Cash for gold! Sell gold today! Get rid of all that old gold! Sound familiar? A few years ago afternoon television was full of ads for loan companies. Now you can't borrow a bean. But nature abhors a vacuum and those hours of cheap afternoon advertising space are now filled with a parade of companies offering to buy your old gold for cash. You know the deal. Throw all your gold in an envelope; send it off and a week later you will get a nice fat cheque. But how do you know you’re getting a fair deal? You get asked quite often by clients where they can sell their gold.
1. Weigh it first. It’s like anything else you sell. It’s up to you the get the best price. Before you send anything off for an offer, give it a quick weigh. Now the gold price is a little more complicated to assess. The price listed as a commodity, called the Gold fix, is quoted in ounces troy which are equivalent to 31.1 grams. Then the gold you have is carat gold so for example let’s take an 18ct wedding ring that weighs 10 grams. 18ct means its 75% pure gold.
2. The market is not regulated. This basically means that there is no set price they have to offer you. The common experience is that the postal services and web based buying services are rather opaque about what they offer. They don't publish a gold price because they say it’s impossible to keep it up to date. However a simple link to a site with a published Gold Fix and an embedded calculator would not be difficult. The truth is they sit on the gold waiting for a good price before they sell it. So go back to point 1 and be aware what your gold is worth before you sell it but be aware they are under no obligation to offer you a particular sum based on that days gold fix.
3. There is choice. Which magazine, the consumer champion, recently did a study, sending identical pieces to various places in order to see what offers they would get. The results varied widely but it seemed that across the board the offers received from postal based and web based buyers were a lot lower than the offers received from pawnbrokers and jewellery retailers. One point that must be noted was that they used identical, new pieces to do the test. A jeweler or a pawnbroker would not send a piece of jewellery in good condition away to be scrapped. They would polish it, repair it and sell it as a second-hand piece, so the price they would offer would reflect this. So, if your gold is in good nick, but you just don't wear it try your local jeweler first.
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