Notes from Chris

Episode 1660

Max Hockley vividly remembers the most important Sunday of his entire college experience. It was supposed to be an uneventful evening watching TV—that is, until his roommate burst into the room and threw a stack of $100 bills on the table. When Max asked him where he got all this money, his roommate exclaimed, “Silver, baby!” A friend had told him that gold and silver were at all time highs, and that he made a tidy profit heading to garage sales buying mismatched jewelry and selling it for scrap. In fact, Max’s friend had made $2,000 in profit that weekend.

This was in 2011, and Max was a broke college student who needed the money. Upon hearing about his friend’s success, he immediately begged for lessons.

He also studied up on his own. After going through countless YouTube videos and talking to a few old-timers at the local library’s coin club, Max charted a course of attack for his plan. He would spend Thursdays nights flipping through Craigslist to find weekend garage sales and mapping the best possible route to visit each of these places.

Starting with just $500, Max went on to make over $10,000 in profit in that summer. Hitting up garage sales over the past months taught him that competition was intense, and that he needed to hustle harder than anyone else if he wanted to do well. In fact, one of his most common experiences was showing up to a sale and finding out that someone else had bought the items he was looking for just hours earlier.

Looking back, Max says that the willingness to hustle was what set him apart. Not many people are willing to get up at 6am on a weekend and drive from house to house. His commitment to his craft has also left him with wild stories that he would never forget. One such experience was meeting a former nun at a garage sale who was selling some gold jewelry for just the price of $20. Max was honest: he told her that what she owned was worth at least $500—but she said she didn’t care because she was a communist! In the end, the goods changed hands for $40, which was all that Max had left in his pocket after making a bunch of other purchases.

These days, Max has followed true Side Hustle School fashion and shifted his focus over to sharing his knowledge. Although he now runs a car rental company for his day job, he remains passionate about the scrap business, and spends his spare time creating videos on YouTube to teach people the tricks of the trade. His channel—the SilverPicker—now has over 100,000 subscribers. As they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.

 

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  MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Learn more about Max and how to become a coin reseller yourself at his YouTube channel, YouTube.com/silverpicker.

SEE ALSO:

• Brooklyn Academic Learns To Upcycle Fine China: After stumbling across a collection of fine china being thrown away, an out-of-work academic learns to upcycle similar items into tiered cake stands.
• Elementary School Teacher Pans for Gold in New Zealand: After changing continents multiple times, an elementary school teacher finds true love, settles down in NZ, goes panning for gold, and ends up making $40,000/year working mostly on the weekends.
• Student Makes Selling Sneakers Look Yeezy: When a business student converses with a sneakerhead, they form an all-star pair to sell rare footwear.

Inspiration is good; inspiration combined with action is better. Now get back to work! Yours in the revolution,

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