Jewels on the Road 

By Demetra Molyva from Cyprus Weekly October 2007

Former accountant Morne Botes, originally from South Africa, runs a unique business buying old jewellery and collectable watches from clients around Europe and selling them in London and in fairs in Germany. On his third trip to the island, Botes told The Cyprus Weekly that he buys old jewellery and watches for cash, at premises he sets up in prestigious hotels like the Hilton in Nicosia, the Londa in Limassol and the Amathus in Paphos. 

Customers hand in their ID card and a copy is kept by the company to ensure that the jewellery is genuine and not stolen, Botes explained. Business comes in through advertising, with the company running “Roadshow EU” ads in local newspapers. The company’s Roadshow always last a week. Most clients in Nicosia are Cypriots and most in Limassol are British. The collectors and clients who buy the jewellery in London come from across Europe.

“We like Victorian jewellery, that’s our specialty”, he said. If people show up with heritage jewellery, they are asked to take them to a museum. “We don’t do old things, and if some people come in with coins, we don’t deal with it, because that’s a specialist thing. We don’t deal with old paintings and things related to cultural heritage”, he said. Cyprus has been very successful in the past and although Nicosia was rather quiet this week, Limassol and Paphos are expected to be busy.

“We pay cash for everything. People don’t know us and we have to pay cash for their material”, Botes said.  Our business is a great service for people because a local shop will not buy things that we buy. Local shops will choose and buy one or two nice items, we will buy everything, we will buy the whole parcel, because that’s our service, we say bring everything and we will give you a price for everything”.