractor.
I was one of their kind of salesguys, whatever, and it was a different
lifetime and a different career.
And one of the things that would happenis that electrical contractors deal with
copper, lots and lots and lots of copper.
And they would on the job site,you get these little copper
bits and you would collect them.
And I, when I first got there,I was like, wow, there's these
(26:54):
garbage cans filled with copper.
I'm talking one inch to two inch copperbits, like in the plastic wiring.
And there was a guy that worked for us.
I go, what do you guys do with those?
He goes, Oh, we take them to thesmelting plant and the warehouse
guys get to take the money.
That was the deal with the company.
It was like a little perk for them.
Sure.
So I go, Hey, can I go with you?
So we jump in his work truck and throwthese like literally big giant bins.
(27:19):
Cause I was curious how it worked.
We go to this yard where I'm fairlycertain bodies get sent there, when you
want to remove a body, it was like, therewas Rottweilers on chains and type stuff.
So I was like, Oh, okay.
And it wasn't, I don't think it was akind of place like you're talking about,
but we put the copper up there and thereis a question in this, believe it or not,
but we put the copper up there and itwas like, this was back in the nineties.
(27:41):
It was like.
200 for this big thing of copper.
They melt it down and they use the copper.
And that's the reason why a lot oftimes you'll hear about these buildings,
getting the copper stripped out of them.
Well, of course, we'll take them.
When you went to this smeltingplace is not one of those.
This is just fine metals, correct?
And just specific ones, silver,gold, platinum, and palladium.
(28:02):
Oh, that's why you've heard.
They don't buy it there.
And I can't remember if it'spalladium or what it is or lithium,
but catalytic converters have oneof these precious metals and that's
why people will be climbing undercars and cutting out your catalytic
converter is because they're harvestingthat substance out of it to sell it.
And unfortunately the, where catalyticconverters are located, it's fairly
(28:24):
easy to remove them, which is a bummer.
This place was very legitimate.
It was like, I didn't see anythingthat was going on behind it.
I didn't see how the sausage is made.
You know what I mean?
I just saw how they weighed it.
And he brought it in the back andthey're going to do their work.
But I wanted to give a quick examplefor people who have something of
their own that they think that this,again, you have to have a license.
So if you're going to go intobusiness, buying and selling, I
(28:45):
recommend you get yourself a license.
I'm not an attorney and I'm not a, I don'thave a degree in business administration.
However.
Legally speaking, you should have,if you want to get into selling
with these reputable, legitimaterefineries, you're going to need to
have an account with them and they'regoing to require some information.
So that's something I did.
I have a ring on my finger here andI'm just going to weigh it really fast.
(29:08):
It's a 14 carat band gold ring andit weighs It does not weigh 44.
3 carats.
I've got it on carat instead of gram.
Let me move the mode.
I was That'd be a great big diamond.
Yeah, I was the last thing I wasdoing was actually weighing gemstones
and that's why it was on carats.
Okay.
So this thing weighs 8.
85 grams and today 14carat gold is about 60.
(29:33):
3 60. 30 per gram for 14 carats.
So if I multiply that timesthe weight of my ring.
This ring itself, if I was to sell itfor exactly spot, it would be worth
533, just this little ring becausegold is very, very high in value today.
Right.
Now this is something that because it'sa common size, it's like a size eight,
(29:58):
eight and a half, something like that.
That's a, that's, that's afairly common size for gold.
Eight, nine, 10 for men, for adult men.
And because it's a wide, itwould be considered what they
call like a cigar band ring.
It's wide and it's heavy.
Not a lot of people wantsomething that's heavy or big.
I tend to like it, but all that tosay, if I wanted to sell this, I could
sell this on eBay for more than 530.
(30:20):
In fact, if you look up stuff thatpeople are trying to sell, not as
scrap, but as basic jewelry, oftentimesyou're going to see across the board.
People are trying toprice things about double.
So if I threw this up on eBay, instead of530, I'd be asking about 1, 100 for it.
Now, am I going to sell it for that?
Maybe, or maybe somebody is goingto watch it and I'm going to
(30:41):
offer them 10 or 15 percent off,and then they're going to buy it.
But even if after I lose my percentagefees from eBay, I'm still making money
because it's a usable piece of jewelry.
But let's say you havesomething that's broken.
Wait.
Can I stop you right there?
Because I think it's a for someonethat's out there selling it.
So really the math you're doing, andthis is where the Matt rusty type
(31:02):
knowledge is super important is thatyou have to look at the item and say,
this is what I can, it's interesting.
Cause like you got to say, thisis what I could make on eBay.
So you need to do your research.
And if you can't make more thanyou could on spot value, then
you're going to go with the spot.
So you're juggling where I go.
Exactly.
Okay.
Okay.
Exactly.
Interesting.
(31:22):
And by the way, when you take stuff toa refinery, It's optimal that you remove
as many of the stones as possible.
You want to try to make that batchas quote unquote clean as possible.
So when a person says they'reselling a spot, a lot of scrap
jewelry clean, what they're sayingis there's only the metal there.
There's no stones or anything else thatwill inflate the weight of it, of items
(31:43):
that are not actually made of gold.
So if I have a bunch of silver rings thathave cheaper, semi precious gemstones
in it, I'm removing those stones.
I personally am going to do it ascarefully as possible because I have
a way to sell stones and try to makesome money off that end as well.
But if they're glass or it's arhinestone or something, I don't care.
I'll break that puppy out of there.
I just want to get the metal clean.
But if you're talking about somethingthat's gold, which is quite hard
(32:05):
in comparison to silver is verysoft metal and it has little tiny
diamond chips and stuff in it.
They don't care about that.
They're going to weigh it.
They can approximate.
They know how to do that.
So it's not a big problem, butthe next thing I'm going to
hold up is this little bracelet.
And this is, it's a 14 karatgold bracelet, that's the back
of it, and here's the front.
And all these littlewhite bits are diamonds.
Oh wow.
(32:26):
This bracelet has approximately300 diamonds in it.
Whoa!
They're all really tiny, they're probablyone tenth of a karat, a lot of times, or
smaller, they'll fall in millis sometimes.
By the way, as an aside, ifanyone's ever examining or talking
to you about gemstones, andthey say, Oh, it has 20 points.
And you're like, what does that mean?
(32:46):
They're just talkingabout how large it is.
So a 0.
2. Okay, so 0.
5 is a half carat, 0.
5 is half of a carat.
One is one carat.
So if a person said, Oh, this is, they'relooking at, so this is about 50 points.
They're saying that's abouta half carat size diamond.
That's what they're talking about.
80 points.
That's an, 0.
8 carat diamond.
So this would have a bunchof tiny, tiny, like 0.
(33:09):
1. 1 10th of a diamond or even 120th of a carat of a diamond, but
they're all spread out through this.
Now I'm going to weigh this.
I think that this, I'm tryingto remember this is somewhere
in the 20 to 25 gram range.
And again, I'm getting the weightof the stones as well, right?
Because it's got 300 diamonds in it.
So this comes in at 21.
(33:29):
78. So again, we're goingto go back to that 60.
3. That's how much one gram of14 carat is worth today times 21.
78. And we're looking at this bracelet,just the weight of it, and I guarantee
you that if someone was going topay you spot on this, they're not
going to care about the diamonds.
They're not going to pay you lessbecause it has diamonds in it.
(33:49):
This is worth just the metal, 1, 313.
Holy cow!
Just this bracelet, because of the weight.
Now, if I took this in today, theywould give me 98 percent of that amount.
So I would walk around.
Even if you took it inwith the diamonds on it?
Correct.
I'm not going to remove the diamonds.
Okay.
Now the reason I'm, this is an example ofone though that I'm not going to scrap.
(34:11):
Why?
Because it is a bracelet, it isnot damaged, it can be worn, and
it has a lot of diamonds in it.
So it has some value beyond whatever.
It's also, it's not as common.
It's a little bit of a unique thing.
I have already seen ones, this exactkind, sell for between 24 on eBay.
Okay.
And again, that's double, right?
(34:32):
Cause it's worth 1300 in spot value.
2, 600 is double.
So people are willing to pay up forsomething that's functional, usable,
and that has precious gemstones in it.
So this is an example of somethingI'm going to hold on to until it sells
elsewhere, either privately or on eBay.
I still don't mind losing that 15percent to eBay because even losing
(34:53):
that 15% I sold it for double,what I would get at a refinery.
And so that is the calculation I do.
If I have something even witha stone in it and I look it up.
Are there only 200 ofthese available online?
Maybe that's something I needto sell because it's rare.
Or if I just look up my ring, 14 karatgold, size 8 12, men's wedding band.
(35:14):
Oh, 14 million available.
How about a size 33 ring?
Like on my finger.
Oh, listen.
I'm still working on selling your ring.
It just happens to be two and ahalf pounds cause it's so large.
So you're going to get somegood money out of that.
But this is for people who don't realize.
So if you walk in with abracelet that weighs 21 grams.
(35:34):
And they say, let's do that really fast.
What did we say?
It was around 13, 1, 313.
Okay.
Right.
Times 0.
61. So that's 61 percent to 65 percentis what a pawn shop would pay you.
They're only going topay you 800 for this.
It's worth over 1300.
So you're going to leave with 800 andthey've made 500 in profit off of you.
(36:01):
Then they're going to turnaround with that piece.
And they're going to sellit to the refinery at 98%.
They gave you 800 and theyturned around that same day
and they made 450 off of you.
Doing basically nothing.
Doing almost nothing.
That is how these pawn shops operate.
Now, if you, now that you're armedwith this knowledge, You know how
much it costs to start an LLC?
(36:22):
200. Yeah, you do that one time,you've got a business license now.
Your business address is your home.
You have to file it, you have to getarticles of incorporation in your state.
Just do an LLC, it's a liability,a limited liability company.
If something happens, you're protected.
The business could suffer, the businesscould go bankrupt, but it doesn't
come after your personal assets.
So here you go, if, and some things areworth selling online or at a nice jewelry
(36:47):
store or something, or there are jewelryconsignment shops where they're like,
they are incentivized to sell it for asmuch as possible because they're going to
take a percentage off of the sale price.
So if you go in, they're going totake this, they're not going to
see that it's worth 1, 300 to scrapand offer you 800 on the spot.
They're going to say,okay, our take is 30%.
(37:09):
We're going to listthis for between 3, 000.
They want it to sell for 2, 700.
And even if it, and if it does, andyou lose 30 percent to them, you
are still better off than havinggone in and pawned it, right?
You're not as well off as you would beif you took it to a refinery yourself,
but some people don't have the abilityto do that or know where to go.
And you don't need abusiness license to do that.
(37:30):
So it's, again it's all basedon knowledge of understanding
what's the best possible way.
Of handling this.
Yeah, that's cool.
I think i'm gonna go get myself aprecious metals dealer's license and
just start selling gold Just drivingaround silver and gold Yeah, it makes
me think of that man, who was thatYukon it wasn't Yukon Cornelius it
(37:51):
was Yukon Cornelius yeah, I think so.
Yeah, sure.
All right.
Listen We're going to do anothershow on this because there's some
other interesting tidbits that arecoming out of this But I want to
talk about what's sold this week.
Let's do that real quick It's justbeen a great week for you and me in
terms of Getting a chance to catchup a talk But I want to hear and I
want to see because it's my favoritepart of the show I feel like we've
(38:13):
been a little light on this lately.
I love the magic of what you sell.
So let's see it.
What do we have?
I don't have anythingto show you right now.
This is going to blow your socks off, butthis is, again, going to give an example.
I had a bunch of stuff, man,in the last couple of days.
You don't know what'sgoing to blow my socks off.
You don't know that.
Okay, fair enough.
You might like this.
First thing up here is a sealedOh, this came out of that big lot.
This is a, why this is fat Tony andthe character from the Simpsons.
(38:38):
He's the mafia guy.
This is actually a perfect one toshow because does this not look
like a pawn shop store owner to you?
It's just, it's a guy he's got arevolver, a cigar and a stack of cash.
You want to know a story about Fat Tony.
Fat Tony had.
Yes Please.
He extorted the local elementary school.
He was going to build ADA compliant ramps.
He made it out of like chalk,and it all collapsed, but he's
(39:02):
like hey, I'm gonna get my money.
That's Fat Tony.
That's how he runs.
You can't do that.
You can't do that, and you have to beADA compliant out there people, so make
sure you know your wits of doorways.
Oh, well apparently Fat Tonydidn't think so, but sure.
No, but he's walking around withhis, it looks like a Colt Python.
And a stack of cash and a cigar.
Oh, he's also got like abat like a little, yeah.
(39:23):
So this guy in, in, in thetagline on here says you have
24 hours to give us our money.
That's the quote on here.
If I had ever, if I had paid closerattention to this man, I would
have just paid for this and kept itmyself now that I'm looking at it.
So great.
Okay.
But this sold for 24.
It's a sealed it's from 2000, maybe 1999.
(39:43):
So it's, it's 20 years old sealed.
This was a large group ofthings that I'm selling similar
Simpsons items from a person thatcollected them back in the day.
I think that there'llbe happy with that sale.
Here's another sale of a little watch.
This is a Mr. Wristwatch gota pretty attractive looking
brown leather band on it.
Now the front of it just saysservice excellence and it has a,
(40:06):
this would be called a, like a date.
So if you have a watch thatshows the date, it would be
like a date or a date adjust.
If it has the day and the date,it would be called a date watch.
Real, real complicated, right?
Yeah.
Now this particular, a lot of thecollectible watches out there are
either automatic watches, meaningyou wear it and it moves around with
the kinetic energy is what actuallycauses it to operate or manual wind.
(40:31):
You wind it up and you setthe time you wind it up.
This is a quartz watch and generallyspeaking, quartz watches, which
require batteries are not ascollectible for obvious reasons.
You got to have a batterythat's in it that's operational.
And when they're, when it's not,most people don't really, they just
throw it in their junk drawer, right?
Which we talked about beforeand they don't ever do it.
But the thing that I wanted to sayabout this watch and this watch,
(40:53):
watch sold for 42, not a hugesale, but it's a vintage piece.
You need to look at watchesand you need to look at the
back of them is on the back.
Usually if it doesn't on thefront, it's going to say on the
back who the manufacturer is.
Now if I had just seen this, thereare thrift stores around me that have
watch jars, and it's like 3 per watch.
(41:14):
They don't care what itis, it's just a watch.
On the front of it, it justsays service excellence.
That tells me this was a watchgiven by some company to an employee
for a certain amount of time thatthey worked there as a gold watch.
So yeah, and this isn't, it's goldtone, but it is not actually gold.
But you waited around for the gold watch.
You worked there for 40 years.
There's all kinds of stuff.
Back in the day, they would giveyou like little tie pins, tie
(41:34):
tacks, lapel pins and stuff.
And a lot of those, by the way,are gold filled or solid gold.
In fact, as you would work longer,they would give you one five years,
10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
And the longer you'd work there, thehigher carat purity of the gold would be.
And, or the better qualityor larger the stone would be.
So if it's five years, it mightbe a couple of little synthetic
(41:57):
sapphires or rubies or a CZ.
By the time you get up to 30years, that could be a good
size ruby, sapphire, or diamond.
And so people will buy those forthe gold weight, they'll scrap the
gold, they'll pop out the stonesand they'll sell the stones.
But getting back to the story, youneed to look at the back because had
I not looked, I wouldn't realize thatthis is not just some cheap stone.
Watch that somebody got, this is madeby Hamilton, the Hamilton company,
(42:19):
which have made antique pocket watchesand have some very high end all the
way up to solid gold watches today.
And they're a prettycollectible brand as well.
So if this had not been Hamilton, thisthing might've sold for 10 to 15 bucks.
Big, but because it's a Hamilton,even though the battery's not
working, someone's going to get it.
(42:39):
This brand makes good quality timepieces and this person knew it.
And so I got 42.
So if you're looking at watches, if it'splastic and different stuff and rubber,
like you can probably pass on it, butif it's older and it's metal, give it a
good one sober, look at the front of it.
Is the crystal scratched?
Does it operate?
Can you tell if it's quartz or a manualwind and look at the back, see what
(42:59):
the brand is, because if you turnover the back and it says, Hamilton
or Bolivar or one of these selectablebrands, then it may be worth it all
of a sudden, and you may not havenoted originally last thing I sold.
I'm selling probably, honestlylike 150 orders a week.
That's not individual itemsthat could be a lot of items.
(43:20):
And so I'm doing fulfillmentat least twice a week, if not
parts of three times a week.
So some things are cheaper.
Some things are more valuable.
This next thing is a little handbag.
And it says glam girl cross body pouch.
It's like a little pouch, but it, if youturn around and you look at the back,
it's made by a brand called Brighton,which is a middle range costume to low
(43:42):
end fine jewelry type manufacturer.
They make a lot of stuff.
A lot of times they havecrystal in them or CZs.
But they make good qualitystuff and you may pass a store
at a, an airport or something.
They'll have an entire storethere of merchandise that
they're selling brand new.
But I come across that stuffat stores all the time.
This was new and sealed in the package.
(44:04):
So it's sold for 28.
Again, I didn't buy it.
This was a consignment piece.
But even handbags, pouches,things like that can have value,
particularly if they're anoriginal packaging and aren't used.
You're going to get the bestmoney for something like that.
But, in summary, I think you should beaware that even small pieces of jewelry,
(44:24):
if they're made of certain metals canhave a lot more value than you suspect,
especially if you're not the kind ofperson that's checking the spot prices
regularly on these precious metals.
On the same day that I was outat this refinery, I went there,
took me five minutes and I'm done.
I drove an hour and a half to get there.
So I'm like, you know what?
I'm here.
I'm going to do a little sourcing.
This is outside of my typical.
(44:46):
Geographical region that I work in.
So let me go to a few thrift stores andI sourced maybe on the next episode,
we can talk about some of thosethings I sourced, but that's another
advantage of going out that areas.
I can find some new places, but Icame across this little container.
I'm going to show this.
It's like a full class container, but whatit's full of is little Lego mini figures.
(45:06):
Oh, like little people and I pulled outfive or six here that are all thematic
in the sense that they are all littleStar Wars characters, Jar Jar Binks,
Jar Jar Binks, you love him or hate him.
He is the most polarizing characterin all the Star Wars universe and all
the world, but he's in all the world.
Yeah, here's some others.
We got you got a stormtrooper in some of their ones.
(45:26):
Listener, you may or not be, may notbe aware that there are many figures
out there that sell for over a thousanddollars for one tiny Lego minifigure.
There are several that cansell for hundreds of dollars.
Cause by now there are so manydifferent variations and certain themes.
I've gotten in Jago characters in here.
I've got these star Wars ones, this littlelot of, I've got six star Wars character,
(45:51):
these are probably going to sell.
I could list them individually.
If I want, I'm going to do them as a lot.
This lot of six characters isprobably going to sell for 50 or 60.
Five or six.
That's it.
I have bought How muchdid you pay for 'em?
I paid $20 for the entire container, andthe container holds about 60 figures.
Nice.
So what I did was I came home andI let the little ones Floe's kiddos
(46:14):
look through and pick two or threeout that they wanted themselves.
I know one guy that would be veryexcited about that box for sure.
Yep.
Mm-hmm . Oh, and he was.
He was having a hard timebeing patient last night.
So he got to pull out once, butnow I'm going to sell these alone.
Maybe probably net me, I'llprobably sell 50 to 60.
This entire container that probablyhas 40 in it will probably sell for.
(46:37):
70 to a hundred dollars.
I paid 20 for all of it.
So for 20 bucks, I'm going to doabout 150 bucks, maybe more in sales.
Many figures I've bought entire tubs,believe it or not full of Legos, because
on the top I could see two or threemini figures that I knew were worth it.
Okay.
We are going to stop there because thatshould have been a whole nother show.
(46:58):
That Matt introduced.
Toys.
That is a teaser.
Collectible toys.
Collectible toys.
We should jump into that.
Listen.
We could do more.
We could do a whole serieson collectible toys.
There are so many.
We're going to talk moreabout precious metals.
We're going to talk more about whatyou find in your house, and we're
definitely going to talk more about toys.
We are so grateful you'realong for the ride.
Take some notes when you listen to Matt.
Otherwise, we're going to be backwith a brand new show next week.
(47:20):
We promise.
Yes.
But have a great week, everybody.
We'll talk to you soon.
Take care.
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