Sterling Silver Hunter
The Silver Lining in Scrap Metal Mining
By DeWayne Augeson
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 DeWayne Augeson
This manual is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information regarding the subject matter covered. It is sold with the understanding that the author and publisher are not engaged in rendering legal, accounting, or other professional services to any person. If legal advice and/or other expert assistance is required, the service of a competent professional should be sought.
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Disclaimer: The content of this book is considered reliable. However, it is a guide only and it is incumbent upon the reader to test and satisfy his or herself as to the reliability, safety and usability of the information described herein before using that information in any manner whatsoever. The materials used in this book occasionally refer to the employment of certain tools, equipment, and other materials. Care and caution should be taken using and handling all such tools, equipment, and materials. The author and publisher of this book will not be responsible for any damages caused by the use or misuse of any said tools, equipment, and other materials. Any profit or earnings profile associated with this book is an estimate, but is used solely to illustrate a mathematical formula of profit progression based on sales of scrap sterling silver. Any figures mentioned in connection with this book are not to be construed as a promise or implication of earnings. Again, this book is a guide only. Any earnings or profits derived from the sale of sterling silver are entirely up to the abilities and desires of the individual reader.
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Table of Contents
Chapter 1 – It’s All About the Hunt
Chapter 2 – Let The Treasure Hunt Begin - What to look for
Chapter 3 – Treasure Hunting in Your Neighbor’s Garage
Chapter 4 - Always Negotiate – Unless It’s Free
Chapter 5 - Couch Potato Treasure Hunting - On-Line
Chapter 6 - The Silver Treasure Motel
Chapter 7 - Conversions, Weights, Estimates
Chapter 8 - Turning The Treasures Into Cash!! (P$$$T…Ya wanna buy some silver?)
Chapter 9 - The End……… or Just The Beginning
Chapter 1: It’s All About the Hunt
I have made a lifetime hobby of treasure hunting. Even as a young child I remember digging under the seats and in the trunk of every used car my folks bought looking for the loose change, rings or whatever someone might have lost. I clearly remember at about nine years old I found an antique walking cane under the back seat that would pull out into an umbrella. I sold it to a neighbor for $10. Remember, I was nine and it was 1958. I was rich. Although I have never had the money or time to travel the world and search for lost gold mines or pirate’s treasure I have nonetheless had a great (and very profitable) time finding “buried treasure” right in my neighbor’s garage. Legally, of course.
There is nothing as exciting as brushing off the tarnish on an old platter on someone’s garage sale and finding the magic word “sterling” under the grime. That $1 piece of junk they want to throw out probably weighs about 4 ounces and will bring $40 - $50 in scrap silver. Or, how about my recent flea market find….two silver looking rings in a small box with the stones removed and cuts through the ring bands. I subtly inspected the karat markings and asked for the price. When I heard only $3 my heart skipped a beat and I gladly handed over three one dollar bills. I sold these same rings a week later for just over $200. They were 10 and 14 karat white gold and I made a 6000% return on my investment. Now that’s real treasure hunting!
As a kid I received a quarter every week for helping with dishes (Yuk!) or mowing. When we went to town for groceries I was able to buy three comic books for that quarter. I had a collection of two dresser drawers full that vanished somewhere. I would imagine mom did some cleaning and out they went. I could probably retire today if I had those comics. I was a great fan of Superman, Batman and The Lone Ranger.
I was always going through the cash register in my dad’s tavern looking for coins to collect. At one point I had over 25,000 wheat pennies. I remember taking my savings to the bank and buying coins that I would look through and then return to the other bank to cash them in, minus the goodies, of course. I would find 90% silver dimes and quarters, wheat pennies, 40% silver clad half dollars, war nickels containing 35% silver and an occasional Buffalo nickel.
I guess I have always loved junk and scrap. At the age of 15 I had my father convinced to buy a group of 1951 to 1954 cars for $10 apiece so we could start a junk yard. The seller told us he would guarantee that we could drive all ten off the lot, although we might have to swap around a few tires. At that time we could have gotten $6 apiece for the junked radiators. I was so excited I could hardly stand it. I just knew I could junk the cars and sell parts for ten times what we had paid for them not to mention the possibility of fixing one or two up with the spare parts and selling the car. Everything was going great until my mother found out. That was the end of that. “Nobody is going to turn this place into a junk yard”, she said. It was one of my great childhood tragedies. If my mother wasn’t such a neat-freak, I would probably still be running a junk yard. Over the next ten to fifteen years I collected more of everything. I frequented most of the household auctions and lots of garage sales, but at this stage my top priority was firearms and reloading supplies. When I was 28 years old, I opened my own gun shop complete with 200 yard outdoor shooting range, 100 yard metal silhouette range, 25 yard indoor pistol range and a complete reloading set up. My family did a lot of hunting, target range shooting and trap shooting but, for me, it was still the collecting and treasure hunting. There was nothing like finding a 1906 Winchester pump .22 on a sale for $30 to $40 and selling it for $125. At the peak of this phase in my life I had an inventory of nearly 200 firearms. The problem with guns is the competition is so intense that it is really hard to find the great treasures I crave. I am thoroughly convinced that you could make a living buying cheap, worn out guns and selling them as consignments on other people’s auctions. People seem to go slightly insane when they start bidding on guns. I recall an auction I was at that had four old guns up for bids. One was an old, rusty double barrel shotgun, another was a very plain Mossberg 12 gauge shotgun, the third was a .22 Stevens bolt action and I forget the fourth one but the point is I would not have paid over $100 for all four. The auction price totaled over $425 for the four guns. It was time for me to move on to another kind of treasure.
Then, along came the Hunt brothers in the late 70’s. I was nearing 30 years old and had probably started no less than 200 coin collections in my youth, only to get hard up and spend them. The Hunt brothers were part of a very rich family in Texas who began to buy extremely large amounts of silver in the open market. By the end of the 70’s, they owned nearly half of all the silver in the world. This sparked a buying frenzy in the silver market and pushed the per ounce price from just under $2.00 per ounce to well over $50.00 per ounce. I scrambled to gather every remaining piece of silver and gold I could find which included my remaining collection of 90% silver coins and my 1967 gold class ring. I sold it all for the whopping sum of $67.50. (My wife wouldn’t let me sell her class ring.)
But the craziest thing happened when I answered a newspaper ad that offered to buy my silver and gold. I walked in only to find my cousin, Dale, was the buyer. I don’t think I have had as much fun in my life as I did over the next year going into the precious metals buying business with him and learning to buy and sell gold and silver.
People would come through the motel room door with BUCKETS of coins, coin book collections, sterling flatware sets, silver tea services, jewelry, gold coins, etc., etc., etc. It was simply amazing. And, talk about a roller coaster ride. We purchased over $20,000 on a Friday, Saturday and Sunday, just at the time the silver market price peaked. We sold it Monday for a nice $5000 profit. If we had waited until Tuesday to sell we would have LOST $5000. The price went from $33 per ounce for silver to $54 per ounce on Friday and held through Monday and dropped back to $31 on Tuesday. After that the price declined steadily for the next 25 years. It stayed in the $4 to $5 per ounce range for many years and has just recently started its climb back up. It is currently just over $13 per ounce with all indications that it is headed higher, much higher.
I mention silver because it is my favorite but gold has pretty much followed the same path. They are very similar as precious metal investments, I just like silver better because of the industrial demand that is not present with gold. And, silver has always been the “poor man’s gold”. I have always said that when I have enough silver that storing it is a problem I would buy gold so it takes less room but that is just talk. I definitely have a preference for silver because I think it will out perform gold as a percentage of gain over the next few years. But, again, that’s another story. I need to get back to telling you how to discover treasures, have fun and make a little money in your new hobby.
The interesting part of my experience in the 80’s was that I made more money buying precious metals after the boom and as the price was declining than I did when it was booming. From the price peak of $50 per ounce, silver steadily declined over the next years but as everyone knows, the price never goes straight up or straight down. It makes corrections. Drop $2, recover $1. Drop $3, recover $2. The recoveries are where you can make the money. When it finally bottomed at $4 per ounce all of the interest was gone. Nobody cared much about precious metal prices, except me. Even at $4 per ounce if you find a sterling spoon that weighs one ounce and buy it for a quarter you still have a 1600% profit. It was a small dollar amount but just as much fun. The other neat thing was there was literally no down side. Silver couldn’t really go much lower so it was a pretty safe investment. I still can hardly believe that it has taken nearly 25 years for it to start climbing again.
Then, during the 90’s I really got serious about my treasures. I went to every auction, garage sale, flea market and antique store I could find. And, I didn’t just buy silver, I bought anything I thought would make a profit or MIGHT just be that hidden antique or rare painting like you see people with on Antiques Roadshow, that antique buying television show. I was so successful you couldn’t get a bicycle in the garage and you could hardly walk through the house. I bought paintings, furniture, glassware, stoneware, comic books, antique toys, guns, coins, metals and seven, or so, tons of other treasures (junk). When we moved from Stewartville to Rochester in 2001 I hauled 21 pickup loads of junk, (I mean “treasures”) from the garage before the movers even got there.
Four years later, after filling up the new garage and basement with boxes that had never been unpacked I decided that it was time to change tactics, again. With my son, Jeremy and his moving company I rented a 50 x 80 building at the local fairgrounds and had a huge weekend sale. We hauled three twenty-six foot moving truck loads plus numerous trips with my pickup and trailer and I filled up the whole building. People asked me how many people had brought stuff to the sale. When I told them it all came from my house they couldn’t believe it. We sold almost $5000 worth of treasures that weekend. Nearly all of the items that were accumulated were the result of auctions and garage sales over the past decade. Most of the junk came from boxes purchased for $2 or $3 dollars. However, several items from each box sold individually for between $5 and $10. I’m not sure I can calculate the exact profit percentage but the treasures found in each box more than covered the cost of my search. I wasn’t sure if my wife was happier with the profits, or being able to park in the garage. My gut feeling is the use of the garage was her first priority. My wife is a lot like my mother was when it comes to my treasures but she is getting better. When I buy something for $200 and she has a fit over the spending I simply have to show her the $700 sale and she magically has a change of heart. Not to say that she doesn’t have a fit again the next time I come home with another “find”, but I can tell that her complaints are becoming less and less spirited.
At the end of the sale I took a 50 gallon plastic barrel and went down the line and threw everything that hadn’t sold and that I was tired of looking at. That was about four barrels. We still hauled home enough stuff for two more huge garage sales that summer. Somewhere during this period I acquired the nick-name “Fred Sanford”, probably the most popular fictional junk collector on television. I’m not sure why but, my family likes to sing the theme song whenever I talk about my treasures.
From all of this evolved my new policy. NO MORE Furniture, NO MORE glass or fragile items and nothing I couldn’t carry in my pocket or maybe a small shopping bag. That is when I sharpened my searches and narrowed down my hunts to gold and silver. I still have a relapse now and then which probably accounts for my 60+ numbered prints, 6000 or so comic books, a few guns and some other fine collectibles, but I have been pretty true to the NO FURNITURE and NO GLASS rule. (Unless, of course, it is a really good deal)
As you can see, I am totally hooked and I must admit, I’m like a woman buying shoes. There are a few consolations, though. So far, two of my four sons have been converted into treasure hunting fiends, just by watching my finds and admiring my profits. They come to me from the garage sales and flea markets and ask how they did with a sterling candle holder they found for a buck or a 25 cent sterling ring. With my knowledge and assistance they have become very successful treasure hunters themselves. And, although my wife doesn’t have an ounce of competition in her entire personality and hates garage sales and flea markets, she has recently succumbed to the need to get up at 4 – 5:00 AM to be the first to get in to the estate sales. I think she is secretly hooked, although she won’t admit it. It may take awhile but I should be able to expand that to, at least, antique shops. She absolutely LOVES jewelry!
Now that you know a little about me and my family, I want to tell you why I have decided to write this book and share the information. After helping family become treasure hunters my eldest son suggested I share my knowledge with others outside of the family. I liked the idea of encouraging others to enjoy the fun and profit to be had treasure hunting and I know there is enough treasure to go around. So, without further ado, I will proceed to divulge all of my secrets and make every one of you a Sterling Silver Hunter just like us.
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Chapter 2: Let the Treasure Hunt Begin - What to look for
Make Sure It Is Real Sterling Silver
You need to focus! If you don’t focus you will spread yourself too thin and you will spend too much time at one garage sale trying to decide if you should buy that Red Wing bowl or the numbered painting or the old butter churn and you don’t make it to the one that has the sterling flatware set for $75 that is worth $400 as scrap.
I am the very first to admit that I have a hard time with this one but I have learned to at least restrict the impulse and focus primarily on sterling as my goal.
The other problem is something you can only learn with experience. There is a lot of stuff out there that is silver colored and until you learn to eliminate most of it with a quick glance you will waste a lot of your time looking at stainless steel, pewter, Avon silver plate, aluminum and silver painted plastic.
Some of the items, like the plastic, aluminum and stainless steel will become pretty easy to recognize fairly quickly. Others, such as silver plate, will take more time. You will soon learn to recognize Avon silver plate from clear across the garage because it has a very distinctive appearance. It is very heavy looking and just has an easily recognized pattern. Pewter will come with a little more experience. Pewter looks a lot like silver and I still have to look close to be sure but pewter has a grayer and less shiny appearance than silver. It is also worthless as a precious metal. Not to say that there aren’t some great pewter treasures out there but leave them for the antique collectors and get yourself on to the real stuff.
Sterling silver is almost always hallmarked with the word “sterling”. Sometimes you have to look really hard to find the mark as it can be literally anywhere on the piece. It might even require magnification to see it which is why I always carry a small magnifying glass whenever I’m on my treasure hunts. Just this morning I was at an estate sale and, lo and behold, in one of the bedrooms I spied a little six inch reticulated bowl that I was sure was sterling. The price was only $2 and I was so certain it was sterling that I was going to buy it anyway, even though I couldn’t find the markings anywhere. About that time I got it in the sunlight just right and there was the sterling mark. It was so worn that I could hardly find it again even after I knew it was there.