Case Studies in
Raising Money Collecting Scrap Metals
CIGAR BOX TREASURES
The question of how you might best fill your cigar box with old
jewelry has possibly already occurred to you. There are a few
suggestions that can be made to help you toward this end. One
means is by first pulling together all of your own scrap jewelry
and dental work items.
Another means is by calling on relatives and friends for
contributions. Besides, these friends and relatives will make
excellent practice situations for you at the time when you are
working to master the necessary technical skills in gold and
silver buying.
There is, though, yet another means by which you can fill your
box.
Most of the items you encounter when making your rounds will be
scrap and nothing more. They will contain no gold for you to
buy. Frequently, you will find things that would add
considerably to the suggestive powers of your cigar box.
You might, then, consider buying these scrap items for a nominal
sum. This frequently can be done, particularly in cases where
you have made one or more purchases of gold alloy articles.
Many consumers will then be pleased to sell you the remaining
scrap for but a dollar or two. In fact, many consumers will be
so pleased with what they received for the gold alloy articles,
they will be willing to just give you the remaining scrap
pieces. It never hurts to ask.
In this way, you can best work to build up a large and widely
varied number of items. And, this is always your goal – to have
as many “powers of suggestion” as possible in your cigar box.
HOUSE-TO-HOUSE
By now you probably know how to test gold and silver
and weigh it. We have discussed many technical facts of buying
gold and silver. All of this is fine, but, if we do not have
any gold or silver to test or weigh it is of no use to us in
this profession.
Everything discussed thus far is very important, but
this chapter is by far the most important. We are going to
discuss the different methods of buying scrap gold and silver,
also, how to get the housewife to look for her scrap.
We are in the business of buying gold. Yet, this is
the one word we NEVER use in our opening remarks. I repeat
NEVER use the world gold in your opening remarks.
WHY? Two Reasons:
1.
The average housewife (general consumer)
does not think of her scrap jewelry as being gold. She thinks
of it as a worn ring, a broken watch, or a broken chain or
necklace. If you approach a person stating you are there to buy
all their gold their first reaction will be that they do not
have any and slam the door in your face.
2.
Gold is a precious metal. Everyone knows
this and when you mention that old broken and discarded jewelry
is made of gold, the consumer is pre-programmed by society to
immediately think of it as having greater value than it really
has. Therefore you want them to think of the items with gold as
discarded and worth just a few bucks to them. You want the
consumer to think their scrap is worth money but NOT TOO much
money. Therefore DO NOT mention gold in your opening remarks.
All right, we are not going to use the word gold in our opening
remarks, so how do we get our point across without telling the
consumer we buy gold? Very easy! We must have an organized
approach though. Therefore the following is an approach which
has been found to work very well:
CIGAR BOX APPROACH
The first thing you should do is go to your nearest grocery
store and acquire an empty cigar box. Fill it with every item of
jewelry you can lay your hands on. It does not matter what
condition the items are in (the worse, the better of course).
The objective is for you to fill the box with as many different
items as you can.
It is not important that the objects placed in the box be gold
or silver. Your goal is to fill it with the widest possible
variety of items. It matters not if they are gold filled or
gold plated. The cigar box is simply designed as your major
prop with this approach.
After you have filled your box with at least one of each (a
ring, an old watch, chain, necklace, dental scrap, etc.), you
are ready to begin.
You approach the consumer’s door (always be sure to use the
sidewalk; never walk across the grass). When they open the
door, you should open with these remarks:
Introduction: Your name, who you are, where you live…etc.
Make sure to tell them you are not there to SELL them anything.
Then say something like: “I buy old, broken and discarded
things you have laying around your home (house).”
After you have finished with this statement, stop, open your
cigar box and take out each item, one at a time and continue:
“Now, here are some of the things I buy. See this old ring? I
buy lots of these, and I don’t are what condition they are in;
I’ll still buy them. Now, here’s an old broken watch; I’ll buy
it. I also buy dental scrap, necklaces, chains, class rings
etc.”
As you can see in this opening statement, you did not use the
word gold once! You see, the use of the cigar box is nothing
more than a “suggestion”. In other words, when the consumer
sees the items you have, they will relate them to their own
personal items. Lots of times they will forget they have an old
ring, watch etc.; but, when they see one of yours, it will
remind her that she has one somewhere in the house.
Once you are inside, don’t attempt to test or weigh the article
they have brought out to you. They have a lot more scrap where
this came from and you are going to help them find it. Find a
place to sit down (at the kitchen table if you can); then take
out your little card with the list of things you buy. Now,
begin to read each item on the card. Do this very slowly but
with a natural tone of speech. When you get to an item they
remember they have, stop and wait for them to go look for it.
When they return, you should have a pile in front of you ready
to test and weigh.
Occasionally, you will have to go through this entire procedure
in order to get every single item they have; and other times
they have a jewelry box full of stuff, dumping all of it right
out on the table.
During the years I’ve been buying gold and silver, I’ve tried
many methods and truthfully must tell you that going from house
to house is the most profitable method you can use. I have
found that most people just will not take the time to look for
scrap, unless there is someone there to encourage them to do so.
You probably are aware that, if you ask someone to do something,
they usually will do it. But, this same person must be
motivated to do it. This is the reason the door-to-door method
works so well. Your job will be to get the consumer to look
and, once they have done so the rest is easy.
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Scrap Examples