The Great Gold Silver Precious Metals Jewelry RIP OFF Avoid It Now
If you have landed here from my Ezine article the – GREAT, now I’ll add here the parts I had to cut out. By the way just a quick intro. my name is Frank and I’ve been buying and selling antiques, gold, silver and anything to do with collectibles for over fifteen years.
What gets me fired up is the way good, nice honest people are being ripped off when selling jewelry, gold, silver or anything precious, that basically is melted down.
Yes melted down!, the item that you might have worn, passed down from family, cherished, is only worth scrap, and then to you only get half of scrap, you will get a pittance. Your Items Are Worth More Than Scrap In Most Cases!!
Follow my advise, this what you can do to get the most for your precious belongings.
1 – Find out its true value – I’ll show you how to easily do that.
2 – Sell – best places to sell, once you know the true value you are in a position to haggle.
FIND ITS TRUE VALUE
If it’s gold or silver it should have a hallmark, if not take it to a jewelers and have tested, make sure they tell you what carat it is, for gold 9ct, 14ct, 18ct, 22ct, 24ct. For silver how fine it is, 0.800, 0.925, 0.830, 0.9584 or 0.999.
Quick test to make sure it’s not just plated or filled is to pass a magnet over the item, if it sticks to the magnet then its not gold or silver, if it does not stick and has no marks get it tested.
Now weigh the item, be as accurate as possible, grams in this game are important.
We are not just looking at scrap value we also want to see if it’s worth anything to collectors, or dealers in fashion, or even people who look at some items having a historic appeal. Try to give the scrap dealers a miss, they are at the bottom of the pile.
Ebay, don’t ignore it, it’s a fantastic tool to find the value of something, follow my instructions below:
Click For Ebay Here
Then in the description field type for example ‘ 9ct gold chain’ and hit search, on the left hand column find the completed listings title and click.
This will bring up all the 9ct gold chains that have been sold in previous listings, then find the sort by box and drop down menu, at the top of the price list, drop the menu and select Price: highest first.
Now you have a complete list of 9ct gold chains and accessories completed in the last 30 days, from here you can easily make a comparison to see how much your item is worth, using all the details you should have noted down i.e. the carat, weight, design etc.
Here you will realise what you should be receiving, whether or not you use eBay to sell on.
Another way to find your items value is take it to a good auction house, not a local one, but a big town auction house. Here you can ask what you would expect to get at auction, they will tell you the details of the item, for example the gold carat, type of item, what you could expect, and whether to put it into a specialist auction(will get more). Armed with this information you can decide whether to sell, plus you can put a reserve on, make it more than the dealer sharks have offered, remember to take into account the auctioneers commission.
By the way if you did have valued by a jeweler or dealer, I can guarantee you will receive nothing compared to selling via an auction house or eBay, or even a private ad.
SELLING
The best bit, how to take advantage and use all the information you have gathered, you know around how much you should be getting, you know to ignore the local ‘GOLD FOR CASH’ rip off merchants, so were to sell.
1- Auction – use good, well established City auctions, that have U.K. and even international exposure. Your item maybe so good it needs to go in there quality fine arts and antiques auction, these usually happen four times a year.
Use specialist auctions if possible for example Fellows they are superb, drawing in Country wide, International and Internet bids, details below:
Fellows Auctioneers
Augusta House
19 Augusta Street
Birmingham
B18 6JA
Telephone: 0121 212 2131Fax: 0121 212 1249Email: info@fellows.co.uk
2 – EBAY – If you can list items, or know someone trustworthy who can, then ebay is a great way to get your item in front of a Wordwide audience, collectors, lovers of fashion items, people who want specific quality items, you will reach them all.
The item will need to be listed correctly, with a description that tells people exactly what the item is, using keywords for example 9ct gold watch chain 25 grams dated 1902, plus any makers, Goldsmiths,Harrods, Tiffanys etc. You should put a minimum bid, that is well above dealers offers, if it’s good you will could get a bidding war, I guarantee done right you will get way more than chucking it at the local jeweler!! Don’t do it PLEASE
Nearly forgot this valuable bit of information so you can get the current value of precious metals, go to the Gerrards at GERRARDS , here you can check the current precious metal prices. Check it against what you have been given, if your item is only scrap, then you could sell it to them, at a better price than high st. jewelers and dealers.
If you don’t want to do the above then why not advertise here, yes on my blog, all you need to do is send me details, plus a few photos, and I’ll list on here for nothing. If it sells then you could always send me a small contribution, say 5 -10% of the sale value, leave it up to you, how easy is that.
I just really want you to get the best return for your item, and stop you from feeding the sharks.
That’s it for now, I’ll do a follow up post soon, on more detailed areas of buying and selling precious items and antiques.
I hope this post goes viral, tell all your relatives, friends, work mates, not to sell anything valuable until they read this article, it could stop them from losing a shed load of money – PLEASE PASS THIS ON.
My other full post about selling gold pocket watch chains is here – GET LOADS OF MONEY FOR YOUR GOLD & SILVER
