I HATE hollow gold pieces.  I hate telling customers that their favorite piece of jewelry is unrepairable (or could be repaired at a huge expense).  I especially hate it when they tell me that the piece is less than a year old.

Here’s the deal.  Companies make hollow pieces because it is a great way to get the same look as a big heavy gold piece without the huge price tag.   Customers buy hollow gold pieces because they see that a solid piece of similar size and style is 3 to 4 times as expensive as the hollow piece.  But, as with most things, you get what you pay for.  If you only wear the piece on special occasions, the hollow piece might work well for you.  If you wear the piece everyday, it is only a matter of time, usually a few short years sometimes even months, before your jewelry is totally destroyed.  Rings and bracelets take the most abuse and will wear out the fastest.  Necklaces tend to fair a bit better, but the hollow piece are just not meant to be durable.  The look big and flashy, but they don’t last.

If you are making a jewelry purchase look out for pieces that look heavy but feel light.  Ask the sales person if the piece is hollow.  If they don’t know, ask the manager.  If the piece you like is hollow, keep in mind that you are buying something that might not be meant for everyday wear.  If you already have hollow pieces, treat them with care.  Don’t wear them to the gym or while you are doing chores or to bed.  If you want to purchase an item which you plan to pass down to your children and will wear often, spend the extra money to buy a solid piece.

My personal opinion is that there is only one piece of hollow jewelry that is acceptable: the hollow earring.  When it comes to earrings the lighter weight is not just less expensive, it is often more comfortable.  Most gold hoops on the market are hollow, so you really don’t have much choice.  The trick is to never, ever, ever wear the earrings to bed.  99% of the customers who bring me their hollow earrings that have been dented admit that the damage occurred when they were sleeping.  Taking the earring off when you use the telephone is another way to extend its life.

This particular customer is pretty lucky.  We are going to slowly replace her hollow links with links made from solid wire.  It will extend the life of the necklace and restore the original look of the piece.

Some people who don’t want to sell their gold outright, want us to make a new piece of jewelry with their gold. Does Precious Metals do this? The short answer is no. We wont take your gold, melt it down, and make it into something else. If you melt down old gold from chains and other unwanted jewelry items, the end product tends to be brittle and difficult to work with. The solder and other impurities in the jewelry compromise the end product when it is re-melted. Some jewelers will do this, typically with the understanding that the product will be of lesser quality, but we’ve found it is more trouble than it is worth. What we will do is a metals exchange. If you give us 10 units of 14K gold jewelry, we’ll give you 9 units back in newly refined and alloyed 14K gold. Because we have to pay to have your 10 units of 14K gold jewelry refined, we deduct that one unit to cover this cost. This exchange can save you a lot of money if you are looking at making a new piece of jewelry, and the end product is of the best quality.
If you don’t want to lose the actual metal of your gold jewelry, we can redesign pieces, creating an updated and more wearable piece of jewelry. Your parents’ wedding bands can be turned into pendants or earrings, or they can be sized to fit you. Re-working a piece that you are no longer in love with is often less expensive that replacing it with a new piece, and it can be very satisfying to find a new love for a piece of jewelry you thought you would never wear again. I find that the soul of most jewelry is the stones, and at Precious Metals we specialize in taking stones from your old jewelry and using them in new and exiting ways. Stones that have been abraded from years of wear can often be re-cut to look like new. There are endless ways to “make over” your jewelry.

You can get current, and by that I mean up to the minute, gold prices at www.kitco.com. There is also an application that you can set up on your Google home page that will show you the current price anytime you access Google. The price will update every two to five minutes. It is best to check the price online through a site that will give you a current price, not just yesterday’s closing price. Gold can close one day at $900 and by noon the next day be at $870 or $960. That price is for pure or 24 karat gold per troy Ounce. A troy ounce is 10% heavier than a regular ounce. If you were to take a troy ounce of gold to the grocery store and put it on their butchers scale or to the post office and on a postage scale, it will weigh about 1.1 avoirdupois ounces. Once you start watching the gold price daily or hourly, you’ll see that it changes very, very quickly. It only takes a little time each day to watch for the price to increase, so that you get more for your gold.
Precious Metals will hold gold prices for you if you come in and get your gold sorted and weighed. Once we have a detailed record of what you have, if you watch the market and call when the price is what you want to sell at, we’ll hold that price for you for 48 hours. For example, you come in and have 10 pennyweights of 14K and gold is at $915. You keep your gold, and when the market reaches a number you like, let’s say $950, you call give us your name and amount of gold (10 dwt 14k) and we will pay you at $950 for the next 48 hours, even if gold drops to $850 in the next 10 hours. If you don’t come in within 48 hours, you lose the hold on the price. If you don’t call ahead, we only pay out at the current price. If for some reason you have more gold or less gold that when you came in before, and we have to do more sorting and testing, we pay at the current price. Keep in mind that a $10 jump in price will only amount to about an extra 17 cents for each pennyweight of 14K. So for that 10 pennyweights it is only an extra $1.70. But if you have 60 pennyweights or gold goes up by $100, those cents can start to add up.

Next in our Selling your gold series: Is now a good time? What if I don’t want to sell it, can you make something with my old gold?

As for unit of weight, some use grams and some use pennyweights (dwt.). A pennyweight is 1/20 of a troy ounce. To convert grams to pennyweights multiply by .64301. To convert pennyweights to grams multiply by 1.5552. When you get pricing from different gold buyers, make sure to convert all of the prices into one unit before going with the highest bidder. Say you have 2dwt 14K gold, that is 3.11 grams. If someone says I’ll pay $14 a pennyweight that’s $28; if they say $14 a gram that’s $43.54.

Once you find the store which pays the most per unit, find out what their policies are. When it comes to selling gold, almost every buyer has a final sale policy. (See the last post about selling items of sentimental value). Some will pay cash, some by check. Some stores will pay more if you use the money as credit towards a purchase. Do they remove stones like diamonds, do they buy the diamonds, or do they leave the diamonds in the jewelry? Do they buy any jewelry as jewelry or only as scrap? Can they advise you on which pieces are better sold as jewelry and not scrap?

At Precious Metals we try to offer competitive pricing, but we would never claim to have the highest payout. First, there are too many gold buyers in Boston and its surrounding towns and cities to possibly know what they all pay. We also don’t negotiate pricing. Some buyers will offer you a low price, but will negotiate up to a higher one. They are hoping that the seller will take the low price without haggling. We offer one price to all of our customers who get paid by check. It is the highest price we can offer. We do, however, pay out more if the money is used towards a purchase or repair, but the entire amount must be used.

Why should you sell at Precious Metals?
Because we will tell you what to sell as scrap and what not to sell. If you have a nice necklace that you could get more money for if you sold it on ebay or craigslist, we’ll tell you. Not only that, we’ll help you. We can show you how to post on either of those popular websites, take close up pictures of your jewelry, and help you determine a fair asking price, at no charge. If you don’t want to sell online there are several consignment stores we can recommend as well.
Any stones that are easily removed we will remove at no charge. We will also give you an honest evaluation of the stones.
Our pricing structure is entirely transparent. We’ll go through the math with you from the market price to the price you are paid. If you don’t like the price we are offering, there are no obligations.
We pride our selves on our honesty and superior customer service. There are more than a few gold buyers who will be happy to buy your wearable jewelry at scrap prices and sell it on ebay or in their store for ten times what they paid you.