Gold and Diamond Jewelry is a bad investment. It’s such a simple statement, but many do not understand just how bad of a hit you are going to take when purchasing jewelry.
The jewelry market is ten times worse than a used car dealer. Jewelry dealer’s job is to sell you something for literally at least double the price of the actual value. They will assure you of it’s value through certificates of appraisal which might as well say it’s worth “clown bananas and Nyan cat moon rainbows.”
I came across something that really makes the point. A local craigslist’er sells gold and diamond heart pendants. These retail from anywhere from $99 to $299 in store , and the seller asks for about $100 to $125 for these pre-owned pendants. This sounds pretty fair? Oh heavens no.
How much are these pendants actually worth? About $25 dollars. That’s right, $25 dollars.
Don’t believe me? Here is a the ultimate fair market test – a completed eBay auction. $28.99 with 4% cash back.
This eBay auction is not an outlier at all. I am constantly reminded of how worthless jewelry really is thanks to eBay. Sad part is, this is virtually scrap value! 2.2 ounces of 10k would be worth $51.11 at current market prices, and assuming it is half gold and half diamonds it would be worth about $25.55 in scrap gold alone!
Remember these pendants sell for about 600%-900% more in retail stores. The best part is if you had it appraised, I’m sure a jewelry store would assure you it is worth hundreds even if you show them the eBay auction (try it yourself).
The scam continues and America has yet to wise up to it. If you don’t buy your girlfriend jewelry, you’re a terrible man according to what I’ve been told via media. My girlfriend deserves the best and I don’t mind if it costs a little bit of money to achieve that, but the jewelry industry is disgusting.
On a side note to all of this, I find it interesting that so many people are engaged in gold scrapping and salvaging. People will salvage anything from jewelry to CPU and motherboards from old PC’s (which contain gold). Sure they have to use $10 of chemicals that most likely cause rectal cancer to get that $100 of gold from the 400lbs of motherboards they paid $40 for, but I think it’s awesome. The best part is the equipment — I have a crockpot and a coffeemaker in my home and this device below is up for $299 dollars! I think I’m going into the jewelry and/or gold salvage equipment business. What a world we live in!
