Gold purchase and trade in special for Christmas

We research our competition to stay ahead of their payout for gold.

Now for August we will pay 10% over our normal high payout.

If using for a swap or store credit for Christmas we will double our normal high payout!

WE WILL GIVE YOU THE BEST GOLD PRICE YOU WILL FIND

Here are some past articles from the Community Connection on how the gold business works.

A Modern Day Gold Rush

Part 1

     The Inca and Mayan civilizations built their cities of it. The Spanish Conquistadors came and took it away.  The 49ers flooded California looking for it and men froze to death in search of it in the Yukon.  Gold has fascinated man since before the beginning of recorded history.  What is gold though, and what is with all of the flap about selling it today?  All gold as it comes out of the ground is yellow in color, so how do we get rose, green and white gold? Man has discovered over the centuries how to add certain alloys to the metal to tint it to the color desired. Copper, Nickel, Iron, and Palladium are among but a few of the elements mixed in combination to for certain colors.

     Well you might ask, If these alloys are mixed into the gold does that mean I am not wearing pure gold?  Unless you are wearing 24-karat gold you are not.  Pure 24k Gold is almost never made into jewelry.  Most jewelry in the US is 10k ( 41.7% gold), 14k (58.5% gold) or 18k (75% gold).  A lot of jewelry from India is 22K and is a very yellow gold. To us Americans it doesn’t look real because we are used to seeing a more watered down version of gold.  Be it yellow, white, rose, or green it still is a valuable asset.

     Many people have asked me “should I invest in gold now?”  “The radio says to invest in gold.”  My response is generally no.  Everyone has heard the adage on how to make money in the commodities market.  Buy Low Sell High is the rule.  If you are buying gold for investment purposes over the long haul, and you buy it at a 20 year high, where do you think you will be when you do sell it?  People trading in gold now are not keeping it more than a couple of days, or sometimes hours before trading it again.  If this is what you have in mind, by all means do it, but to invest in gold for the long haul right now just does not make sense to me.  When we buy scrap gold our computer program plugs in the current price based on the karat of the gold, and we turn around a sell it to the refiner in days.  I do not hold on to it because gold is so volatile a commodity.

     Where can the average Joe sell his or her gold?  The best answer is finding someone who buys gold that you trust.  Gold parties and gold events at hotels are generally not people you know.  If they breeze into town and high tail it back out, I would beware.  Not all gold buyers use the same system of weights when weighing your gold either.  We use grams instead of pennyweights or DWT.  Did you study grams or pennyweights in school?  That is why we use grams, that and the fact that grams are part of a Troy ounce.  Troy ounces are how gold is bought and sold universally.  Why do some people use pennyweights then?  Well a pennyweight is equal to over 1 ½ the weight of a gram. Even if they are really giving you less per ounce for your gold, it sounds like they are giving you more.  If dealing with pennyweights just do your math first.  How do you determine who is paying the most?  Well that is tough, and requires a lot of homework and math.  We regularly shop our competition to stay ahead of or even with what they are paying out, and that is hard work.  If you are going to sell a valuable commodity like gold though it is a necessity.  Please do your homework first.  Remember there have been people before and since the Spanish Conquistadors looking to steal others gold.  Those people are still out there, so pick someone you trust, and you should be fine.  Oh, and yes we DO buy gold.  

A Modern Day Gold Rush (Part 2)

People still ask me “Do you buy white gold too?” The answer is yes.  I thought it would be beneficial to let everyone know what the gold on his or her finger has in it to eliminate the confusion.  All real gold is yellow, isn't it, so how do other colors fit in—are they imitations? They aren't imitations at all--they are alloys, new metals that are created by combining two or more different metals.

Colored gold alloys are just as "real" as their golden colored counterparts. Pure gold is generally too soft to be used for jewelry, so other metals are nearly always added to it, no matter which color of gold is being prepped for jewelry making.

Chances are the ring on your finger is marked 18K, 14K, or 10K to indicate how much pure gold is present in the mix. The K stands for karat, the system used to state how much pure gold is found in an item.

·         24K gold is pure gold. (Your jewelry will not be stamped with this)

·         18K gold contains 18 parts gold and 6 parts of another metal(s), making it 75% gold.

·         14K gold contains 14 parts gold and 10 parts of another metal(s), making it 58.3% gold.

·         12K gold contains 12 parts gold and 12 parts of another metal(s), making it 50% gold.

·         10K gold contains 10 parts gold and 14 parts another metal(s), making it 41.7% gold. 10K gold is the minimum karat designation that can still be called gold in the US.

Some jewelry is stamped with a percentage mark instead of a karat mark. 417 means 41.7% gold, 583 means 58.3% gold, 500 means 50% gold and 750 means 75% gold.

Even 18K gold, with its 6 parts of another metal, gives jewelers the opportunity to play around with color.

·         Nickel can be mixed with gold to create a white (or gray) color; it can cause dermatitis in people who are sensitive to nickel.

·         Palladium is another metal used to create white gold alloys. Related to platinum, it is more expensive than nickel, but is less likely to cause allergic reactions than nickel.

·         Copper is added to make gold-colored alloys, but additional copper creates pink and rose tones -- the more copper, the deeper the effect.

Adding silver to gold creates greenish shades.

Black Hills Gold jewelry is a good example of colored gold alloys. Most Black Hills Gold jewelry uses 10K or 12K gold alloys in shades of yellow, pink, rose, and green.  Making alloys isn't as simple as it might sound. Before they make an alloy, metallurgists have to consider how the metals will react with each other. Adding too much of one metal or another can make the mixture brittle, too hard, or difficult to work with. Some ingredients could make the mix too soft.  Metallurgists fine-tune their recipes to produce combinations that are attractive, durable and can be successfully worked into pieces of jewelry.

So you have an old 10K-nugget ring weighing an ounce that you want to sell for scrap, it’s worth an ounce of gold right?  Wrong, its value is only 41.7% of that. The rest is another alloy.  Lets say gold is selling at $900 an ounce, which means your ring will bring you $373 right.  Not exactly and here is why.  The price you see for gold on the stock exchange is for refined, pure 24K gold. This is the price jewelry manufacturers; coin makers etc will pay for the gold.  Your gold has to go through a lot of processes and hand before it reaches this point.  With the profit margin so thin one might ask how can they do this and remain profitable.  I asked the same question to Frank Cole this past year, and was surprised I didn’t see it before.  Frank’s question back was “What happens to the other alloys smelted out of the scrap gold?”  Those alloys are valuable in themselves.  Copper, Nickel, Palladium, Silver, these all have value in the commodities market.  They do not just throw them out.  They sell them. We are so focused on the gold that we forget about the other alloys involved.  Is this wrong? No, it is not they have to remain profitable in order to stay in business.  If they had to pay for the other alloys too our percentage for the gold would be less and we would still get the same.  So, does it matter? Probably not, but I believe an informed public is better than an uninformed one.  If selling your gold, be it white, pink, rose, green or yellow find someone you trust in the transaction.  Know your facts and go for it. The time to sell your gold is now. Oh and by the way, Yes we do buy gold.

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