A friend really wants to downsize her possessions to build up her bank account. She is wondering if this would be a good time to sell her gold, silver, and good jewelry or if she should hold on a bit longer for markets to improve more. Opinions please.
You can’t time the market, and you lose money trying. Better to sell now and put the proceeds into a reasonable, long-term investment like mutual funds. The steadier return of a mutual fund will outweigh the possible amount she would gain from waiting for the perfect moment to sell second-hand jewelry, which has probably passed anyway.
Regards,
Shodan
If you look at the price of gold at Gold Price Today | Price of Gold Per Ounce | 24 Hour Spot Chart | KITCO you can see (by scrolling down) the price over a variety of periods. This will give you some idea of the trend so far. The price seems to be fairly stable lately in the $1300 per ounce range, and I agree with Shodan that you can’t ever know what the price is going to be tomorrow. Might as well sell it now and do something useful with it. Or save it long-term as a hedge against serious inflation. But if you were going to do that, you should make sure you have gold that is easily translatable to cash (e.g. non-collectible coins or bullion) rather than a bunch of jewelry which is hard to valuate and which is easier to cheat you on.
We just turned some old jewelry in to one of those “We Buy Gold” places. My daughter is downsizing in anticipation of moving away to college.
I do not know what the price per gram was, but he gave her $38 for one gold ring on smallish to medium side, size wise, and $2 for a a small collection of silver earrings. He explained the testing to us and them performed the testing in front of us. There was no credit for gemstones. He popped them out and offered them back to us.
Perhaps you could call around to some of those shops and see if there is mch variation in the ‘per gram’ price offerings.
I think the only other way to get rid of jewelry is to pawn it.
People always thing jewelry is some kind of investment, but it’s not. There is no place to sell it for anything near what one paid for it unless it’s really a big, valuable or unusual piece.
The price of gold is pretty darn high right now. OK, so it was a little higher during the panic during the recession, but I have a hard time seeing gold go much higher in the near to medium future. Now, I could always be wrong. I never thought the price would go as high as it did (or as high as it still is).
Shodan is right, it is almost always better in the long run to put the money in the stock market. I like low cost index funds. Now, some people would say the stock market is a bit overvalued right now, and it probably is, but if you’re willing to keep it there, that’s where it will grow.
I have a coin collection containing many gold coins, most of which are encapsulated and graded. This means it’s very easy to evaluate each coin. Back when gold was at a crazy high, I chose one of the more valuable ones, and took it to a few “We Buy Gold” places. I pretended to not know anything about the coin’s worth. Every one of them offered me a very small percentage of it’s actual worth. You would expect them to take a reasonable profit, but this would have been pure theft.
It’s worth based on the net gold metal value of the coin if melted or it’s worth as a collectible coin?
What exactly did you think you were testing? Of course they were only going to offer you the melt value of the coin, and not its value as a collectible. If you brought them a bronze sculpture by Rodin, would you expect them to recognize its value as an art piece?
I suppose ‘melt value’ is all the “We Buy Gold” places are interested in. I asked the guy what they did with the gold and he said they melt it, form it into shapes (I forgot what word he used here- ingots?) and resell it for around $3800.00 an ounce.
I think you misheard… gold is currently trading for just under $1300.00 per ounce.
You want to be careful about where you sell any jewelry. One of those “we buy gold” outfits came to our town and our son took some junk gold and silver to them. The offered him a very low price for his gold, his response was “I will buy all the gold you have and pay 25¢ more per ounce”, they declined his offer. He has a place in Vancouver where he sells his gold and sliver they are always fair to him because they actually pay what ever the daily rate is.
The WORST time to sell it is when you see an ad on TV offering to buy your stuff. Look in your yellow pages for coin dealers or jewelers who buy and sell gold coins. Shop around, because some (not all) of them are honest, which is a great deal more than you can about the guys on the TV pitch. Even the dishonest ones will offer you a lot more than the TVad guys.
There re 31.1 grams of gold in the Troy Ounce that is used for gold pricing (which is not 1/16 or a pound avoirdupois). When inquiring, make sure your buyer knows today’s spot price of gold, which you can find at kitco.com, adjusted to the minute. That doesn’t mean you will be offered that much, because the price offered will represent deductions for shipping, handling, meltage fees, dealer profit margin. And 14-karat is only worth a little more than half spot, which is 24kt. At this moment, Kitco will buy scrap gold for 37.81 per gram, while the spot price is $1293/oz, which is $41.57 per gram. But they won’t buy it from you, that’s how much your local jeweler can get for it, but he has a cost of doing business.
I’ve never dealt with the TVad people, but I’ve heard that you will be lucky to get ten bucks a gram from them, after they take a huge cut for a dozen different reasons that you might be able to persuade them to reveal. You’re captive, they’ve got your gold, you can take their offer or have it shipped back, at your expense. If you have several competitive buyers in your yellow pages, you ought to be able to get somewhere around $30 a gram.
The sealed coins have prices that are figured on their gold content or melt value. Most places that advertise heavily “We Buy Gold!” will not give you anywhere near their value. We recently inherited a dozen or so sealed gold coins and a lot of silver coins. The difference in offers was significant.
The best deal in our area came from a shop that advertised itself as a coin dealer. They dealt with coins and jewelry at melt value and had small bullion available for sale. They checked the spot price at the time of sale and paid 10% more than the next best shop, which was a jeweler who specialized in buying and repairing old watches. The “We Buy Gold!” folks were not even in the same ball park.
ETA: The best time to sell gold is when the stock market is going down and everyone is panicing. That always drives the cost of gold up.
Gold prices are very high, silver pretty damn low.
Guess what I have… 
Its a better time to sell than buy. It could double ------ but it could also go down to like $300 gold and $3.00 silver.
Shop it around a little if possible - remember you “only get to sell it once”. The folks I work for pay substantially more than those “we buy gold” places and better than average compared to most coin and jewelry shops. Ask questions and make sure you have a comfort level before you accept that check.
I would suggest that most people are better off not selling.
While the metal value is certainly high now, you’re still usually getting only a fraction of what you paid for the jewelry itself (and a fraction of its replacement). So you take a fairly big hit in net value by selling the jewelry, though obviously you make that value more liquid or re-investable. But, should you ever wish you had a bigger jewelry collection again, it’s unlikely that your other investments would make up the cost of buying-selling-rebuying jewelry.
Plus, while lots of people like to talk about investment value and earnings, most of the people I know put that money into consumer spending that has no investment value. Even things like home improvements won’t return value like gold, and things like computers and cell phones may be necessary, but they’re money pits.
If the OP’s friend really is serious about a permanent downsizing, and a permanent re-investment, then it might still be a good idea. But I’d give it a big :dubious: until proven otherwise.
My sister has a Krugerrand, and whenever she hears about gold prices, she asks me if this is a good time to sell it. I tell her a good time to sell it is when you need they money. If you don’t need the money, keep it as a part of a diversified portfolio.
I think if I had a bunch of scrap gold, I’d see if I could find a coin dealer who would exchange gold coin for it. Coins always have a fixed value, and are much easier to sell without any runaround.
They do the same with jewelry. Take the stuff to a jewelry store that deals in buying.
In my extensive experience, there are very few “jewelry stores” that pay a fair price.
Our coin store in Northern Ohio is currently paying $18.50/gram for 14 K jewelry. Just call and ask any place that buys gold and ask how much they pay for 14K gold by the gram. Compare. If it’s close to that, then it’s fair.