So, my husband’s crazy mother gave him this clunky gold men’s ring that apparently used to belong to some guy she dated a million years ago. It has a cluster of small-ish diamonds on the top of it. Total weight of the ring is 11 grams, according to my kitchen scale, and it has 14K stamped on the inside. I’d guess the total weigh of the 7 diamonds is about 1 karat, but that’s a pretty un-educated guess.
There is zero chance of my husband ever wearing this thing. I know gold is high right now, what’s the best way to get a bit of cash for this?
Take it down to your local gold dealer, coin or pawn shop and see what it’s worth. After you know that you can decide whether you want to sell it or not.
There are two jewelry stores in my area (stores that have been around for years, not those “Cash4Gold” places that popped up as soon as gold prices went up) that will buy gold jewelry, gemstones etc. and one antique store that I know of that buys and sells antique jewelry. Maybe being a gazillion years old would be a bonus even if it is fugly
There’s an article in the November 2009 issue of Consumer Reports that compares the amount paid for gold jewelry from the mail order places (e.g., Cash4Gold), jewelry stores and pawn shops. The amount paid was lowest from the mail order places, but also varied among the jewelry stores and pawn shops. The article suggests calling around (jewelry stores, coin shops and pawn brokers) and asking what they pay as a percentage of “meltdown value.” They suggest not doing business with anyone who won’t say on the phone what percentage they’ll pay, and to try for 50% of meltdown value.
The price of gold is so high now that most dealers will only give you melt down price for the gold and will totally ignore the gemstones (even diamonds if they are less than 1 caret). I just sold some ugly rings a few weeks ago and everyone offered to pop the stones out before making thier final offer (so that they could get an accurate weight of the gold). I now have a small bag of stones (tigers eyes, a ruby, some onxy, small diamond cluster and such). I’m definitly not going to do this with my non-ugly rings and will sell them on ebay before I take them down to get melted.
There’s also the option of getting a certified Appraiser, who, for a certain fee, will give you a neutral opinion of the worth of the ring - gold, stones, possible antique value. This is different from a jeweler’s appraisal since the Jeweler wants to make money, so he naturally offers lower, while the Appraiser is controlled by the certifying organisation (usually the state) to be honest, and doesn’t have personal stakes. So knowing that the gold really is worth about 2 000, lets you better decide if you want to take the offer of the jeweler for 1 000 or not, instead of just accepting the highest offer among the comparisions.
Thanks for all the advice. It’s not an antique, it really is just an ugly ring. It’s definitely not worth a lot of money. I’ll try the calling around for meltdown value avenue, and see where that gets me. I seriously doubt it’s worth more than we’d pay an appraiser to tell us what it’s worth.
Sure there should. I can’t think of a case where the word “men’s” would not take an apostrophe. If you remove the apostrophe, you get mens, which seems to be the plural of men, but men is already plural.
There’s nothing gramatically incorrect about the thread title. It is a little ambiguous, because it’s not quite clear (except from the context) whether the adjective “ugly” modifies the noun “men” or the noun “ring.” But, even if you remove the ambiguity be rearranging the sentence, the word “men’s” still requires an apostrophe.
I just sold some ugly rings a few weeks ago and everyone offered to pop the stones out before making thier final offer (so that they could get an accurate weight of the gold). I now have a small bag of stones (tigers eyes, a ruby, some onxy, small diamond cluster and such). I’m definitly not going to do this with my non-ugly rings and will sell them on ebay before I take them down to get melted.