Episode Summary
In this episode, Johnny Mueller explores the cost of living in Latin America, focusing on the affordability of daily newspapers as a benchmark. He compares the prices of newspapers in Latin America to those in the U.S., highlighting the significant cost difference. He explains that the low cost of living in Latin America is partly due to lower labor costs, especially in journalism, where reporters earn significantly less than their counterparts in the U.S. Johnny also critiques the value of certain college degrees, such as journalism and communications, arguing that they often lead to underpaid or unstable careers. He concludes by suggesting that expats can estimate the cost of living by checking the price of local newspapers and comparing them to U.S. newspapers.
In this segment, Johnny Mueller compares the cost of a daily newspaper in the United States to the cost of a local newspaper in Latin America, highlighting the differences in cost of living. He explains that if you buy locally, the cost of living is significantly lower, but if you rely on imported products, you'll end up paying first-world prices. He also discusses the challenges expats face with language barriers, particularly in rural areas where locals may not speak Spanish well or be literate in the language. Johnny then introduces the concept of pocket translators as a modern solution to language barriers, noting that they have improved significantly over the years, with some models now featuring voice recognition and visual displays.
In this segment, Johnny Mueller discusses the functionality and practicality of voice recognition translators that can translate between English and Spanish, as well as other languages. He highlights their usefulness in real-time communication, noting that they work in both directions and can be helpful in various situations. However, he also raises concerns about the security risks associated with carrying such devices, especially in larger Latin American cities, where they could make an expat a target for thieves. He suggests that while these devices are convenient, they come with trade-offs between security and convenience. Johnny also mentions that future versions of these devices may be smaller and less noticeable, which could reduce the risk of theft. He concludes by expressing that while he personally might eventually want one, he recommends waiting a year or two before purchasing due to the current risks involved.
In this segment, Johnny Mueller discusses the current state of translation technology and its practical applications for expats, particularly in Spanish-speaking countries. He highlights the availability of Google Translate and its audio features, which can be used on smartphones and Blackberries, making dedicated translation devices unnecessary. However, he also warns about the security risks associated with carrying such devices in Latin America. The segment then transitions to a discussion about the rising value of precious metals like gold, silver, and platinum, and how this has led to new market opportunities in the region. Johnny notes that many people in Latin America are unaware of the true value of their jewelry, often owning items with little real gold content, such as gold-plated pieces. He explains how this lack of knowledge makes them vulnerable to exploitation by buyers offering high prices for their jewelry.
In this segment, Johnny Mueller discusses the disparity in gold prices between local jewelry buyers and international scrap companies. He explains that a 14 carat gold necklace weighing one ounce contains $870 worth of gold, yet local buyers offered only $410, which was significantly less than the market rate. Johnny then recounts his experience at a local mall where he observed a gold buyer testing jewelry with nitric acid and offering low prices to desperate customers. He highlights how these buyers exploit the public's lack of knowledge and desperation, often giving misleading results with chemicals to justify low offers. Johnny also notes that many people believe they are getting a good deal because they bought their jewelry when gold prices were lower, not realizing the significant increase in gold prices over the years. He concludes by suggesting that expats or expat wannabes could capitalize on this market gap by offering better prices and services to local buyers.
In this segment, Johnny Mueller outlines a business opportunity for expats in Latin America to profit from buying and reselling jewelry. He suggests that local buyers often pay significantly less than the market rate, creating a margin for expats to capitalize on. He emphasizes that expats can use their position as 'first world gringos' to gain trust and advantage in the market. Johnny also highlights the importance of testing jewelry for authenticity and value using a $29 testing kit, which allows expats to become experts in jewelry appraisal quickly. He uses the example of a gold maple leaf coin to demonstrate how local dealers often underpay for gold, reinforcing the idea that expats can make a profit by being more honest and fair in their dealings. Johnny concludes by stating that this business model requires minimal startup costs, no inventory, and no overhead, making it an ideal option for expats with limited capital.
Topics
Cost of living in Latin America, Affordability of newspapers as a cost benchmark, Labor costs and journalism salaries, Critique of journalism and communications degrees, Comparison of cost of living between Latin America and the U.S., Cost of living comparison, Language barriers for expats, Pocket translators as a solution, Voice recognition translators, Language translation, Security risks for expats, Convenience vs. security trade-off
Chapters
00:00:00 Opening 00:01:01 Cost of Newspapers in Latin America vs. the U.S. 00:02:18 Labor Costs and Journalism Salaries 00:03:47 Critique of Journalism and Communications Degrees 00:04:50 Cost of Living Comparison: US vs. Latin America 00:09:09 Modern Pocket Translators with Voice Recognition 00:09:56 Do I recommend these things? 00:10:55 The risk of carrying expensive electronics 00:13:03 Wait a year or two before buying 00:14:05 Google Translate as a Translation Tool 00:15:54 The Rise of Precious Metals 00:18:24 Calculating the Value of a Gold Necklace 00:18:44 Johnny's Investigation into Local Gold Buyers 00:19:37 The Desperation of Local Jewelry Sellers 00:22:13 Opportunity for Expats in the Gold Market 00:23:16 Profit Potential in the Jewelry Market 00:23:39 Tools for Jewelry Appraisal 00:25:04 Johnny's Gold Maple Leaf Coin Example
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the original recording; names and wording may contain errors.
[00:03] Hi everybody, I'm Johnny Mueller and you're listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America. The show that tells you what it's really like to live, work, play and or retire in Latin America. I tell it just like it is, not the version they give you in those glossy travel magazines, or the picture they paint for you in those international traveler websites, where they're only trying to sell you something. What's it really like for expats living in Latin America? Well, it's time to take off those rose colored glasses and find out. So let's get started. Now people always ask me about the cost of living down here in Latin America, and one of the easiest ways for you to tell the cost of living in any country is to check the price of the nation's biggest circulation newspaper, the daily newsstand price that is. And if you compare the newsstand price of any big daily circulation newspaper down here
[00:53] against the newsstand price of let's say the Chicago Tribune or the New York Times or the Miami Herald, you get an idea just how cheap it is to live down here. For example, I just checked out the newsstand price of more than a dozen big city newspapers down here in Latin America, some of the biggest cities in Latin America that is, and they range from 25 cents US to about 50 cents US, averaging about 35 cents per issue at the newsstand. Now compare that with the New York Times, which is $2 at the newsstand, the Chicago Tribune, which is $1 at the newsstand, and the Miami Herald, which is a buck at the newsstand. And if you average together a couple of dozen of the big city newspapers up north, you come out with about $1 to $1.25 as the average cost for a daily newspaper at the newsstand. Not including the Sunday edition, which is always more.
[01:40] Even down here in Latin America, they have double wide Sunday editions, and they're always a little more expensive too, about a third more than the weekday edition. So if you do the numbers, it turns out the big city newspapers down here in Latin America are about one third the price of the big city newspapers up in the first world, and they're just as thick and full of ads and full of all kinds of junk and flyers and inserts. So even though you pay about a third less, you get about the same volume and mass of junk as you get with a first world big city newspaper. And you wonder, how can they do that down here? How can the cost of living for almost everything produced locally be a half to a third of what it is in the first world? Well, that's simple. It's about the labor costs. And nothing is more labor intensive than a newspaper. And the fact is, I know quite a few reporters down here in Latin America still living with
[02:27] their moms and dads after five or 10 years of working on a big paper. And that's because they just can't afford to move out. Because the average newspaper reporter down here working full time, even for a big newspaper, only makes between $300 and $400 a month. And that's a guy with a college degree. And even if you're lucky enough to have a byline or your own column, why you only make about $500 a month in that case. Which even down here in Latin America barely qualifies a person for the middle class. And as you well know in the United States, that would be abject poverty. Because even $500 a month is only a yearly salary of six grand. Barely enough to live in a cardboard box or under a bridge in Cleveland. But even at those crappy salaries, journalism is considered a prestige profession. And a lot of young students that you might talk with on the streets say they want to
[03:16] go into it. They think it's a glamour profession. But how much glamour can there be when you're still stuck living with your parents when you're 35 years old? Go figure. But still, the universities down here are just cranking out people with communications and journalism degrees. Even though only one out of about 20 of those graduates will ever make a living at it. But the schools never tell you that. Because for them it's all about enrollment. Now I know I'm going to step on some people's toes when I say this. But I think that communications and journalism are two of the most useless college degrees ever conceived by man. Next to psychology, art, drama, acting, sociology, political science, physical education, and African American studies. Sorry, but let's be realistic. And I'm not saying that going to school to get one of those degrees is bad.
[04:03] Because any kind of education is a good thing. What I'm saying is if you're looking at a chance to get a real job when you actually graduate and get out of the university, in your chosen field, the plain fact is any one of those careers and a buck will get you a cup of coffee. Down here anyway. And up in the first world, any one of those careers and about three bucks will get you a cup of coffee. Discrepancy and the cost of living, you know? So back to my basic point. If you want to determine a very good approximation of just what the cost of living is in a particular area or particular big city down here in Latin America, all you have to do is Google that city or countries, biggest circulation newspapers, look at the front page on any one of the additions, and you'll see the cost in their local currency, whether it's pesos or boulevards or whatever. Then you do the conversion into dollars, which you can also get off Google.
[04:50] Then compare that to the average daily newsstand cost of a big city US paper, like the Chicago Tribune. And right now, in late 2011, that averages out to about a dollar on the newsstand. That's your average cost of a big city daily in the United States. Then compare the two prices, and you've got a really good representation of the differences in cost of living. That is, if you buy locally, if you're down here in Latin America, buying their local products, not imported products. Because if you're addicted to imported products, you're always going to pay first world prices, or maybe even a little more. Because anything imported from the first world has a bit of taxes added to it, and of course, there's the shipping cost. Now lately, on my last show or two, I spoke a little bit about getting a Spanish translator if your Spanish really stinks. I spoke of some very neat, interesting, and inexpensive ways to find and hire a fully
[05:39] bilingual Spanish translator, full time for only around 100 bucks a month. But there's another translation option that I didn't talk about, that is pretty new and I think is kind of important and should be brought up, that I think maybe some of you expat wannabes up there are already thinking about, and I'm surprised nobody sent me an email on it. Anyway, just to cover all the bases, let's talk about some of the new high tech stuff on the market. I know when I first came down, and my Spanish really sucked, I felt like a fish out of water, and I know some of the locals took advantage of me because of that. The locals obviously pegged me as a clueless rich gringo, looking for help. Well, they were half right, clueless yes, rich no, and some of them were glad to help me out. At gringo prices of course, especially in the tourist towns where they always get away with it, because first worlders there don't know enough Spanish to know the difference.
[06:28] All they know is that whatever they're getting, it's cheaper than the United States, even if they're paying double what the locals pay for things. It's still cheaper than up in Seattle. And locals can tell you're looking for somebody to hold your hand, because they can see you're having a tough time just getting the basics down. Now we all know, learning some Spanish, and even finding a good Spanish translator, does take some time. But there is a way to dive right in with the Spanish speakers from day one, even if your Spanish sucks or is non-existent. Now if you Google the words pocket translators, a whole list of little electronic devices will come up, all of them only about as big as a cell phone or a little larger, costing anywhere from about $50 to $500, quite a range. Now I remember about 10 years back when I last investigated these things, and they were just devices with a little keyboard, that you had to punch in the word in English, and
[07:18] you'd get the translation right away. But, can you imagine yourself sitting at a restaurant for example, or a bus stop or a train station, or a place off the beaten tourist track, and you're looking for your hotel or your bed and breakfast, and you're a little bit flustered and you just can't get your point across, what if you're out of the city and you're with a bunch of indigenous people, who have pretty tough accents to begin with. Not so clear and defined as Spanish speakers in the big city. And when you're off the tourist trail, which I always recommend, they don't know a lick of English. And a lot of times when you're exploring out in the hinterlands, you'll find yourself in the midst of vaqueros and campesinos, that is farmers and cowboys, who'd never actually been face to face with a gringo in their whole lives. And they might not even be able to read Spanish very well. And even if you did have an intelligible phrase typed out in your Spanish translator, they
[08:05] wouldn't be able to read it anyway, even though it's in Spanish. Because after all, in some countries down here, especially when you're talking about indigenous Indian populations and people who live in the Boonies, when you're on their stomping grounds, there could be from a 30 to 40% illiteracy rate. So a good percentage of those people won't even be able to read even simple Spanish. So even if you could write something out in Spanish for them, or show them a Spanish phrase on your pocket translator, you're just not going to get anywhere with them. And you know about 10 years ago, when those electronic translators first came out, I really thought those companies were onto something good. But the models they had with those tiny little keyboards just weren't ready for prime time. Not to mention, if you dropped it on the ground or spilled a beer on it, the game would be over. But now let's flash up to 2011.
[08:50] Man, things are really different now. And if you look at those little pocket translators, they've come a super long way. In fact, if you buy one of the more expensive ones for 200 bucks or so, they have got great automatic voice recognition. That means you can speak right into it in English, and instantly, it'll give you a phrase right back in Spanish. Pretty much Stephen Hawking style, like this. Hola, buenos dias, mi nombre es Johnny Mueller, como se llama. Kind of like that, but nevertheless, intelligible. There's also a little video screen on the device that actually spells out the letters in Spanish. So you can hear the words and see the letters. And the really great thing about these little translators is that they work in reverse. If someone speaks into it in Spanish, you'll get the English translation immediately the same way, by audio and on the screen.
[09:37] Again, Stephen Hawking style, but intelligible. And as long as a local Spanish-speaking person speaks into it slowly and enunciates decently, and doesn't use too many slang words, when it's translated into English, there'll really be no doubt as to what he's trying to get across to you. Though it's never a perfect translation, you'll get the point, believe me. So the question is, do I recommend these things? Well, they work alright, though there's a bit of a learning curve, and you might get frustrated at first. But here's the thing. Knowing Latin America like I do, and thinking about the various scenarios, there are a few problems. Besides the fact that if you drop it or spill beer on it, well, who knows? But then again, I can't tell you how many times I've dropped my cell phone. Many times it's hit the pavement so hard that the back flew off. But they keep on working, don't they?
[10:23] Though I don't know about those blackberries and smartphones. They're complicated, and there's a lot more to go wrong. I'm actually surprised that more of them don't bite the dust. So even if you treat one of these things badly, that could be the least of your problems. The fact is, every time you whip that thing out, people are going to be around to see that you've got an expensive piece of electronics in your hand. And suddenly you're a target for thieves. And like I've said in so many past shows, it's not a good idea at all to bring down your blackberry or your laptop or your iPod or your Kindle, because that's not a way to blend in with the common people. And the way to remain very safe down here, and not have anyone bother you or target you for a robbery, is to keep a low profile. And if you dress like a first world tourist, and whip out expensive electronic gadgets like that, you become a target, simply because of the fact that most electronic devices
[11:12] that first world people carry, like blackberries, are worth a month's salary or more to the average guy down here. So it's a trade off of security versus convenience. And you should remember that if you're in one of the Latin American cities of 50,000 people or less, it would be perfectly okay and safe to bring some small electronic gadgets down. Because in very small Latin American cities like that, the violent crime levels are so low, that they're actually as safe or safer than any city in the first world of that size. But if you're walking around in one of the really big Latin American cities, I wouldn't recommend one of these devices. Just like I wouldn't recommend carrying around a blackberry. But the good news is that in the next year or two, some of these companies are bringing out tiny little versions of these voice recognition translators. I've actually heard that they're going to be about the size of a big pen.
[11:59] So they'll be much less obvious and therefore much less a target for thieves. Though I don't know what they're going to do about printing the words out on the screen. Maybe they'll have a little LCD screen running lengthwise, who knows. And just a little aside here, I actually don't know what a common thief would do with one of these things. I mean, he could easily turn over an iPod or a blackberry that he's just stolen. There's quite a big market for that kind of stuff down here. And in fact, right now, I know exactly where to go to get a blackberry for half price. But I don't care how low the price is, I'm not going to buy one. Not that I'm such a morally superior guy or anything. But if I had a blackberry, I'd be a target too. But who's going to buy or fence a voice recognition pocket translator? I'll give you 9 to 1 that the average thief wouldn't even know how to get the thing to work. And you know, I've been around down here in Latin America and I've never seen anyone use
[12:45] one of these voice activated jobs yet. But I know they're out there. Anyway, how's a local bad boy even going to know what a thing like that even does? He's surely going to think it's a blackberry or some kind of a smartphone. And chances are, after screwing around with it a bit, he'll probably end up taking the batteries out and tossing it in the trash. So my best advice is wait a year or two before you go buy one of these. But I think eventually everybody's going to want one, including me. Because these things don't only translate English to Spanish and Spanish to English, they translate five or six other languages too. Just think about how useful a thing like that could be if you were stuck in China. Or how about in France, where everybody pretty much speaks English, but they act like they don't. Oh yeah, and I have to mention that some of these devices have built in pre-programmed phrases that you can call right up.
[13:32] You know, the common phrase is about asking for bathrooms and hotels and restaurants and airports and all that. You know, the ones that guidebooks always say you should bone up on. But we're usually too busy, so we don't. So all of you expat wannabes up there who just have to have all the new gadgets and have a few hundred bucks to blow. One of these new voice recognition translators might be nice to play with an experiment, but I say wait a few years and the price will go way down and they'll be as small as a pository and twice as comfortable. And just one last thing about translating back and forth from English to Spanish. Google has a really nice service called Google Translate. So if you ever have to write letters or documents to anyone who doesn't read or speak English, Google will do an instant translation for free. And the translation is really pretty good.
[14:17] And even though it's not perfect, because no translation software is, an average Spanish reader can figure out exactly what you're talking about. And what's even nicer, since about a year ago, Google has offered an audio translation too, so you can hear the words and phrases come out in Spanish or English. So Google has this program called Google Translate. Google Translate lets you listen to audio recordings of translated documents or texts that Google has actually translated itself. And you can translate the text and convert it to an audio recording if you want, right then and there as it's translating in real time. So you or someone else can listen to it now or later. And I know what some of you are thinking right now. If you have one of those smartphones or a Blackberry, if you're traveling around in a Spanish-speaking country, it would be like having a voice recognition device without
[15:05] actually buying one of those dedicated translator units. I know that there's some apps out there already for Blackberry's androids and smartphones. As a matter of fact, you don't even have to go to Google's webpage. There are all kinds of apps for English to Spanish and Spanish to English translations already and voice recognition apps. So there's a good chance if you have a smartphone or a Blackberry that you'll never have to buy one of those voice recognition devices at all. You just get the app or call up Google Translate. But then if you're down in Latin America with a Blackberry or a smartphone, you run into that security problem again and you're at target for thieves. So here we go again. It's a judgment call. Hauling your Blackberry or smartphone with you down here does have its risks, but if your Spanish sucks, it could come in really handy. Okay enough about that.
[15:51] But now I'd like to talk about another subject. Gold, platinum, silver, and other precious metals. Now in the last year or two, as gold and silver and platinum and other precious metals continue their rise into the stratosphere, even though they've slipped back a good 20% in the last few weeks. Anyhow, they've gone up so dramatically in the past two years. They've beat out almost every other common investment on the planet. Anyway, down here as usual in Latin America, it took some time, but the vultures have landed. And what do I mean by that? Well all of a sudden I'm seeing, in the classified sections of the big newspapers down here in Latin America, advertisements offering to buy your gold, silver, platinum, and any other jewelry at the highest prices in history. At least that's what they promise you when you bring your junk jewelry in. Now I never saw these kind of ads in the paper before.
[16:38] They've just popped up in the last few months and they're making money hand over fist. In fact, it would probably be illegal if you tried to pull something like that up in the past. Latin America has no idea whatsoever how much gold or silver or platinum is actually in a piece of jewelry. In fact, the average Latin American has no idea the difference between 18, 14, or 10 carat gold. And they have no idea what the price of jewelry should really be when they have the money to actually buy it. So they get royally ripped off when they buy it and when they get desperate enough to want to sell it for junk jewelry. They get caught in the squeeze both ways, coming and going. Not that the average first world jewelry buyer is that much smarter, but down here it's absolutely ridiculous. And the fact is, every Latin American girl and some guys have their little box full of
[17:26] jewelry stuffed away somewhere in their bedroom. And normally they won't have much real gold at all. Very little 10, 14, or 18 carat gold. Probably less than 5% of all the jewelry down here that looks like gold actually has enough gold in it to be of any real value when melted down for scrap. Because what the people down here buy like it's going out of style is gold plating. In fact, they have different kinds of names down here for different kinds of gold plating. And I know there's a half a dozen plating styles, but the ones I've heard of are Brasilania from Brazil, Chapiada, and Chapina. But it doesn't matter, plated gold is all junk jewelry and not worth anything really. Except of course for sentimental value. But what happens down here is that these buyers of gold take advantage of the ignorance of
[18:11] the population. Because let's say a person has a 14 carat gold necklace that they want to sell and it weighs exactly one ounce. Now 14 carat means it's 58% gold. And the rest is base metal not worth anything really. So if gold is $1,500 an ounce today and you have a 14 carat necklace that weighs one ounce, that means 58% of it is gold. So 58% times $1,500 means that necklace has $870 worth of gold in it. Which is .58 times $1,500. Now I wanted to see just how crooked one of these gold buyers was and I went down to one of the local shopping centers where a company had set up a booth in the mall to buy your silver and gold. At a great price according to them of course. And I walked up to the guy with the scale and the little bottles of nitric acid.
[19:01] The stuff to test gold jewelry with to check on his purity. And I asked him what he'd pay for a one ounce chain of 14 carat gold. And he hemmed it hard a while and he made some calculations and he said he'd give me $410. But he didn't know that just that morning I looked it up on the internet and one of the scrap companies in the US would give me $820 for it. And that was the going rate all over the internet. And when I told him that fact, his face looked a little shocked. Because I'm sure none of his customers, the common people walking in and trying to sell their gold jewelry to him, had done a single bit of investigation beforehand about the price of gold and gold jewelry. But one thing was for sure, all of his clients were in desperate straights. Because you have to be really broke to sell your jewelry now, don't you? Anyway, he looked at me like I'd just come from Mars and he said, if it was really 14
[19:49] carat and it was really one ounce, he'd give me $600 for it. Which was still 25% below the price that I could get on the internet that day. But he did jack up his original price in a hurry, didn't he? But just then, a group of ladies walked up, indigenous ladies in typical garb, and they handed him some jewelry. And this is where the fun really began. Now one lady had a nice little bracelet and she handed it to him and said, this is 10 carat gold, what can you give me for it? And the guy clipped on his little eyepiece to his glasses and he looked at the marking and it did say 10 carat on it. It was stamped all right. Then he opened up one of his little bottles of nitric acid and he put a drop of it on the underside of it and it began to bubble away in green little globules. And then he shook his head and said to the ladies, I'm sorry, this might say 10 carat on it, but it's really not.
[20:35] He explained that the 10 carat stamp was just for the clasp, but the main part of the bracelet was well below that. And then he offered them a real lowball price and they took it because they were desperate and needed the money. But in reality, they were quite happy because as they walked away, one of them said to the other, that's almost twice what I paid for it. And that's the ace in the hole for these jewelry buyers. Gold prices went up so much that these people think they're getting some kind of a good deal. Because they're remembering the price that they paid when gold was way down and feel like they've won the lottery or something because they're getting back more than what they paid for that piece of jewelry. Not realizing, of course, that the price of gold has gone up 500% in the last few years. And almost all of them bought their jewelry well before gold took off like that.
[21:22] Now the thing is, when somebody takes out a little bottle of a chemical like nitric acid and puts a drop of it on a piece of jewelry, there isn't one common man in 10,000 that knows exactly what's going on there. But they're always impressed because it does look pretty scientific. And after these gold buyers get done weighing and putting a few chemicals on your jewelry, the person bringing in the jewelry almost always believes what the guys got to say. And it seems like these guys who buy jewelry in these commercial centers or wherever they set up, they're trying to scam everyone that brings in a piece of jewelry simply because they know the public is stupid and desperate to sell. And though everybody has an inflated value of their own jewelry, they usually accept anything the guy tells them is fact. And these days, like I said, since the price of gold has skyrocketed and most of them bought when gold was very low, they think they're getting a great deal.
[22:09] Because they almost always make more than the price they paid for this stuff years ago. Which means here's a great opportunity for expat wannabes to start a little business for themselves down here. I mean think about it, if the average guy buying gold jewelry down here is paying less than half of the going rate to the client. The going rate being what first world precious metal scrap companies will pay you if you package it and send it up to them. And even if a Latin person knew he could get a lot more for it, if he did send it to a scrap company up in the first world, everything's done in English up there and they don't know English and they wouldn't have any idea how to package it safely or ensure it either. Add that to the fact that no one trusts a mail down here. And if they did it through UPS or a courier, it would cost them at least $100 to send an insured package, so that would be completely out of the question.
[22:56] So here's where an expat or expat wannabe could start a really good business. If local jewelry buyers are paying half or less than half of the going rate, look at the margin that's available for you to jump in that market. And you'd be doing everyone selling the jewelry a favor because you'd be paying a lot more. And you could use that in your marketing that you'll pay better than anyone in the country and you will. Because suppose you've paid 75% of the going rate on the internet, then you make 25% profit on every piece of jewelry you buy. And all you have to do is buy the jewelry and when it gets to a certain volume, you send it up to the first world to one of those scrap companies and they'll send you a check. And it's not rocket science, believe me. You can go on the internet right now and buy a jewelry testing kit called the Ultimate Gold and Silver Testing Kit for only $29.
[23:42] It has all the testing solutions for silver, for gold, all the carrots, 10, 14, 18, and 22, as well as an electronic jewelry scale for grams, ounces, carrots, and grains. Plus instructions so you'll be an expert jewelry assayer in less than a half an hour. Now what could be easier than that? And because in your newspaper ad, you'll be representing yourself as a first world gringo doing business down here, you automatically get that extra advantage every first world person living or doing business down here gets. The Latin population always believes rightly or wrongly that first world people are more honorable, trustworthy, and loyal, especially when doing business compared to homegrown Latin businessmen who they're used to doing business with and occasionally getting ripped
[24:27] off by. So there's another great business idea I'm handing to you with almost no startup costs, no inventory, and no overhead. And the fact is as the world economic crunch clicks into high gear and Latin Americans fall into the abyss too, it's a guarantee and a no brainer that more and more of them are going to be so desperate that they're going to break down and sell their jewelry. And we all know where the price of gold and silver are headed. So all you have to do is be a little more honest than the average scrap dealer down here and you'll make a bundle and your clients will be much happier too. And how do I know that nearly all the scrap jewelry buyers are crooks down here? Well here's another case in point. Now if you've listened to my past shows, you'll know that I carry a one ounce gold Canadian maple leaf with me at all times. It's my emergency stash if something bad happens to me.
[25:13] And of course it's very well hidden and not in my wallet. And a coin like that can be traded or sold anywhere in the world at today's spot gold price. So when gold is $1,500 an ounce let's say, my little gold maple leaf one ounce coin is worth $1,500. And any legitimate coin dealer and even some banks will give me that price for it instantly. Now since I carry that one ounce gold piece on me all the time, on occasion when I'm walking through a mall and I pass one of these junk jewelry buyers or a jewelry store that has a sign in the window that says we buy your jewelry or your silver or gold, well you guessed it I pull out my maple leaf and I say what do you give me for it? And I know what the price of gold is at the moment I ask them and they always take a look at it very surprised because they've never seen one before but they know what it is because
[26:01] all the world knows what a gold maple leaf is, especially people in the jewelry business. Anyway I've done that very thing 5 or 6 times in the last year and not one of those dealers offered to give me more than 70% of what the spot price was at that very minute on the internet. And realize this for a minute, a gold maple leaf is pure gold it doesn't need to be refined or processed it's 100% gold and nitric acid will not dissolve bubble or burn it. So proving that it's real is the easiest thing in the world. It weighs exactly 1 ounce on a scale and nitric acid has no effect on it and it's very soft so it's easy to scratch. But still the dealers down here will give you half or a little more than half of what its actual value is so you can see they're all about ripping you off.
[26:48] So there's another great niche that an expat can jump right into since the local junk jewelry buyers have rigged the game so much in their favor simply because the average poor schmuck has no idea of the value of the jewelry that they have and are not adept enough to look anything up on the internet like that and even if they did they don't have the chemicals or a scale so their only option is to trust what the jewelry buyer says and as you might have guessed they nearly always take anything they can get because they're desperate and these days with gold through the roof they're actually happy to get the price that they're offered even though technically they're getting screwed but of course they don't know that. Now I can't think of a better business for an expat wannabe who doesn't have much capital at all but wants to make first world money. You've been listening to The Expat Files, living in Latin America and don't forget you
[27:42] can email me on anything at all about Latin America. The Expat Files at gmail.com that's theexpatfiles at gmail.com. See you next time, nos vemos!