Gold Fever! (part 4)

Posted on March 21, 2011 by John Fritze Jr

So a guy wanders into my shop a few months back with a plastic bag of mixed jewelry, all of it gold, albeit various karats.  He says he’d like to sell it.  I separate the karats into individual piles and start weighing and adding things together in order to come up with a price for him.  As I’m doing this I look at the bag and realize the total weight I came up with is written on the outside of the bag rounded off to the nearest whole number.  Underneath that number was the number 236.  Before I totaled my numbers, this didn’t mean anything to me as plastic bags are used and reused many times in the jewelry business so random writing  is common to see.  I realized that this fellow must have taken this gold elsewhere first.  When I asked him about it, he confirmed that the 236 was his highest offer.  He was shocked when I offered him $687. Did he sell his gold to me?  No.  After he walks out, I comment to my secretary that I thought I was being more than fair as his gold was pretty clean.  A couple of days later he returns to sell me his scrap.  I wonder if he went back to the place that gave him that offer to see if he could get them to come up.  My guess is they tossed him out.

A girl comes to me several weeks ago, referred to my business by a another customer.  She said she was told that I was real honest and would give her straight information.  She pulls out a small bag of silver coins, about nine or ten dollars.  There were Kennedy half dollars, a few quarters, maybe a dime or two.  So I look over the coins and realize that most of them are dated after 1964, meaning that they are not silver, but nickel clad over copper.  You can easily tell by looking at the edge.   But there were a few older coins totaling three dollars or so that were silver.  I explain to her that unless there is a rare year or mint mark which adds numismatic value, silver coins are worth  x number of dollars face.  In other words a silver dollar, two half dollars, four quarters or ten dimes are worth the same. Pretty simple, huh?  So I tell her I’m not interested in the clad coins, just use them as change.  But the three dollars of silver coins are worth $72.  She thanks me very much but told me that she thought the lot should be worth a bunch more money.  Her tone of voice was a bit insulting.  At the time, my profit margin was three dollars so I didn’t see any way I could offer more.  A few days later she trots in again, and says that she would sell me her coins.  She said her highest offer was $12 for the entire lot, meaning someone offered her $2 additional for the silver.  Her shoulders dropped when I told her “Well, now I’m not interested in your silver for $72”.  Meanwhile my secretary had already written the check which perked her back up.  I explained to her I felt she had learned a very valuable lesson about treating people.  Think about it, I probably spent more than thirty minutes with her for $3.  It’s all part of my get rich slowly scheme, so far so good.

Almost weekly I have a customer who hands me a bag of old broken stuff and and I mean stuff.  Like safety pins, bottle caps, screws and the like, mixed in with a few items of costume jewelry, Timex watches, and plastic beads.  To paraphrase an old expression “Everything that’s yellow ain’t gold”.  But every once in a while there is a treasure mixed with the trash.  Kind of makes you wonder what their homes look like on the inside.  A number of years ago a young lady shows me a bag of things heaped together she bought at a various garage sales. There were a few antique pieces that although they were costume they were cute.  I pull out a little item that she comments she had bought downstate for $5.  She showed this item to a couple of antique dealers but was told it wasn’t worth anything.   She really wasn’t interested in selling anything, just fishing for information but I asked her if she would like to sell it anyway.  I told her I might be interested in it for about seven hundred dollars.  After I revived her, I explained that although it was silver, with a little gold trim, it was set with a mix of tiny diamonds, emeralds and pearls, perhaps dating from the early to mid 1800’s.  It was part of a much larger necklace that was now gone.  I eventually did purchase and sell this piece, so it goes to show, one man’s junk really is another man’s treasure.

Almost every bag or box of costume that your Auntie Gertrude has saved seems to have at least one or two good items mixed in.  I think this is because we all get forgetful with age.  Things get tossed in a box and forgotten.  The surviving family members really don’t know what’s good and what’s not.  While programs like The Antiques Road Show have done a lot to raise people’s awareness of collectible antiques sadly lots of things end up in the town dump.  Never be afraid to ask a knowledgeable person about items left to you.  I don’t charge to look over a basket of jewelry items and I’m guessing many other dealers don’t either.  All I ask is you pick out the dead bugs.