A motorcycle taxi rider in Pathum Thani has turned 150 baht of flea market junk into a payout of more than 100,000 baht. A gold shop found that the bracelet he took for a fake was the real thing.
Chokcherd Duangngern, 45, rides under number 53. On August 28 he and his girlfriend walked into the Mangkorn Lom Thong gold shop in Thanyaburi district. He carried a tarnished silver box and a bracelet that looked like costume jewellery.
He had bought both at a second-hand market beside the railway line in Rangsit. The box cost him 100 baht and the bracelet 50 baht.
Staff at the shop ran each piece through a metal tester. The box turned out to be genuine silver weighing 156.88 grams, and the shop bought it for 9,844 baht. The bracelet was gold of roughly 80 to 90% purity, and its 24.30 grams fetched 94,881 baht.
The total came to 104,725 baht. The shop posted a clip of the moment online, and Channel 3 tracked Chokcherd down for an interview yesterday, September 13.
The windfall could not have come at a better time. Chokcherd’s motorcycle had been stolen shortly before, and he had been riding his mother’s battered old bike to keep working.
“When we found out, my girlfriend and I both had tears in our eyes,” he said. He has since bought a new motorcycle to replace the stolen one.
Chokcherd said the find came down to luck but also to the shop. Most gold shops only glance at a piece, he said, while this one checked every item properly. Had the staff not tested the bracelet, it would probably have ended up in a drawer at home or in the bin.
Hunting for old items at markets is a sideline he plans to keep. He now carries an amulet loupe on every trip to look for hallmarks that show a piece contains gold or silver.
The habit has paid off before. He once bought an old pen clip stamped 13K for 10 baht and took it to the same shop. It was silver and sold for just over 1,000 baht.
Goldsmith Sirasak Butchai said Chokcherd is a regular who usually brings in silver rings and chains from weekend markets. On that day the box was obviously silver, but the bracelet did not look like gold to the naked eye.
The shop tests every piece regardless, he said. When the machine returned a gold reading, he asked Chokcherd to scratch through the surface and ran it again to be sure.
“The second test confirmed it was real gold. He could hardly believe it, and his girlfriend burst into tears,” Sirasak told Thairath.
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