Gold Bugs, Gem Hounds and Silver Stackers
By Isaiah Frizell
We all know someone who wears a gold engagement ring, silver chain or bracelet and likely a piece set with a precious gem—emerald, diamond, ruby. How many people do you know that actually melt metals for artistic expression, beyond jewelry?
Store of Value
Most people’s first encounter with real silver comes in the form of heirlooms, decorative serving sets for high tea or a swank dinner and, of course, with higher-end jewelry. Sterling silver isn’t worth much but fine silver can be a solid way to encapsulate value for transferring it to the next generation of your family, purchasing goods and services, or holding a potentially appreciating asset. Society attaches value to various naturally formed materials based on metrics of scarcity, utility and beauty. Not exactly an investment, they’re mostly a way to store value, affording some means of protection against inflation and the volatility inherent in the financial strategies put forth by the Fed to maintain the dominance of the petrodollar as a world reserve currency. That is changing, however.
If you’ve been keeping an eye on financial news, you’ve probably seen the prices of these metals move lately, maybe not by much but they do move. Like all commodities, the value rises and falls according to market forces, following trading and mining. Silver has been used as a form of currency and store of value in nearly every human civilization since its discovery in at least 3000 BC by the ancient Sumerians of Mesopotamia.
Metal coins have long been the way we trade in our civilizations. It’s only natural that the circular coin shape has lasted. It’s convenient, small and many fit in one pocket or sack. As the world pivots toward a new era of digital currencies, many are finding a fresh love of naturally occurring splendor. What can you buy for an ounce of silver these days? Who can you purchase one from safely? Vetting online or even retail shops relies on a discernment of human characteristics and traits. How can it be done safely, securely and successfully for both parties?
The Pouring Community
Another store of value is art – paintings, sculpture, decorative pieces for the home. These have an even more intangible aura surrounding their value based on the popularity of the artist, the technique, the technology used and trends. Imagine a melding of the two where you’re dealing with a solid store of value that also exhibits artistic merit. A new breed of metal makers, called pourers, are redefining art and finance with precious metals – silver, gold and even experimental alloys.
Most stick to the original form factors of bars and coin shapes but there are some who take it far beyond. How about a giant, anachronistic hammer, engraved with exotic patterns and filigree that shines with the heart and mind of genuine artistic expression?
Ketchum’s Barry Peterson
Barry Peterson is perhaps Sun Valley’s best known jeweler from Barry Peterson Fine Jewelers, who also deals in precious metals. For 52 years they’ve been in the Valley and do quite a lot of melting of gold as most of their jewelry is made from gold. They buy and melt gold for use in fine jewelry and Peterson’s work is indeed meticulous, spectacular and gem infused. “When I first started dealing with gold it was $42 an ounce so it has changed a little. People buy it as an insurance hedge against the dollar. I’ve always advised that you don’t want to put all your money into it, it’s more of an insurance policy against cash to have some gold. But there are speculators on the price going up. I think the political unrest has pushed it up $300 recently. But it’s actually dropped a bit, which is normal, it has a lot to do with political unrest and the price of oil.”
Peterson has been around long enough to have seen things change from the perspective of a fine jeweler working with precious metals at spot prices. “Silver’s got more room to go. When I first started dealing with silver it was .68 cents an ounce. It has a lot of industrial uses to it, computers, energy and it’s also an insurance policy. The jewelry aspect though, is really different than buying it for a hedge. We base a piece of jewelry on the base price of metal, then you throw in labor and retail markup – however when the price changes dramatically like with gold and platinum, we do change our prices with the market.” Peterson doesn’t see a ton of people searching for new types of collectibles or even for insurance. “People just want to sell it and get the silver, I’ve had many people over the years where they just don’t want to mess with silver. However I do think silver is a great place to get into the metals market and there’s a whole lot of room for it to go.
“I saw it go to $50 in the ‘70s but that was run up by the Hunt Brothers who pushed it up in a few months and then bailed on everybody.” A classic pump and dump scheme that happens in crypto constantly. A gem hound since childhood, Peterson is deep into the sparkling, colorful stones. “Diamonds and colored stones are really my forte, I stick with the natural resources of the planet and that’s kind of my thing. Even the lab grown diamonds had a nice little roll but they’re now almost worthless. Part of the problem is there’s no regulation on them like on naturals. The manufacturers have flooded the market to where the price has just plummeted. The fastest way to dump the prices is to dump a bunch on the market.”
Could this happen with silver? Why is it so accessible? “The price of it just never really goes down. Jewelry-wise it all stays very consistent. The biggest range of value increase is in the bigger, finer stones. These naturally occurring diamonds, though, are going crazy. Certain stones are so rare in occurrence, they don’t come from too many places and they’re a great investment.” The common denominator appearing here is the artistic aspect. Jewelry is a fine art beyond just the classic engagement ring where even art nouveau costume jewelry or the ineffably beautiful pieces created by the great Faberge collective add something beyond – something extraordinary in value – art.
Peterson speaks with rich insight and pure history of dealing with precious metals and gems from within the jewelry industry and he too is asked about how to vet a dealer. “I had a call last night, a friend wanting to buy gold, and I said some of those houses you see on TV are very well established. They’ve spent big money on ads, and they’re worthy to deal with. They do good work. You know it’s interesting, a lot of gold and silver now comes out of copper mining. But what’s even more interesting is they’ve just discovered that in the fracking process for oil, the byproduct is full of lithium. They just discovered it in the Ohio-West Virginia-Pennsylvania oil belt. They discovered there’s going to be enough lithium produced that we may not have to buy it from China.” A charming man, an expert jeweler and a true Sun Valley resident, Peterson’s jewelry is the best in the Valley and stands up to the best in the world.
Omen Precious Metals
Reid (last name withheld) has been pouring and selling his pieces under the name of Omen Precious Metals for around three-and-a-half years. “It kinda came out of a hobby project. I stepped away from IT to stay at home with the kids and during that time I only really worked about 12 hours a week, but with the kids I didn’t have a lot of time to devote to it. So I got into silver collecting as a way to store value and I kinda got into the artistic side with collecting. I don’t really want to just be a flipper [precious metals dealer]. You know, I see beauty in the art that’s not being expressed. So I started buying tools and I have a big ol’ garage that’s good for projects like that and eventually my wife and I swapped, I went back to IT and in my spare time I had a bit more time to work on the hobby. That recipe made it possible for me to do it here and there and as things took off, well, I do it everyday now.”
Omen’s work is almost supernaturally profound with sublime mythological themes, traditional norse iconography and a core, ethereal, focus on owls. “I first bought gold when it was $1287 an ounce. In my son’s lifetime it’s gone from that to $2300. So I really focused and started off collecting silver with a lot of the basic stuff [American Eagles, Constitutional], I went into the rare vintage, went away from government bullion and started looking for art, specifically owl pieces, and I got some cool pieces but owls are something I connect to spiritually and I didn’t see a whole lot out there. That led me to finding the theme that I wanted to bring into silver – nature and owls.” Omen speaks with a practical confidence and the deep spiritual lived awareness of a father. Less a businessman than a working artist, his work is unlike any other demanding to be seen and held, owned and displayed. His work showcases the energy and dedication of hours of toning and hand hammering. They’re a site to behold.
So why silver? “I think it’s a very obtainable asset for the common man, for how powerful a commodity it is and how you can hedge your futures with it, essentially, so it has a lot of leverage in its accessibility. You don’t have to be working with fractional gold to get into precious metals.” Is the price of silver going to skyrocket with electric vehicles and technology? “I think we’re in a heyday with where spot [the price of silver per ounce as traded] is right now considering where it should be and where the economy is right now. I think the biggest turning point is going to be the pivot to the digital dollar.”
“The Central Bank Digital Currency is en route. With Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general being the preparation for a full scale digital currency revolution we can only wait to see how the American people will react. Some are saying silver, others gold and a few precious gems will be a way to have currency you can see, feel, hold and trust is real as confidence fades in derivatives backed fiat. When credit and debit cards came out many parents put them in the freezer in ice to be broken open “only in emergency”. Now, CBDCs, fully trackable and traceable units of programmable currency [expiration dates, limits on what can be bought] that exist as an electronic reading on a digital medium relying purely on electricity to tally and transfer? It’s a big ask but we shall see.
“A normal person’s experience with precious metals is usually with jewelry and even buying a basic piece of sterling jewelry, the markup is like 4x the price of materials, usually, and in our industry we’re rarely even charging 2x of what spot is. I think this speaks a lot to bringing back jobs to America and the concept of real money to a society that’s lost it. That’s pouring, doing it. Being able to push this stuff that’s less than 2x the value of the metal including labor with an American maker, handmade, there’s so many layers to it and I think we’re in the heyday of silver making. I love it right now and can’t get more hyped about this industry.”
Viking Family Foundry
Jordan (last name withheld), also known online as Viking Dad, is embedded in the social media community of precious metals trading. He’s well known for helping people into precious metals and not simply dealing but deeply coaching and discerning what exactly the entrant is hoping to accomplish: store of value, community, bartering, stacking for future generations. He makes a huge point of saying “Look this is not a get rich quick scheme, try not to think of it as an investment. It’s a store of value.” Jordan is philosophical to the core and speaks almost like a spiritual guide with an extremely centered moral compass, ethical even in the words he chooses.
Jordan is a banker by trade but a stacker and creator by nature. His wife had been heavily into crypto and they were watching the ways in which these digital investments worked, who they went through and how and what it took to liquidate, when and it dawned on them that there was something immoral about cryptocurrency. Going through the layers of transactions trading Bitcoin for Circle, then Circle to Fiat, [for example] there were so many layers and maneuvers that begged the question of what are we doing and why and for who? All this hoop jumping with digital transactions, tracked and traced was a hurdle that seemed to be more about control and began to not make much sense as far as clearing the investment and being a part of that niche, wanton community.
He speaks of the structure and strictures of the finance industry and the degree to which people have the freedom to trade as they wish and for what value means to them. “What access do you really have to this thing [digital currency]? So that was in 2019 and we talked and so it became my wife saying ‘Let’s liquidate, I’m going to buy Silver Eagles’. It took three months to fill our order. I looked at it, and we overpaid for one and for two, we were out for three months with no dough and no metal, so I took over and went down the rabbit hole. The most helpful people were the old guys who owned coin shops in every little town around. They had some lack of trust, in general, they’d lived through Nixon and being taken off the gold standard.”
Making a switch to precious metals, Jordan’s deep dive led him to the pouring community somewhat by accident. “This became, you know, there are already people in our community that are worth building community with.” And community is precisely what all of this is about. What’s more community-centric than being able to agree with your neighbor to trade things that have intrinsic value to the both of you?
“I went to the coin store every single week and absorbed as much as I could. But I also met people who would do framing or electrical or plumbing or auto work in exchange for metals. That was probably more important to me than the informational side. It’s all academic unless we’re going to do something about it. The community part became – someone who could help me with something and ‘oh great do you take metal?’, and that became something I ask all the time. It was a lot more open in the blue collar trades than the white collar which is a bit of a wrinkle, but still, you know, going from my financial education and securities licenses and all that to seeing an overlay, seeing what has happened with metals as a tool for finance over the years – It was an awakening.
“There’s all this chatter with BRICS and failing bonds and digital currency and everything, however I think people have had a readiness around metals. But it’s only going to be worthwhile as a tool provided people are going to use it. If you take spot away, metals are only going to be what a private contract between two parties is worth. If you and I think that two 1oz coins of silver are worth two chickens it has nothing to do with anyone else and neither of us are setting the market for the greater economy of the US or the world. It’s irrelevant. Gold and silver is a tool, it’s been used as a currency in nearly every single civilization of mankind. You can even eat small amounts of it.” Jordan laughs.
“It’s always been a good store of value. I try to educate people to have the realization that this tool can be used for a purpose and if so I should know what all the purposes are and how I can save it for my family. We have to do all of that leg work, to build community and really think how you can save it and how might you go about using it and with whom. Those are the building blocks of the conversations I’m having with anyone who is referred to me.”
Jordan is the go-to guy for entering precious metals. He will dig deep in what it is you’re trying to do and help you understand what your possibilities are. “You have a thing that has value but be really careful if you say it’s an investment. The people who want to go out and get rich or make dough, I put a big pause on how I advise there. We have ways for people to start, I put some guardrails on us as a family and how we use it. For us as a family of four, a 1/10 gold piece is around the price of a week’s groceries. From a security perspective putting a bunch of bars in a safe somewhere, it’s just not useful. It was definitely an awakening of morality in the last couple of years [since the crypto changeover]. I never thought I’d have this, well, it’s not a side hustle, it’s more of a mission. We don’t really make any money. It’s about what we can do as a family and what we can do for someone who is trying to do for themselves. This may be beneficial to you, it’s been beneficial to every other civilization in the world so if you want, here’s some info. To be helpful however we can be helpful to people is the mission.”
Jordan is approached or referred people every month “Roughly 9 out of ten people approach who I don’t know. I do know that if there’s that many people reaching out and saying hey, I don’t know you, you don’t know me but someone said something about you and I trust that person. I have to argue that it’s divine. I don’t advertise, I don’t pay for people to come to us. It’s just been a service that started literally out of a garage as an opportunity to help people and it was you know my mom telling her friend who told someone else. It came from my wife’s revelation and became: if anyone needs this help we can do it and it all snowballed in, I don’t know, two years? And now I’m dealing with people, the vast majority of whom I’ve never met in person.”
The magic of these communities on social media comes from a place of divinity and the central concept of community itself. How do you learn to trust a stranger online? “The internet became reality. It’s kind of a joke but it’s kind of true.” Jordan puts out a family coin, the logo was created by his wife, that stands for his mission – The Viking Family Foundry. He reached out to pourers in the community and had a die struck to build this token as a symbol of family and morality. It was a stranger at the time, even, who started him out. “I didn’t know Bunker Bullion at all”, [Bunker presses Jordan’s 1, 2, 4, and 7 oz buttons with his wife’s logo] but they are in short supply.
“The whole pouring thing then became like, Omen reached out and said I want to do something together if you ever want to, I like the Viking stuff, it’s part of my heritage.’ You know, one of the first things we did together was a double sided shield you could stack, it had runes on the front and had a wooden presentation box and it was just incredible. Omen made that and I thought it was awesome. He started advertising it and he was relatively new and that brought a bit of a following. The next thing we did was the axe. [A highly decorated 1oz Viking style axe] We put that out and it blew up and became oh can we make a bigger one. Someone asked for a kilo version, for a ten ounce, and the asks just came rolling in for people who wanted to save in that way.”
Omen and Viking have a longstanding relationship of collaboration. Viking handles the passion for the educational and business side while Omen handles the pure artistry and passion for creation. “Again, it was not even meeting someone in person, it was community”. There’s a spiritual dimension to everything they do. It’s about helping people and celebrating the somewhat unexplored art of metals pouring for the modern era.
Why do people want to save through silver? It’s simple and so easy to understand.
Sound Money Coins and Collectibles
Justin (last name withheld) runs Sound Money Coins and Collectibles in Irving, Texas. A friend of Omen and Viking Dad through the online community, Justin is a dealer and collector. He’s a Goldback, silver and gold dealer by trade. “Over the long term you’re not gonna lose. It’s been weird the last couple of months, though, generic Eagles, Maples, Philharmonics, like the lower premium government stuff are harder to sell right now because of where spot is. It’s easier to sell collectibles, Libertads the stuff that’s like 50-60$, that stuff’s easier for people to swallow for some reason compared to spending 31$ for a generic Buffalo round.
“Silver is the only commodity in the world that has not hit an all time high since 1980. The market cap for silver is so low, globally, nobody cares about it because it’s such a small market. If it had a market cap like mortgage backed securities, if JPMorgan was manipulating that market the SEC is not gonna fine them a half percent, slap them on the wrist and let them go there’d be serious repercussions but it’s such a small market nobody really cares. Also you go back to gold confiscation in ‘33. Everybody had gold and silver because that was our money. It’s not gonna happen again because nobody has it now. Maybe 4-5% of Americans have gold and silver.
Justin got into silver, again, through an elder. “I got into it because an old timer sat us down and told us what you can buy for a quarter in the ‘50’s, if you had a silver quarter now and sold it you could literally, dollar for dollar, buy the exact same thing. That always stuck with me.”
Justin runs a brick and mortar. “I got into the silver and gold community on instagram and it was kinda by accident. I bought a bar on Facebook and he told me ‘if you’re into this kinda stuff you should check out my instagram page. I did and then kinda figured out who everybody was and I started doing photomats. I would print people’s logos on mouse pads so when they’re selling their metals their logo is in the background [as a watermark for their pictures]. I’d go live with Pit Bullion [famous dealer] when he was doing lives everyday so everybody knew me. I’d sell a little bit but I was never really a seller.”
Justin was laid off and he had became friends with the elderly owners of a coin shop. During the pandemic, they were the only ones open so he spent a lot of time there. The couple related to him sadly that the shop was to be converted into a bar and “I kind of joked ‘Why don’t I turn this into a coin shop?’ The old couple got on the phone! That was on Friday by next Friday I signed my lease and four weeks later I had a coin shop. Justin is heavily involved in the online community and speaks with passion about using silver. “There’s restaurants in DFW that accept silver. You can literally buy your dinner with it.”
But what about the art pieces? “I have a rule now that about 80% of my silver budget is for the normal stuff, as close to spot as I can get, and the other 20% I buy whatever I think looks cool. That’s one of the stigmas with metals. You keep them in a safe and you don’t put a 10oz bar on your kitchen counter so I buy things that look cool for whatever room I think it would work in.”
Justin doesn’t pour. “I burnt my house, man, I’m clumsy” he laughs. Self-deprecating but only a bit, he carries the knowledge and wisdom of 24 years of precious metals experience. Justin does, however, do collabs with different pour artists – Omen included – to create pieces he likes.
There’s a growing interest in having objets d’art that has boosted this online community into a growing medium for double edged art. You have a beautiful, intrinsically valuable precious metal as a store of value that also benefits from a premium value of the art itself. How do you appreciate a painting? A sculpture? The art market has its own metrics but with a baseline of precious metal, just like jewelry, pouring has become a discipline of its own.
Hayleybug Mint
Jay Jeffreys started the eponymously named Hayleybug Mint along with his daughter Hayley. It has become a full time family business, once again literally with beginnings in a garage, the Jeffreys now run their mint full time. How does one go from pouring a few art rounds to becoming a full fledged mint? First, you have to look at the gorgeous pieces they present, second you have to know about Jeffrey’s inventions. But again, social media is the soap box and silver lemonade stand all in one – pure community fabrication within the online precious metals community.
Upon exposure to the quality of work you immediately notice a quality that outshines even giant government mints and it was Jay Jeffreys himself who twisted his hobby into a career. “ I got into this by accident. It started as a hobby, became a brand, the brand blew up and I left a job I was at for 22 years. We kinda started where everybody starts. I was melting my first bar in 2019, kind of just playing around and my daughter came into the garage and asked what I was doing ‘I’m melting silver’ and she asked ‘Can I do it?’ I said absolutely! I put her in protective gear, showed her how to work the torch and guided her through melting the second piece we’ve ever melted. She was just ecstatic about it. We bought some stamps and kinda started selling on Facebook. It was a lot of fun, she made some pieces, I made some, we started going live together and doing auctions in Facebook groups and the demand was there for handmade silver.” Ok, but if you look at their pieces, they aren’t just graphite mold or sand casting pours. How did they achieve the finish?
I have a background in heavy equipment maintenance and I kinda used all the stuff I went to college for, mechanics, electronics, hydraulics, physics and I invented a 100 ton tabletop press. Something that would normally cost $50-60,000 I was able to build for less than $1200 so we were able to start minting and selling rounds. Then I designed and built a 200 ton tabletop press and we were able to make proof like rounds and various pressed items. It became apparent we were going beyond art pours.” They started as Hayleybug Art Pours but after their abilities did a high jump, through Jeffrey’s inventions, it was clear they were now a mint. The name became Hayleybug Mint in 2021.
Since the brand took off they no longer even use the presses. They’ve upgraded to the same brands and quality minting manufacturing equipment that all the world’s major mints use. The Jeffreys work with online artists. “I try to work with a new artist for every new piece. I don’t design the art, I leave that to the professionals. I come up with a concept, they create it and we license the art.” It’s pure community cooperation and collaboration. “We do hand pours, cast pours and investment casting, and they’re hand packed in packaging we design, we do it all. Packaging has become a big part as the collectibles market has really taken off and that includes the packaging. We’ve worked really hard to design our own collectible packaging.”
I don’t totally buy into the thing about prices being manipulated, I don’t predict the market prices.. I just like to make cool stuff for cool people! I say buy what you like as often as you like! When you no longer want to buy it then don’t.” Jeffrey’s perspective is that of a pure artist and entertainer. He speaks with infectious enthusiasm about simply enjoying life doing what you want and are called to do.
think there’s room for everyone. There’s a famine mentality that circulates in the community every once in a while, when someone sees somebody else buying ‘oh they’re not buying from me’ but I think if you’re just true to the art and what your goals are, the buyers outnumber the sellers. I encourage it. One of the things we did early on we’d aim the camera directly at the work area and actually gave tutorials three to four times a week on sand casting. This encouraged a lot of folks to get involved.”
The theme of family and community accents every discussion about these artists. The community, the social media aspect and the core values of family and helping others. “We’ve been a family business and continue. My son Jacob came on with us, full time, when he graduated high school just over a year ago. Hayley is still in high school with a friend group to maintain so it’s like ‘Dad I need some money for clothes’ and I’m like ok, get to work. My wife, Tina, has a lot of input on the designs and making sure we maintain the “Peace, Love and Hayleybug” mantra. We have a lot of fun doing it.”
They do limited mintage and art pours but the quality is of a professional world class mint. These pieces sell out almost as soon as they’re announced, the auctions are a wildly fun event and Hayleybug is much sought after for their live streams. They also do custom minted projects once a week for companies across the US.
Social media is a great place to find anything and everything you’re looking for in the silver bullion and stacking collectibles world. If you visit Hayleybugmint.com, here’s a shameless plug, we’ve got a diverse range of stacking products to collectibles in a variety of competitive premiums.”
Once again the concept of trust and vetting people online is a concern. “There is a percentage of the people out there who are fake and do scam but they’re not a part of the community. What makes the social media buying experience good and safe is that it’s a community and this community looks out for each other. It can be a bunch of strangers, all you have to do is ask for references, simply asking for references is the best way to protect yourself. Word of mouth and buying from people that others have trusted and also asking questions like what is the seller’s shipping policy, their lost packages policy, don’t be afraid to ask questions. If any seller out there is not able to define what their shipping or lost packages policies are then maybe they’re not ready to sell.“
Jay and family at Hayleybug go live, big, on Wednesdays and generally do two lives a day on WhatNot and Instagram. Enjoy the photos and consider the artistry – chat jewelry and history with Barry, pouring with Jay or Omen, talk in depth with Viking about Goldbacks, pick Justin’s brilliant mind on the future of finance. It’s a wild new industry – jewelry-adjacent – and a unique blend of finance and art. The pieces here speak for themselves. They’re intense conversation starters and as a community minded person, knowing there’s trusted, friendly, happy communities doing cool things online is value in and of itself.
Goldbacks
If you haven’t heard of Goldbacks, they’re fractional gold laminated with fine art in sleeves with denominations. They make it very easy to hold actual gold and use it in a familiar way. There are curiosities with how they’re made through nano-deposition of gold and the premium that is attached but many states are supporting them and most people will trade with them. It offers a sound money, gold backed currency where there currently isn’t one. They are somewhat controversial and they’re also artistically marvelous. An interesting fact is they’re created by a corporation that has patents and does all the craftsmanship with nano-deposition of gold and sanctioned by each state that has them so far, Utah, Wyoming, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Dakota with more to come each year.
For any questions about the work expressed here and for further information contact:
Barry Peterson Fine Jewelry at (208)726-5202 or https://barrypeterson.com
Omen Precious Metals – Instagram
Viking Dad – Instagram
Sound Money Coins and Collectibles – Instagram
Hayleybug Mint – Hayleybugmint.com
Please send any questions or comments about precious metals as well as this, or any article written by Isaiah, to: Isaiah@woodriverweekly.com