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The “Jeweler’s Loophole” — Can You Really Buy Gold For $421 an Ounce?

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, April 17, 2012

“Buying PURE gold bullion for $421 an ounce while retail investors are paying $1,700 for the EXACT same gold?”

That’s the promise from a recent ad for GoldProfitFormula.com, and, though it turns out it’s not a pitch for a stock this time around, I thought I’d spend a few minutes on the ad — in part because I’m seeing it sent out on a lot of newsletter lists and my delightful readers are asking.

It’s one of the interminable video ads that doesn’t have a handy dandy transcript behind it, unfortunately, but I’ll share a few quotes with you — the narrator is an aw-shucks Texas guy (or voice actor, dunno), and he pitches his story thusly:

“A few weeks ago a young reporter brought me a story that made my B.S.-o-meter ping at 9.5….

“buying pure gold every day for between 30 and 60 cents on the dollar…. using an old loophole he had uncovered 25 years ago in the jewelry business.”

He then spins a tale of going out to visit this guy who “discovered” the jeweler’s loophole, a story that hinges on the lush description of how freakishly wealthy this dude is, including tales of the multi-million dollar home, the pristine golf course, and the uber-fancy cars in the garage.

Which reminds me of one of the old Gumshoe rules: If they put a picture of a yacht or a luxury car in the ad for their newsletter, RUN AWAY.

And yes, there was a picture of the guy’s vintage Lincoln convertible, so you would be wise to consider that whatever service they’re selling may well be propped up on greed without much of a basis in real life … but the narrator’s description of the wealth of our modern-dray Croesus did send the taste buds a watering, just a little bit, so we’re going to try to figure out what they’re talking about for you anyway … even if they did break one of the rules.

If they show a picture of the guy’s young third wife in a bikini, or if he’s at the helm of his yacht, we might just start gagging too hard to continue. So keep your fingers crossed that they’re able to maintain some decorum.

Close one, by the way — the ad mentions the gold guy’s 20-years-younger wife, and his swimming pool and man cave. No more photos or wealth porn yet.

Then, apparently, in this “man cave” of his, he started to tell his spiel about how he got so stinkin’ rich — after being a failing jeweler in Missouri, he “discovered” how to get people to sell their old jewels and valuables to him at 30-60% of market price when they needed fast cash (that’s the $421 he keeps mentioning — though that’s less than 30% of the current market price by quite a bit, so perhaps the copywriters got this story started when gold was at $1,400? Don’t know, this is the first I’ve seen of it).

And yes, I know, we’ve all seen the big “we buy gold” outfits and the local jewelry stores who advertise about buying gold on your local TV news — apparently this gold expert says that those ads are “just helping him grow his wealth” because they try to “steal” the gold for as little as ten cents on the dollar … “they just piss people off, then they find me.”

So this guy thinks that he’s getting rich buying old gold jewelry because he doesn’t have high overhead (no advertising) and can make just as much profit as the big advertisers without lowballing sellers, and because, unlike cheap employees of the mall kiosks he can “think” and pay more for valuable stuff.

After that, it’s a pretty straightforward story about how someone built a business in used gold — he says he “goes where the money is” by lurking at estate sales and bankruptcy sales, and by looking for divorce lawyer referrals (I’ll admit I didn’t think about the divorce lawyers).

And he said the secrets are “in the math” — partly because most people don’t know how much gold is in 14K gold, for example. And he makes lots of money buying scrap, junk from old computer circuit boards and other harder-to-refine stuff that includes gold and can be bought cheap. “Scrap gold is everywhere,” we’re told.

Which is a similar pitch to Frank Curzio’s spiel about “gold fracking” that I wrote about for the Irregulars last week — with commodity prices high, recycling is at more of a premium, and becomes more profitable.

He also spins a quick “Antiques Roadshow” story about a dozen different items that were bought at scrap prices but later sold to dealers or collectors for massive amounts of money (ie, a rare stone in a silver ring bought as scrap for $11 was worth $3,600). And of course, you can also get scammed by buying fakes.

So what, then, are they selling you?

Well, unlike the normal teasers we usually write about these folks are selling you a “get rich quick” set in a box — some DVDs and CDs that have the transcripts of the “man cave” interview with the gold guy and his “secrets” for building your own scrap gold business, like places to look to buy gold cheap and, one assumes, refiners to use to process your scrap, and presumably other stuff like instructions for how to buy a testing kit and do the little acid tests that jewelers do to authenticate gold.

For this, they’re charging $77.

And while one assumes that the avalanche of folks they’re hoping to sign up would stress the marketplace and raise prices and hurt this “gold guy’s” profits, making it not worthwhile to share these valuable secrets for $77, we should probably also note what most of us are not willing to acknowledge when we look in the mirror: We don’t want to work.

So yes, almost everyone who buys this “secret” course is going to open it up, listen to a few minutes, realize that they don’t actually want another job or time-consuming hobby, and certainly don’t want to take a class, and stuff the DVDs in the back of the closet. I know that’s what I’d do. I am, after all, far too busy blathering away to the good readers of Gumshoedom to befriend divorce lawyers and try to “liberate” their clients’ old gold jewelry at discount prices.

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I’m sure there are plenty of ways you could make some money in the scrap gold-trading business — but I’m also pretty sure that if you’re a good enough salesman and have that “wheeler dealer” gene, you’re probably going to do fine in any business. There are hundreds of “cash for gold” websites and refiners that will also teach you how to sniff out gold and give you these kinds of “tips,” because they’re trying to build up the “inflow” into their refining operations and take their cut off the top of the gold that’s recycled and melted down.

If you want the simple math, by the way, anyone with a computer or access to a library can easily get the quickies: The rough numbers are that there are about 30 grams in a troy ounce (gold is priced in troy ounces, not “regular” ounces that we use for everything else); there are about 1.1 “regular” ounces in a troy ounce, and jewelry is almost never pure gold because pure gold is very soft — gold karats are an indication of purity (24 karat is 99% pure, 18 karat is 75% pure, 12 karat is 50% pure, etc., and it’s the pure gold that goes for $1,650 an ounce so, depending on what it costs to refine, 12 karat gold should probably be worth a bit less than $800 an ounce. For what it’s worth, european jewelers often use a percentage number instead of karats when they’re putting little stamps on their pieces, so 999 instead of 24 karat and 750 instead of 18 karat.

Oh, and yes, there are a lot of fakes out there, and probably a lot of fraudulently misidentified pieces of jewelry (ie, stamped with 18K but actually 10K, or gold plated but not gold throughout, etc.) — so sniffing out that kind of stuff is probably a big part of the learning curve, along with finding divorce lawyers and old caches of circuit boards and quiet estate sales. There are a variety of tests that you can do to test gold, including simple stuff like “is it magnetic” (gold isn’t) and “will it scratch glass” (high purity gold won’t), though I’d personally shy away from the “bite test” that you might remember from old Westerns (I’m making my dentist wealthy enough already). And from what I can tell there are a bunch of electronic test machines available now, but for real testing most folks still use acids (acids react to most metals by fizzing and bubbling, but don’t do that with pure gold, and different acids and concentrations can be used to test for different purities and metals). You can get cheap acid test kits for various gold purities for ten bucks or so online.

So sure, if you’re an Antiques Roadshow enthusiast and want to learn more than the basics about testing gold, and build a business by recycling jewelry and circuit boards and old dental scrap gold, feel free to jump in and start reading online — or heck, even spend $77 if you want to buy this particular course or one of the other many such “training packages” that are available out there from various refiners and promoters, but (and I can’t be more clear about this), I’m LAZY, that’s why I invest in stocks, so I can get other people to build businesses and make my money grow while I lounge in a hammock … if I wanted to actually work I’d get a job or start a business doing something I like (OK, so I’ve done that — and I almost never get to sit in the hammock because the little Gumshoes are always trying to use it to kill each other, but you get the point) … I have no interest in trying to compete with the bored and glassy-eyed (and completely un-busy) “cash for gold” guy I see in his little kiosk whenever I am forced to visit our local mall, and I don’t want to have “I’ll buy your gold” tupperware parties and try to rip off all my friends.

So there you have it — yes, you can buy gold for $421 an ounce, sometimes … but you have to find it. And convince them to sell it to you. And make sure it’s real. And send it off somewhere to be refined.

Or if you just like the shiny stuff and don’t want to get your hands dirty, you can always buy pure gold for the market price (I’ve been using GoldMoney lately, and also buy coins on occasion), or invest in a miner who can pull it out of the ground for probably $700-1,000 an ounce in most cases these days, or a royalty owner or streamer (like those pitched by Matt Badiali as “secret gold societies“) who invests up front to buy cheap gold (yes, sometimes around $400 an ounce).

So … if you’re a burgeoning “gold recycler” who uses the “jeweler’s loophole,” feel free to let us know your top secret tricks of the trade with a comment below. And don’t worry, tomorrow we’ll make every effort to get back to writing about something we actually know about.

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martin allen
Guest
martin allen
April 17, 2012 11:43 am

As a jeweler, I can tell you that there is good money in buying scrap gold. It has kept many jewelry stores alive over the past two years. However, the market is saturated with home gold parties, mall kiosks, and every legitimate jewelry store and pawn shop in the country. Usually there is also a gold buying license that you need to acquire AND you need to make a police report of every item you purchase and hold it for two weeks before you can scrap it – that’s the legal way to do it anyway. Oh yeah, are you going to pay in cash?

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fireball
Guest
fireball
April 17, 2012 11:50 am

i owned mfgd for a little while. that was the ticker for cash for gold. i started feeling a little guilty because i knew they were buying from lots of folks that didn’t know better than to sell at those prices so i sold with a small profit. i checked back about six months later and they had been creamed. i haven’t looked again but i was guessing they were actually going under.

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Myron Martin
Irregular
April 17, 2012 11:59 am

As usual Travis does an excellent job of exposing the REALITY of highly hyped ways of getting rich. While there is certainly profit to be made in buying old gold as Travis points out, most people who pay for these kinds of promotions will not actually follow through because making the transition from a job needed to pay the monthly bills to a self sustaining new career like this, developing the contacts, learning the details necessary to be successful is simply too time consuming for most, it is certainly not a quick and easy way to riches.

From memory this pitch is part of a promotion for the Palm Beach Letter by Mark Ford who is apparently so wealthy he was able to hire away a former Agora analyst to do most of his leg work for him. An Australian as I recall, and probably as soon as i sign off I will think of his name.

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Wolfgang Sailler
Guest
Wolfgang Sailler
April 17, 2012 12:42 pm

In this pitch the money is not made with the booklet and the CDs. If you proceed to buy, the site wants to sell you all the tools needed as well (scale, chemicals, the works).
Hard to believe that after full page ads in every paper there is any ‘unwanted’ gold left in the populance.

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Jack watts
Jack watts
April 17, 2012 1:47 pm

you nreed to also be aware of the letters on the piece also. Ss means that the plating is over sterling silver. Gp, gf, or plated mean that the piece is just plated with a thin coating of gold over the base metal. This means that the weight is reduced far enough that the piece is virtually worthless or worth very little.

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Andy
Andy
April 17, 2012 3:28 pm

Gold is gold, and scrap gold can be many other things. If you want GOLD I do recommend my own online gold dealer, Bullion Vault. I have done business with them the past 2 years and always come out on top. They use a foolproof system for dealing online, and BTW have impeccable references. You can choose where to store your gold (NY, London or Zurich), and transactions (buy, sell) are performed in milliseconds.

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rick
Member
rick
April 17, 2012 8:02 pm

If you google refining gold, or buying scrap gold, there is a huge interest in doing this. The problem I see is that thousands have jumped on this bandwagon, which means it is time to ignore what the sharks are selling you

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English teacher
Guest
English teacher
April 17, 2012 11:03 pm

This article, Travis, like all of them, was informative, entertaining and (generally) well written. So thanks as always. But it made me cringe to see you not knowing, or not observing, the difference between “i.e.,” which means “that is” (Latin “id est”), and “e.g.,” which means “for example” (Latin “exempli gratia”). So, in

<>

and

<>

the “ie” should have been either “e.g.” or simply the English words “for example.” The things mentioned in parentheses are merely some instances of the thing mentioned before the parenthesis, of which many other instances could have been given. “I.e.” is correct only when the things mentioned before and after it are identical, but described in different words following the “i.e.”

Thanks again for your yeoman work in the investment trenches!

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English teacher
Guest
English teacher
April 17, 2012 11:08 pm

(It looks like the “less than” and “more than” marks in what I just posted blanked out some of it. So here it is again without them.)

This article, Travis, like all of them, was informative, entertaining and (generally) well written. So thanks as always. But it made me cringe to see you not knowing, or not observing, the difference between “i.e.,” which means “that is” (Latin “id est”), and “e.g.,” which means “for example” (Latin “exempli gratia”). So, in

“. . . sold to dealers or collectors for massive amounts of money (ie, a rare stone in a silver ring bought as scrap for $11 was worth $3,600)”

and

“. . . fraudulently misidentified pieces of jewelry (ie, stamped with 18K but actually 10K, or gold plated but not gold throughout, etc.)”

the “ie” should have been either “e.g.” or simply the English words “for example.” The things mentioned in parentheses are merely some instances of the thing mentioned before the parenthesis, of which many other instances could have been given. “I.e.” is correct only when the things mentioned before and after it are identical, but described in different words following the “i.e.”

Thanks again for your yeoman work in the investment trenches!

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Don
Don
April 18, 2012 8:20 am

English Teacher, I’ll bet some of the phrases used by intelligent people these days drives you nuts. “Raised up, lowered down, opened up, fell down (I dont’ think you can fall up)” are a few. I also did know you could climb down a ladder but according to the dictionary you can. Climb seems to indicate going up. I didn’t know that about parenthesis and I don’t know if the above parenthisis is correct but I did stay a Holiday Inn once.

Galt
Galt
April 24, 2012 10:19 am
Reply to  Don

Well that certainly explains the problem…… I think it only works at a Holiday Inn Express?

rick
Member
rick
April 18, 2012 1:11 pm

English Teacher, the most butchered choice of words seen in the media today is “less” and “fewer.” Most ads tend to use the word “less” for everything. It is discouraging to see major corporate sponsors (with the money) that usually hire some highly paid ad agency or PR firm to write their copy, and they still get it wrong. Now, you would think some executive far up the pole would cringe when they hear their own work, but I guess they don’t have the smarts.

Back on topic. I saw a blog that had either 45,000+ or 235,000 members, all trying to refine gold. I have received two or three solicitations, from the likes of Bidiali, who want to “teach” me the business. Once you see this kind of flood into something, it gets over-crowded. It is like buying tax sale properties. Anything from Newsmax and Agora should be tossed in the trash. They tell people want they want to hear. They have one guy saying the world is falling in and another saying DOW 36M. Their “owner” just “came out of retirement” and made a pitch that the bond market will collapse over the next year and a half. He, in the same presentation, also said, that he had a stock that paid a dependable 7% year after year. Which is it? If bonds go to 10-17%, the value of that stock will collapse. That is a far LESS favorable outcome. And since I told these guys to take a hike, I imagine that I will receive a lot FEWER solicitations from them.

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Ron
Member
Ron
April 18, 2012 3:03 pm

Get a life !! Who cares if i.e. or e.g is used. i.e. is RECOGNIZED as “for example”

Steve
Member
Steve
April 18, 2012 5:59 pm
Reply to  Ron

No, it is misunderstood to mean “for example.”
NOT misunderstanding can sometimes save embarrassment, a job, or even a life.

English teacher
Guest
English teacher
April 18, 2012 11:10 pm

Wow — I didn’t expect my comment to stir up this much reaction! It’s encouraging to hear from others (Don, Rick and Steve) who are also bothered by the rising tide of illiteracy, while Ron exemplifies the problem — though he goes further than most illiterates, who merely PRACTICE illiteracy, by also aggressively defending it.

Rick is right, of course, about “less” and “fewer,” though I’m no more bothered by that than by the confusion of “imply/infer,” “affect/effect,” “comprise/compose,” “that/which” and many other pairs I could mention. But all hope is not lost: at least two stores that I patronize, one being Target and I forget the other, now have signs saying “10 Items or Fewer” (not “Less”) at their “fast checkout” lanes. So somebody at tbose establishments is actually literate, and seeing those signs brightens my day.

Perhaps the most rampant error I currently see is one that the Gumshoe in his comment above acknowledges making (though out of carelessness rather than ignorance, I’m glad to say), and that’s “it’s” in place of “its.” Talk about major corporations with highly paid ad agencies getting things wrong — a year or two ago I saw “it’s” used in place of “its” in an ad for AT&T! How many millions did they spend on that ad campaign, how many hundreds of thousands is their ad or marketing director paid per year, and how many months was that ad worked on?

Others that drive me up the wall include “to” in place of “too,” “your” in place of “you’re” (both rampant on Internet message boards) and “notoriety” to mean simply “renown” (it means infamy, or NEGATIVE renown).

As for Agora, they’re obviously lower than snakes and just slightly above carnival barkers and three-card-monte con men. The Gumshoe described Agora perfectly when he called it a “Hydra-headed monster.” I laughed out loud when I read that!

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Joe
Guest
Joe
March 22, 2016 5:28 am

@ Englishteacher – So, you have a firmer grasp of the English language than many. If I am to believe what your screen name implies, you are an English Teacher by trade. Congratulations, and thank you for waving around your vast knowledge.

I work on computers for a living. I don’t get a kick out of belittling people who aren’t as comfortable around a desktop as me. I’ll never understand why you word Nazis do.

rick
Member
rick
April 19, 2012 11:42 am

English Teacher, I believe Ron was trying to say that in blogs, texts and twits, the object is to get the thought out quickly. My daughter is graduating with Cum Laude honors from Marquette University, yet she manages to hit about 1500 text message per month, and do varsity choir, research and selected other clubs. And, when it comes to writing papers, she is in the upper 1%. With that said, her texts are without caps and commas, but filled with brevity, only to get the point made.

And, Ron, even though you are hiding behind the cloak of the internet, it pays premiums to be civil. If you want to do dirty, do it in your own bathroom, and not out in a public venue.

I also don’t want to turn this into the Gumshoe Grammer School.

vince
Member
vince
April 19, 2012 10:25 pm
Reply to  rick

umm… you spelled grammar wrong

Billy
Guest
April 23, 2012 5:21 am
Reply to  vince

Owned

Dave
Dave
April 20, 2012 12:10 pm
Reply to  rick

>>I believe Ron was trying to say that in blogs, texts and twits, the object is to get the thought out quickly.

In texts and twits, yes. In blogs, no. This is a blog, or whatever we might call the online equivalent of a daily newspaper column. It’s intended as serious writing.
English teacher, I am surprised you didn’t mention the death of the subjunctive. If I was an English teacher, I’d have mentioned it. 😉

Steve S.
Guest
Steve S.
April 21, 2012 9:45 pm
Reply to  Dave

Dave — Should it not be “If I were an English teacher, I’d have mentioned it. ” Since you are making a supposition contrary to fact ? – Ah, but back to the GumBlog; another great profile of an iffy business proposition.

Dave
Dave
April 22, 2012 7:01 pm
Reply to  Steve S.

Steve, you musta missed the smiley face…

wealth building secrets
Guest
April 19, 2012 4:04 pm

Yes it seems the time to get into this business is when nobody else even cared about gold. When gold was around $400 an ounce. You could have built up your business and made all your mistakes by the time gold hit $1,000.

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rick
Member
rick
April 20, 2012 4:31 pm

Vince gets a gold star! Wanted to see if anyone was paying attention. I ran it thru word spellchecker first. Normally don’t do it anyway… incomplete sentence

Dave, blogs written by writers fit your description. Blogs that invite public discourse are at the level of the writer and usually filled with errors and bad spelllling. In any case, I am not an english teacher.

Wealth building secrets, anything worthwhile usually cost more than $100.

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Dave
Dave
April 20, 2012 4:50 pm
Reply to  rick

>>Blogs that invite public discourse are at the level of the writer and usually filled with errors and bad spelllling.<<
Rick, proofing your public writing is kinda like going to the "trouble" of wiping the snot off your upper lip and the spilled food off of your shirt and getting the visible chunks of salad out from between your teeth before meeting your friends at someone's house. It's a matter of self-respect, if nothing else.

Dockie
Dockie
April 20, 2012 6:30 pm

English teacher, et al: what bugs me is the use of “try and” instead of “try to.” Remarkable that such notables as Mark Steyn and the late Christopher Hitchens failed in this regard.My english teacher must be spinning in her grave. Travis SO grateful for your work. JS

rick
Member
rick
April 21, 2012 8:12 pm

All very interesting, but off-topic. Let it be said that while buying scrap gold has been profitable in the past, there seem to be an army of ants dreaming of getting into the business. There is one other thing that many can agree on, and that is Agora publishing and Newsmax are a bunch of carnival barkers. If you don’t know them, today, don’t bother looking into them, tomorrow. On to the next teaser, Travis. Please, lead the way.

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P3t3r
Guest
P3t3r
April 23, 2012 4:28 am

Struth English Teacher, I failed but with hard work I was able to retire a decimillionair. Gumshoe OK anyway he tells it.

barry williams
April 29, 2012 4:54 am

Say no and get this useless POS (pimped in Stansberry’s latest spam – I am now done with them and wondering why I bought anything since everyone knows a monkey throwing shit at the stock pages in the WSJ scores better) for $38.50.

SHEESH!

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anzenmaster
anzenmaster
March 24, 2014 8:48 am

Most pawn shops know gold very well. And diamonds.
Where they fall short is colored stones. They will often sell emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and the rest of common precious and semi precious colored stones for the price of glass.
If you know a GIA gemologist, take him shopping with you. Pawn shops are great places to shop for the ladies.
One other thing, pearls are currently “out,” and the best “new” stuff is garbage because of pollution and other supply problems. A lot of pearl jewelry from the 1940s to 1960s is winding up in “Granny’s” estate and being sold for peanuts. You can get “Tiffany” quality pieces for less than 5-10% of retail.

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