Old and Busted: Tupperware Parties, New and Hot: Gold Buying Parties

In the last few months a company called “Cash for Gold” has been advertising on late-night television. They play off the recession and give consumers an opportunity to sell their extra gold for much needed cash. It sounds like a valuable service in theory, but in practice the amount of money that they compensate the individuals that make use of their service is a small fraction of what the gold value is actually worth. With consumers tight for cash and gold at over $900.00 an ounce, there’s another new rip-off in the world of gold.

There’s now a home-grown industry that’s buying up unwanted gold. Companies such as “MyGoldParty” give entrepreneurs an opportunity to host “gold parties” where they invite their friends and family to come and trade all of their unwanted and old gold jewelry for cold hard cash. The host of the gold party will have a scale and be able to determine what quality of Gold it is, and then determine a price for how much the jewelry is worth. If the consumer takes the offer, they walk home with cash.

The main problem with these types of parties is that more often than not, consumers get far less for their old jewelry than the face value of the content of the gold. Some of these companies are paying approximately 20% of what the gold is actually worth. They will then take the gold, melt it down and sell it off at current market rates and make a huge profit off the deal.

Most consumers don’t consider whether or not they are getting a fair price for the gold that they have because there’s no emotional or monetary attachment to the jewelry. It’s usually all old necklaces, rings, and earrings that they just don’t have any interest in having anymore and would just rather have the cash, even though they could have gotten more elsewhere.

If you have extra gold that you wouldn’t mind getting rid of, you can turn them into cash with a little bit of effort and not get totally ripped off. You’re almost better off to sell it as a piece of jewelry on Craiglist or eBay. If you don’t want to go to the hassle, visit a local jewelry dealer and seeing how much they will offer you. Make sure to visit a few different jewelers and get quotes to make sure that you end up not getting ripped off by an individual dealer.