Back in April of 2020 I decided to make an impromptu 24-hour roundtrip  to Lynchburg, VA to pick up a sealed monster box of 2009 American Silver Eagles to resell. I had negotiated a buying price of $10,000 cash and to meet at the airport amidst a tremendous presence of security and surveillance. Despite a ton of preparation, I made 2 critical mistakes throughout this process. The first was that the box was sealed, but I didn't know a ton about monster boxes and refused to buy a sealed box I couldn't examine first, so I insisted that we break the seal right there in the airport so I could examine a handful of the eagles as well as magnet-test and weigh them. In my defense, I've done many, many in-person deals and always inspect the merchandise I am buying thoroughly to ensure it's not only as advertised, but also authentic. You cannot thoroughly examine a sealed box; for all I knew, that box could have been full of rocks. I did not realize at the time the enormous value lost when you break open a sealed monster box, but you live and you learn. My second and way more serious mistake was the turnaround time on the box. I ended up selling it to a local pawnbroker the second I got back from Virginia for $11,500. A 15% profit margin is certainly nothing to scoff at, but little did I know that silver was in the process of hitting an all time high, and had I held it for several more weeks, I could have made upwards of $3000-4000 profit (if I held for a few months I could have made $5000+). Despite those two hiccups, the process of getting the box was definitely an adventure and at the end of the day I got the opportunity to hold 500 BU Eagles at once for the first time as well as to make a little bit of cash. Flying with it was certainly an interesting experience as well; TSA was very intrigued by the box and getting it into the overhead bin was quite the physical feat. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the transaction and more importantly it was a very valuable learning experience for me.