The obvious reason you would sell gold jewelry is to make money, but the reasons you may decide to do so can be more complex than that. If you aren’t in urgent need of money but have been considering getting rid of some old pieces, now is one of the best times to sell gold jewelry. The value of gold is higher than it’s been in the last three decades so take some time to decide if this is the right time for you.
There are many practical reasons to sell gold jewelry and a few reasons that are purely emotional. No one reason is better than another, but if more than one of these apply to you, it’s probably a sign that now’s the right time to sell.
1. Your jewelry is broken or damaged. If you have earrings without mates, brooches with broken clasps or chains that are kinked and twisted, you may keep thinking, “Maybe some day I’ll get if fixed.” Be brutally honest with yourself. If you haven’t bothered to get it repaired in years, what is the likelihood you’re going to do so now?
You may also be shocked at the cost of jewelry repair these days. The fine craftsmanship required as well as the relative softness of gold both mean a high price tag on repairing damages. If you sell gold jewelry that is damaged, you can use the money you make to buy brand new pieces that are in perfect condition.
2. Your jewelry is out of style. Most people have very particular taste in jewelry so finding the right buyer for older, dated jewelry can be a difficult task. It will be a time-consuming, costly task to advertise for a buyer for older pieces of gold jewelry and there’s no way to know if you’ll ever find the right buyer.
Companies who buy scrap gold, however, are always happy to buy from you, and they don’t care about the style or any damage to the jewelry. They won’t penalize you on the gold price because the jewelry is old-fashioned or just plain unattractive!
3. You don’t have the time to sell gold jewelry pieces individually. Everyone hopes that their grandfather’s antique watch or grandmother’s set of gold pins can be sold to a collector or someone who will cherish them. The reality is that it’s very hard to find the right buyer for estate jewelry, and even if you find someone they probably won’t be interested in everything you have. By splitting things up and selling only a few pieces, you’re cutting into your own time, and you may still have half the pieces sitting around month’s from now.
If you sell gold jewelry to a buyer who wants the gold for scrap, you can get it sold all at one time for a great price. At the end of the day, you’ll have cash in hand and no more unwanted jewelry to worry about.
4. Your gold jewelry has bad memories. Do you still have that engagement ring from an old boyfriend who dumped you before the wedding or gold necklaces from your ex-husband? Selling gold jewelry that’s associated with unpleasant moments in your past is very empowering. You’re getting something of value out of items you would otherwise like to forget about. Don’t hold on to a lingering memory. Get started on a new life with some cash in your pocket.
There are as many reasons to sell gold jewelry for scrap as there are types of jewelry. If one of the above reasons seems like a perfect reflection of your own life, now is the time to sell gold jewelry and move on with your life.
For those of you who are thinking about selling gold jewelry, it is crucial that you understand fully how to determine the price for gold jewelry. Not only this can help you to tell a good deal from a bad one, it also helps to analyze your competitors and understand the market better before you make any investment.
Gold price
The most important part of wholesale gold jewelry trading is to understand the breakdown of the cost of a piece of gold jewelry. Let‘s say the current good price is $500 per ounce. To calculate the cost of gold for a piece of 14 karat gold jewelry that weighs 3 gram without any stones, we first divide the price per ounce by 31.5, to get the price per gram, which is $15.87. This is the price of pure gold. To convert this to 14K gold, knowing that there are 24 karats in pure gold, we divide $15.87 by 24 and multiply the result by 14. The price per gram for 14k gold is roughly $9.26. Therefore, the total cost of the gold for a 3 gram ring would be $27.78.
Labor Cost
Another major part of the cost for a piece of gold jewelry is the cost for labor, especially for pieces set with precious stones. Gold jewelry generally requires some filing and polishing after it is cast out of the mold. The labor cost can sometime be as high as $2 per gram, depending on the origin of the jewelry and the style. In addition, the cost of setting any stones on a gold jewelry can be over one dollar per stone. Certain advanced setting such as channel set and invisible set cost even more because of the high level of craftsmanship required.
Markup of Competitors
A good way to analyze if a certain style of gold jewelry is profitable and beneficial for a business is to understand your competitors’ prices. Since you already know how to calculate roughly the cost of a piece of jewelry, and therefore the price that you can get it, buy looking at the markups of your competitors, you may get an idea of how severe the competition is. For instance, if the competitors are marking up the jewelry three times of the cost, the competitiveness of that style is not really that high. On the other, if everyone has the same pricing and the markup is 50% above the cost, the style might have already saturated the market.
Volume trading
Another angle of looking at the pricing issue is that when the competitors are marking up at a low margin, the item is probably accepted by a lot of consumers. The justification behind it is that when the profit per piece is low, and people are trading them actively, there probably is a high demand for it. On short, the higher the profit margin, the low the volume of sales and the low the profit margin, the higher could be the volume of sales. Another point that is worth noting is that the volume theory also applies to jewelry vendors. If you buy in large quantity, pricing should go down automatically. Therefore, running a successfully business involves getting the balance between all the factors within the resources and infrastructure you have such as employees and capital.
Closeout Jewelry
Since jewelry business is highly time-sensitive, styles that were once popular several months ago may not sell at all couple months later. Therefore, when buying gold jewelry wholesale, you should estimate the monthly sales and stock according to the sale volume. For example, you may want to stock a certain style for two months worth of stock and restock it when it runs out in order to minimize the closeout items in the inventory, which is sometimes referred to as inventory shrinkage.
By understanding the market and your competitors before buy wholesale gold jewelry, you can reduce the mistakes during your entrepreneurial endeavor, thus increase the chance of succeeding tremendously.