How much is your gold jewelry worth?
Instructions Beware of Cash for Gold Scams by Joseph Ganem With the price of gold soaring while
the economy falters, selling little-used gold jewelry has become an attractive
means of raising extra cash. The melt value of gold necklaces, rings, and
bracelets, has risen to the many hundreds, or in some cases thousands of
dollars. Joseph Ganem is author of the award-winning book: The Two Headed Quarter: How to See Through Deceptive Numbers and Save Money on Everything You Buy.Hear him talk about the book below.
Gold dealers, who do a brisk business these days buying up unwanted jewelry in
order to extract, and resell the gold content, have also noticed that fact.
Commercial TV, and the Internet are awash with ads offering cash for gold.
Unfortunately, many of these "cash for gold" operations are scamming
their customers. It is easy to fool people, because many jewelry owners have no
idea how to estimate the worth of what they own.
The Today Show on Friday January 22, 2010, reported that many heavily
advertised online cash for gold services pay 11% to 29% of the value of the
gold. The reporter interviewed Ben Popken from the
consumer watchdog site consumerist.com that did a study on Internet cash-for-gold offers. According to Popken a pawnshop would pay far more for your gold jewelry
than many of these Internet sites. You can see a video of the Today
Show report and interview with Ben.
Popken’s advice is to always get more than one offer
for any gold jewelry that you sell. But, it is actually not that hard to
appraise your own gold, and determine if an offer is reasonable or not. The
calculator on this page will assist you in doing your own appraisal. All you
need is a kitchen or postal scale that determines weights in ounces (oz). Place your gold chain on the scale to determine the
weight.
Next you need to know the purity, which is expressed in carats. If you have the
original packaging, the purity is usually on the label. The most common gold
alloy used in jewelry is 14 carat (although 10 carat and 18 carat are also
widely used). Pure gold is 24 carat, which means that a 14-carat chain has
(14/24) or 0.58333 gold content.
The spot price of gold varies by the day. Updates on current gold prices are
shown below the calculator on the left.Those are all the numbers you need to
appraise the gold content of your jewelry. Enter them into the calculator on
this Web page and click compute.
Obviously no dealer will offer you full price for your gold jewelry. The dealer
needs to cover costs of overhead, purifying the gold, and reselling it. The
dealer would not be in business without a markup. But, if you are offered less
than 50% of the gold value you should shop around. A local pawnshop might offer
as much as 75% of the gold value.
