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Jewelry - Gold and Silver
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Jewelry - Gold and Silver in 2010, if your investment was in gold you would be a millionaire by now probably. The price of gold jumped like crazy and seemed to climb daily. Naturally, jewelry prices would have to climb too, right? Of course, unlike oil, the price of gold very rarely goes down; and even if it did the price of jewelry would not follow suit. Manufacturers have been trying to milk this cow for all it's got, but to ensure that they get more than they bargained for, they have resorted to manufacturing jewelry that uses less gold, but still keep the consumer buying. They could have gone the 'strictly 10 karat' route, but 10k is only 42% gold. The rest is probably brass, copper or other alloy. Maybe they learned something from their experiment with lab-created and synthetic stones. That didn't become quite the rave they expected since consumers wanted real stones for their hard-earned dough. So, the alternative? Bonded gold and silver. People love silver, right? And it still looks gold, er... golden. So they've started promoting bonded gold as the way to go; not as expensive as gold jewelry, but almost as beautiful. And since the gold is bonded to the silver, it shouldn't tarnish. But wait. That's not all. An high-end jeweler has gone one better, touting the creation of a new metal: gold jewelry with a pinkish hue! This is supposed to be different from "rose gold" but you have to understand gold in its purest form is yellow. For jewelry purposes it's alloyed down to 22k, 18k, 14k, 10k, (and in Europe 9k) from 24k. Stay with me! To not make this piece too long, let me break it down like this: Gold jewelry is usually gold and some other alloy like brass/copper, silver, and some zinc (for toughness). Bonded gold is silver bonded to a small percent of gold (already alloyed down, i.e: a mixture of gold and copper tied to silver); Rose gold is mostly gold and copper (with some zinc). Pinkish_hued gold is gold, copper, and silver. This "new" metal could rise in value depending on how many folks fall for the ploy. |
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Rule of thumb for gold jewelry is it's typically 14K (which incudes white-gold.) Some is 18K and virtually ALL Black Hills (or other colored gold) is 10K. And silver is virtually NEVER pure... and is more often than not, nickel-silver. I wouldn't give you a dime on the dollar--for ANY jewelry. The mark-up is usually around 600-700%, at retail, over gold or silver spot price. Diamonds, which the market for such is fixed even more solidly than the London gold and silver fixes, are the express epitome of "there's a sucker born every minute." Of course, that "fix" only holds when you're buyin'. If you're sellin', unless you got millions of $$ tied up in large carat sizes (in blue-white perfection), you're not gonna get crap for them stones. Ya wanna buy (invest in) gold? Get ya some late model St. Gauden $20 double Eagles. If you wanna get into collecting these, make sure they have either NGC or PCGS certs Silver? Snatch up some Morgans. Or even some coin silver--dimes, quarters, halves (and maybe even Peace Dollars)... pre-1964. These don't usually need certs unless you are looking for VERY rare earlier issues out of the 1800's. Stay away from bullion coins. Except in extrememly rare cases, they will not add any value over the spot price of the metal used to stamp them out. None of these are certified US coin. US coins are very rarely counterfeit, bein's they are official US currency and are under the jurisdiction of the Treasury's Secret Service. You get caught with conterfeit US coin... you're gonna spend abut 30 years in a federal pen. People just don't screw with phony "money". Ain't enough profit in that.  Solar...
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Thank you for stopping by, and for your timely advice. Even while I was writing this I understood that I might not even be making it sound as bad as it was, but I decided to err on the safe side. Now, I might not be able to get close to any Double Eagles, but I might have a better chance of buying some silver. Thanks again.
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