He was going to be a big shot.
He was going to invest in silver.
On Jan. 4, 1980, the Herald ran into the young man while he waited in line to purchase silver bars.
“Here I’m a kid with $1,000 and I thought it was going to be something valuable. I was in on something,” Sanders, now 44 and a prominent local historian, said from his southwest Calgary home.
He and his older brother had previously profited on a small gold purchase. But soon after they sold the ounce, the price shot up dramatically.
“I tore a strip off my brother. I said, ‘You told us to sell, and it made so much money.’ ”
Sanders wouldn’t make the same mistake again.
“I wanted to be like my big brother with a valuable investment and make money of my own.”
When Sanders got to the front of the line, the bankers denied him silver bars. They said he didn’t have enough money to invest. At the time, he was disappointed.
Now, he realizes just how lucky he was.
Only three months after he stood in line, the price of silver tanked. He would have lost his small stash of savings.
“I was lucky, lucky that it was just a quirk,” he said. “It was a good thing. It was such a small inventory that they didn’t waste their time on me.”
Instead, Sanders put his money into something less glamorous — a small interest-bearing savings account. Losing his bar mitzvah money would have been heartbreaking.
“It shows I didn’t really know what I was doing. I learned not to jump on a bandwagon like that,” he said. “If you’re going to invest money, you should know a little bit more and understand what it is you’re doing.”
He’s decided to skip out on the latest precious metals rush, too.
“That was my one taste of looking to invest and trying to make a killing. I got it out of my system quite early and I never came back in my life.”
jgerson@calgaryherald.com
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