Investing in Precious Metals

Hey welcome to this segment on investing and precious metals. I’m really excited to bring on a special guest here, Jason Nichols from Wexford Jewelers. So Jason, what got you into the field of what you do now? Gold and silver, shiny things. And I think everybody is kind of attracted to that, plus you know the business that we’re in, it kind of tied in to that. Thanks. How did you end up going from you know from where you were at to actually being the one that has to figure all of this stuff out? Sure, so we had clients come in and they would want to sell precious metals and I had no idea what I was doing. In the beginning I even melted some variable things down that shouldn’t have ever been melted down. So I had a guy come in and he taught me a few things and helped me learn my lessons. And it’s kind of history ever since. That’s awesome. And so you know, I know we get fielded questions quite a bit on hey, who should be investing in gold and silver or precious metals? Yep, I would say you know that everybody should probably think about it at least. You know, you know you guys deal with diversifying and you putting different eggs in different baskets. And gold and silver is that same thing, you know? People might think it’s too expensive, but it’s really not. It’s very affordable. I have clients that come in and buy $10 at a time, $30 at a time and you know it works for them. And then what’s like the most you’ve ever had? The biggest sale I’ve ever done was a little over $100K at one time. And so how do you know that when you’re buying it, that you’re buying it at the right price and from the right location? Can you speak to that at all? Sure, sure. We have a lot of clients come in and you know they bought something online or they bought something on television. It’s not fake or bad, but you usually pay more premium because online, you know they have bigger bills to pay. So we always recommend, you know go to a local store right down the road or as close as you can get. And they’re usually more than happy to educate you and you know show you physically what you’re, you know what you’re looking at, what you want to buy, what to look out for, you know those sort of things. Awesome. So let’s see, I think it was 2007 and I watched one of those infomercials about hey, you should buy some gold coins, you know diversify. And so I took it upon myself to do such, okay? So this is before I knew anything. Yep. And so I bought these uncirculated you know, gold coins, dollar Washingtons. And my wife gave me a hard time. She said why are you spending more than a dollar to buy a dollar? And so I’m dying to know, was that a good decison 17 years ago and what do I do with them now? Well unfortunately right now, they’re worth a dollar. They might be worth a little more 50 years down the road. But no, you have to watch out for language. Gold dollar, you know you think in your head, gold. It’s not gold. You know it is a dollar. It is a gold colored dollar. Okay. I bought plenty of fake silver. It will say one troy ounce, 100 mills. What that means is there’s a little plating of silver on there and it is an ounce. But it’s an ounce of brass or copper or something. So that’s why it’s always good to go to someone local who can say this is a one ounce silver coin. Awesome. Now how do they know they can trust you? What kind of questions might they ask or what kind of feelings might you want them that their gut is saying yep, I can trust this person. And what are good questions that they might ask to better ascertain that? Yep, you know anybody worth you know doing business with I think is going to be completely transparent with you. If you come into the store, I’ll tell you I may not give you the best price on this gold ounce because it’s worth more to a coin dealer who has different clientele for it. I just don’t have clients for those fancier coins. I have clientele for you know for people who want gold and silver for a good affordable price. So it’s always good to ask is there a better price somewhere? You know, it’s not insulting. It’s the truth. Just be open and honest. You know look for somebody who’s just going to be straight forward and open and honest with you. Awesome. Yeah, because you know in our field people will meet with us and they might be in an hour or and hour and half into the relationship and they’re like yep, here’s my life savings. You know that’s not a lot of time to make a decison on whether you trust somebody. So I think you know what drew me to you is when I went in and I just started asking questions, just your transparency. And your willingness to teach. You had the heart of a teacher and so I really appreciated that. And you just start figuring it out, right? You start figuring it out. It’s trial and error. You know you start with maybe something expensive or you start with something cheap and you might learn a hard lesson, you might not. But to have people that come along side you, especially local business owners is a huge help. Awesome. And if they were going to want to reach out and ask you some questions, do you have some good contact information for them? Absolutely, yep you can call us Wexford Jewelers in Cadillac. 231-775-1289. And again, if you’re looking for something special that I can’t help you with, we know many places local, Traverse City, Clare, you know that will more than be able to help you out. Awesome. Well thank you so much for your time, you know for being on here and I hope you found that helpful that you have a local connection of somebody that you can sit down across the aisle from and have a face-to-face meeting. So I hope you enjoyed this episode.