“I understand that but we thought what we had to sell was a large enough volume you might be interested. Unfortunately your buyer over there didn’t seem to believe we had enough product for him to bother with. He told us he wasn’t interested even before we discussed volume and prices.”
The older man glared at the young man and turned back to Seth. “Well young man just to be fair how large an amount of metal do you have to sell today?”
“I really don’t know sir. I have” Seth heard the man behind him snicker and turned to face him once more. He was smiling at them. He said, “See sir. That’s why I invited them to leave. As you can see he doesn’t even have anything with him.”
Seth turned back to the man he was talking to and said, “To continue sir, I do not know exactly how much metal I have to sell. I have a small gold mine on some property I own. It was a working mine until the early 1950’s when my grandfather closed it up. Over the last little while I have mined some ore from it. I have no way to test its purity. I have melted it into small ingots using the equipment my grandfather left at the mine. I have 13 small bars that I estimate weigh about an ounce to once and a quarter each. I understood from your advertisements on the internet that you would assay and purchase ores AND jewelry. That is why I am here. And I DO have the ore with me. I just did not bring it into the building until I saw what I was dealing with.”
The older man looked at the young buyer once more. This time there was real anger in his face. The young buyer’s face was pale. He looked sick. The older man said, “You are absolutely correct sir. We do purchase ore and we do test it for purity. We can either do an exact analysis by melting and purifying it or we can drill your bars and get a more inexact analysis in that manner. In any event we will pay 99.7% of the daily London spot price for gold based on the analysis of your ingots. Would that be agreeable to you sir?”
Seth smiled and said, “Yes. I can live with that. If you’re interested I’ll go get the ore now.”
“Yes, we’re interested. Do you have it with you or will you have to go somewhere and pick it up?”
“No, it’s outside in our truck. I’ll just be a moment.”
When Seth turned to leave the building the older man looked over at a security guard. He said, “Sam would you go with this gentleman and escort him back with his ore please?”
Seth carried the ammunition can into the building. When he saw him the older man said, “If you would please follow me we’ll find a more comfortable place to finish our business.”
The older man who finally introduced himself as Roger Wilkins led him into his very ornate office. They had barely sat down when a man in a white coat came into the room. Roger told him they had some ‘product’ that needed to be assayed as soon as possible. Seth handed the man the ammunition can and received a receipt for the can and 13 bars of gold. He turned and left the room. Roger said, “Shall we go into the viewing room so you can watch the tests?