Florida Man Metals Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Truth be told the only real profitable business plan I have come up with is a pawn shop. In July of last year Ron DeSantis changed the laws on 2nd hand goods. If the metal is in Bullion form and stamped with a weight and purity it is no longer considered a 2nd hand good. In other words if someone sells the pawn shop Bullion they can literally turn around and sell it to the next customer in line. You no longer have two hold the item for two weeks unless it is jewelry/scrap. So if I owned a pawn shop and buy scrap gold for 70% of spot (which is what they pay here). I would hold it for two weeks to make sure it isn't stolen. Refine it to 24karat and stamp it with a weight and purity and put it in the case with a 10% markup to sell. That is an easy 40% profit margin. Just need someone with deep enough pockets to back me. That is the only truley profitable business that I have come up with to pay for my hobby. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George N. M. Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 FMM, you have just pointed out the problem I have had with investing or keeping precious metals as a hedge against economic problems. If I buy at spot plus X% and I can only sell at 70% of spot I have to hold until there has been a 30%+x increase to break even financially. The real issue of holding gold or silver seems to be how do you convert it back into a medium with which you can buy a loaf of bread or a gallon of gas. So, for an investment vehicle it doesn't look very shiney. If a person is looking for something that will hold value in case of an economic collapse the that is a different equation. GNM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott NC Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Lol, I didn't realize this was about investment. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 I disagree I own everything Shiney. It all depends on how you buy, and how you sell. I spent so many years avoiding gold because of the price. Only bought silver. I went heavy into silver back in 2019 and bought a lot. Bought it off a guy on Craigslist. He was diagnosed with Lou Garrison disease and didn't want his wife to have to deal with it after he was gone. I started out buying all his .999 silver for spot. He was happy and I was happy not paying a premium above spot. Then he offered me his coin collections which I wasn't really interested in. He explained that the coins are insurance if the price of silver falls. I bought all the Morgan and Peace dollars he had. On the nice ones I paid a two dollar premium and the not so nice ones spot. I didn't pay a penny over 22 dollars on the nicest coins. The uglier on were like $14 a piece. You can't find a cull silver dollar for less than 25 to 30 dollars today. That was 4 years ago. I finally got into gold at $1800. Gold is 2100 now. I kick myself for all the times I said gold was to expensive for me at $1400. Again thou when I say $1800 that is what spot was and what I paid for it. I would go to the pawn shop and buy all I could afford at 100% of spot price. The pawn show could only get 95% of spot from the refiner. He was more than happy to sell me all he could. If you are selling scrap/jewelry you will get 70%. So I would inquart it with silver and purify it into 24k. Now when I need to sell i get 100% of spot because it is in Bullion form and he can put it in his case vs sending it to the refiner. Everything is an investment. The scrap yard will pay say 4 dollars a pound for copper, but if you buy copper Bullion it is a dollar an ounce. Doesn't make sense to ever sell copper to me. I only sell brass. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott NC Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Do you separate your pennies? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 As to how do you convert it into something useful like bread or eggs that is easy. It is essential the barter system. Precious metal will always be worth something and there is only a finite supply of it. Not to mention it can be made into something useful without modern machinary. Say you have eggs to barter with. What if the person has a gun for instance to trade. I don't need 2000 eggs at one time. Gold is the medium of exchange that can go in your pocket and no one will refuse. Gold hasn't increases in value the dollar has decreased in value. I have $5 indian head dollar gold coins from the 1920s worth more than $500 in melt alone today. The fed literally tells you they are shooting for 2% inflation rate. In a hundred years that means your dollar is worth nothing. The only better barter is bullets. Again thou try carrying a couple thousand rounds around with you. Gold has always been for barter and always will. Heck yeah I seperate my pennies. Pennies cost a heck of a lot more than a cent to buy or make. I do this with a scale. Copper pennies weigh a full gram more than the zinc ones after 1982. I know it is against the law to destroy currency. That is until the value of the metal changes. For instance it isn't against the law to melt silver change because of the diffrence in value between the face and melt value. Look at Canada for instance who done away with pennies. Just look at the price of zinc to buy online not even considering the price of copper. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott NC Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 They may use their gun to take your 2000 eggs. I have given up on the ultimate survivalist crud. I'll do what I can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 They talk about a green revolution and copper and all these other metals necessary to go green. I bet no one realizes everyone of those metals can be mined in America. Do you ever hear anyone mention tin. You can't make a single electronic device without. And it is the only metal we can't mine in this entire hemisphere. We can dig up lithium, uranium, gold, copper everything else even a lot of the rare earth elements. All the tin comes from southeast Asia. Good luck when China cuts us off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott NC Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 7 minutes ago, Florida Man Metals said: You can't make a single electronic device without Good luck when the whole electronic thing gets fried by hackers or who knows what, solar storm. You may wish your kugerand was a potato! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 I like how you over looked the tin part. But yes you are right I can't eat gold but I won't go hungry. Maybe I should be buying bitcoin like all the institutional investors. Just kidding. I'm not into mlm scams for men. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott NC Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 What is mlm scams? I don't know what tin has to do with the collapse of the internet, commodities trading, communication and all that goes with it. What did I overlook? Btw, if it comes to that everybody will go hungry sooner or later. Nobody is an island. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George N. M. Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Multi Level Marketing, one of the classic scams. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irondragon Forge ClayWorks Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Amway comes to mind, we almost got sucked into that scam way back when. I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s. Semper Paratus Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 I never said tin had anything to do with the collapse of the internet or commodity trading. I said you need tin (solder) to make every electronic device. I also said tin is the only element not found in this hemisphere. Infer what you want from those implications. Truth be told I'm not very familiar with amway. I'm under 40 and the school systems in florida have never been very good. I have probably learned more from my smart phone in my 30 than they ever taught me. I will google amway thou. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George N. M. Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Actually, tin does occur in the US including Alaska, Virginia, and as an accessory mineral in porphyry copper deposits in the Southwest US. But it is not economical to mine, compared to places like Malaysia, mainly because there are no US tin smelters. IIRC the last one closed in the late '80s or early '90s. Tin is generally mined as a placer operation rather than a lode deposit. An exception is Cornish tin deposits. Also, tin is often mined by lots of small operations rather than big mines. FFM, I'm the local IFI geologist, that being my career prior to the oil and minerals crash in the early '80s. Not wanting to go to work at Burger King or 7-11 I went back to school and became an attorney. I still describe myself as a recovering geologist. If I ever feel an urge to hit a rock with a hammer or make a map I call someone up and they talk me out of it. GNM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 Thank you for the clarification. I had seen a few conflicting things mentioning tin in the northern hemisphere. That doesn't change the fact it is an unviable option here. If there isn't high enough concentrations to mine for tin which makes it economically pheasabil. We would have to mine other metals to capture it as a byproduct and We can't process it here. Sounds like we will always be dependent on southeast asia. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scott NC Posted March 22 Share Posted March 22 51 minutes ago, Florida Man Metals said: Good luck when China cuts us off. This is what I was responding to. There are things that bother me and this is one and I ran with it. My school wasn't so great either. Good to have you on the forum. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 *feasible See I told you the school system in florida is atrocious. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George N. M. Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 You said a mouthful. My wife has taught in Florida and her father was a Florida educator. She and her late husband had lived in New Mexico and there were teachers (teachers!) who thought that New Mexico was not part of the United States. GNM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 I was stationed in El paso, Texas and when people asked me where I was located I told them North Mexico. I can easily see why some teachers taught that and wouldn't necessarily say they were wrong. No disrespect to your family but I don't think I ever had a class with them. Speaking in general. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George N. M. Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 My wife grew up in Plant City and Lakeland. Most recently taught in Sebring. She thinks that Wyoming is a little piece of heaven. When I told her that the all time record high is Laramie was 94 degrees and that she would never see triple digits on a thermometer again unless we traveled it really messed with her paradigm. Summer temps here are typically in the 70s and low-mid 80s with low humidity. Also, no hurricanes and a lot fewer bugs. GNM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 I'm on the Treasure Coast. Yeah summer sucks here but the winter is like your summers in Wyoming. I don't know if I could do the Wyoming winters. It is 70°f right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nobody Special Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 What's viable now isn't what might be viable if the world markets or the technology shifts even a little. Think the last US tin production shut down in 1993, but there's tons of it in Alaska, and I think there's a fairly big casserite deposit in eastern Washington and Idaho for one. But heck, used to be low grade ores weren't bothering with, but the last few decades, the Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah shipped slurry in a two-percent copper ore something like thirty miles through pipes to a refinery at the north end of Salt Lake profitably. Really cool set up too and you can go see them float the copper on surfactant bubbles and electrolytically deposit it into big flat ingots. Huge smokestacks that seem to give off a tiny puff of steam about once an hour. Pewter does seem to vary, but it also seems to depend on where it's made. That would be a problem buying it off the scrap heap, but I get a lot of mine in thrift stores, where you can try to track down the maker from the markings and go from there. Most Brittania metal is fairly consistent, as is a lot of European pewter, which is almost the same stuff. Amercian pewter is hit and miss, and Mexican pewter mostly isn't. It's aluminum-ish. A lot of the East Asian stuff is almost pure tin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 There really isn't any diffrence in buy from the thrift store vs the scrap yard besides the price. I use an old technique for sorting pewter alloys. If it does on the dinner table it is most likely not to contain lead. That being said lead free pewter can technically contains up to 1% lead of the total alloy. English pewter is easy to tell because it stays pretty white and Shiney even after a few years of oxidation because of the bismuth content. American pewters basic formula is 90% tin and 10% copper. It has a copper sheen appearance after oxidation. The only real diffrence is that the scrap yards melt pewter accent pieces of of silver plated brass. I get the same mugs, chargers, bowls and everything you buy from the thrift store buy at a better price. Every bin I pick up has some amout of sterling silver in it. Half the time the value of the silver pays for the bin. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Florida Man Metals Posted March 23 Share Posted March 23 Man I really need to reread and spell check before I upload. Forgive all the grammatical errors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.