What a week!

 Well, it's been one hell of a week. I finally finished up a paper I've been slaving on and got it out. Of course as soon as I started working on it the weather turned nice, which had me splitting my time between writing and trying to get some spring prepping done. I'd like to say I put more effort into the spring prepping but... Oh well. I did however manage to get a bull calf slaughtered. He should be gracing my freezer and dinner plate before spring.

 So I'm thinking about gold again. I picked up a pretty good idea from a fella over at HT, one that I was ashamed of myself for not thinking up first. He's running a few ads on sites like Craigslist and such buying scrap gold. He pays more than the local gold buying outfits but still well under spot. He was able to pay nearly double that the local scrap buyers are paying which is still half of the spot price! Genius right? I've been doing this with copper and aluminum for some time now which is why I boggles my mind why I didn't think to try the same with gold and silver.

 I've only been buying PMs this way for about a week now but it's going pretty well. I've also managed to pick up a few stones along the way, although I know very little about them yet. It's entirely possible I've over payed for them. I'm going to need to study a bit more on them and buy a loop I suppose. All the same, it's pretty interesting and I thought it was worth passing this one on.

 I will say that you can not expect to purchase all this scrap and work out any kind of deal with your local PM dealer. It's pretty obvious why right?

 I mentioned above I've been doing this same thing with copper and aluminum. With all the things I have to do I really don't have the time or inclination to run around collecting scrap metals from the trash or whatever. What I did to get my scrap collection growing was place an ad on Craigslist saying I would buy this stuff for a little over the local yards prices. I was very careful in who I selected to purchase from mind you, and I told the few folks I decided to work with exactly what I wanted .

 I was sure that the folks I dealt with were willing to show me some ID right form the start. I have a photo copy on file of those few folks, just like the local scrap yard. I'm not trying to buy stolen metals after all. I was also careful to get a good look at the few folks I selected. I was looking for people that weren't high on meth of course. While I'm not worried about what the guys look like, I'm certainly not interested in dealing with a bunch of tweekers. Do your homework if you use this method of collecting metal! Like any other dealings you want to know the other guy is going to be someone worth doing business with.

 Some of the benefits of this arrangement:

 1. I set a minimum amount I'm willing to purchase. Right now I won't get a call unless the guys have 200lbs or more of copper and/or aluminum.
 2. I don't have to clean the scrap. Because I'm paying more than the local yard I get better quality stuff. If there are decent lengths of pipe or something I'd prefer in tact, that's what I get. The rest of the stuff is sorted and crushed to my specs. This saves me a lot of time and makes storage a breeze.
 3. I'm always learning something interesting. Regardless of how these guys might look to the rest of the world, I know they are decent guys. They have a lot of interesting knowledge to share and I'm ready and willing to soak it all in.
 4. I get to promote Ron Paul. Yeah, I said it, so what? These guys often didn't vote as they are kinda free minded. Talking to them about politics often leads me to Ron Paul, whose ideas they tend to like. I'll take any win I can.
 5. I've met some real stand up guys. My wife got a flat on her way home one evening and didn't have a spare. (She'd gotten a flat previously, changed the tire and never mentioned it... arg) Two of the guys I deal with saw recognized the car and swung back to help. When she told them about not having a spare, and that I was coming to get her one of them waited with her while the other ran back for a trailer. By the time I arrived they had her car loaded up on the trailer and were waiting on me so they could decide if they should tow it to my house or to the tire place. For this I had to force $100 on them, as they insisted good deeds are free and kindness comes back in other ways.

I feel I should add that this arrangement works well for me largely because I don't have the metal delivered to my home. I have an off site place to have metal delivered and weighed. I'll transfer it to my own trailer and bring it home after. While I don't do business with people I think might steal from me, and while many of these guys are really nice folks; I'm not that trusting to show them my home either. Just sayin.