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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;MrNate, post: 887372, member: 5515&quot;]The buying side is a little &quot;murkier&quot;.... I&#039;ll do my best to describe my philosophy on how much to spend when making purchases.</p><p><br /></p><p>In general, I consider this a great sport searching for silver, a wonderful hobby that I enjoy tremendously. It turns out that most hobbies actually cost us money to participate in, this is one of the few hobbies I&#039;ve ever had that can actually make me money in the process. So my interest in the sport doesn&#039;t come from the money I make, it comes from the hunt and the value that items hold. I certainly appreciate making money, but it&#039;s more satisfying to simply find something that has value.</p><p><br /></p><p>So...my philosophy on how much to spend. I run a small business buying and selling stuff, and I keep track of all my profits and expenses, I do the same thing with silver. As an aggregate, I want my silver hunting to be profitable, so as an aggregate I track that I accomplish that goal. When I&#039;m looking at specific items, I&#039;m trying to be profitable (or atleast at market value) but that&#039;s not always possible. Here&#039;s a few reasons why:</p><p><br /></p><p>1. To find some of the big things I&#039;ve found, I have to dedicate some $$ to speculation. I have to be wrong sometimes. I do my best to limit the losses and make low risk speculation. Here&#039;s an example that happened yesterday. Online someone listed four sets of plated flatware for $50 total. They told me time and time again that everything in the sets are plated, but I could see in the photographs it was a &quot;hodge podge&quot; of flatware, worth a gamble to me. So I buy four sets, pay $50 and sift through everything. I managed to find two sterling pieces and one coin silver piece in the mix. Not worth $50 for sure, but I can part out and sell the plated stuff and maybe break even. So the price wasn&#039;t too high, there&#039;s other things that I can resell, and I get some silver. </p><p><br /></p><p>It&#039;s much easier to decide to buy in a store because I know exactly what I&#039;m getting. I have a good sense of how much silver a weighted item will produce, and if I find the solid sterling items I&#039;m only buying it at a bargain (thrift stores tend to overcharge if they know it&#039;s real silver). </p><p><br /></p><p>So for me it&#039;s not about the money, but the money does matter because I&#039;m not made of it. I try to make smart decisions that allow me to continue to hunt and collect.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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