With the prices of gold at record heights, jewelry collectors are in Meltdown mode.
For weeks, they have traveled their houses and open their safes to recover vintage necklaces, family inheritances and other expensive parts containing the precious metal which can be melted for money.
“This happens with each golden tip,” said Jeff Clark, market analyst and founder of Thegoldadvisor.com. “If you have a lot of old gold jewelry, it’s fundamentally free money.”
The price of gold reached a historic summit of $ 3,357 per OCE Thursday and is up approximately 27% compared to the beginning of the year, fired by factors such as geopolitical tensions, tariff disorders and the increase in demand from central banks.
Gold has long been considered as an asset on a package in times of economic uncertainty, considered by investors as coverage against inflation and market volatility. And, when the demand is strong, the items made with gold can be lucrative for the owners.
“Everyone says:” If I have gold jewelry, if my grandparents or my mother or my father left me something, I can perhaps get money for that, because everything else is down and inflation kills the purchasing power and consumption of everyone, “said Alex Arakeloglu, associate sales in Capri Jewelry at Downtown Los Angeles. “I hear it all around the jewelry area.”
The influx of customers who seek to exchange or sell their gold coins was a boon for independent jewelers, who have been faced with high wholesale prices for new items in the last gold rush. Many also fear that President Trump’s prices could increase costs for imported precious metals and diamonds.
A recent Monday afternoon, Rosie Judah arrived at the studio in the second floor of her longtime jeweler with plastic bags full of gold jewelry, some of which have been in her family for generations.
Discarding the sparkling parts on a glass table between them, Olivia Kazanjian, owner of jewelry of Olivia K, examined each with a magnifying glass: rings with blue and red precious stones, a registered cigarette box, an acute necklace with dishes of seafood from Uchine de Mer with a Tiffy & Co.
“Well, it turns out that you have made very good choices by investing in gold,” said Kazanjian, placing articles one by one on a scale. For pieces of unknown purity, it carried out a quick scratch test using an acid kit to help determine the composition of the metal karat.
Recently, Kazanjian saw “a rotating door” of customers wishing to melt their jewelry collections. But she urges caution.
“Sometimes it is very clear when you get jewelry, it’s like,” no. It is not to be melted, you have to stick to it “,” she said. “Ancient pieces are not worth it – you will never see this craft again.”
For Judah, 56, it is a question of enjoying while gold is a hot goods. The timing is particularly fortuitous, with two girls in college and heavy feature of tuition to pay.
“The priorities in your life change. Do I want all that sitting in the safe? ” The retired set decorator said. “Let go, it’s just time.”
During the next two hours, the jeweler and the collector were stalled on nearly 40 pieces, separating them into neat piles. Kazanjian persuaded Judah to keep some of the rarest articles as is, and will rethink some others to give them a new look.
The biggest was the heap of cast iron, a mound of jewelry thrown for which Kazanjian proposed to pay Judah $ 9,500 – a figure which she calculated by estimating the grams of pure gold in each room and by multiplying it by the current market price of metal, before subtracting the fusion and treatment costs. She will write to Judah a check at the end of the session and bring the articles in a refinery in the jewelry district.
There are dozens of companies in the city center that will melt gold. One of the largest precious metal refiners is Elemetal, which operates more than 45 locations across the country. A director of the downtown branch in Los Angeles said that he was not authorized to comment on the company, citing its high-value transactions and its carefully verified customers.
On its website, Elemetal says that its specialized facilities melt gold sources such as scrap jewelry and altered ingots to separate impurities and obtain refined gold. He works with jewelers, minors, wages and dealers to “convert materials into high purity gilded products while ensuring transparency and competitive establishments”.
While the price of gold has increased, jewelry district companies have taken additional safety precautions.
This week, millions of dollars of gold and jewelry were stolen in the two safes of a jeweler in downtown Los Angeles after the burglars killed in the shop through several reinforced walls. The FBI is working with Los Angeles police to investigate Love Jewels, where the officials said that the thieves had crossed a room next to the gold merchant and succeeded with around $ 10 million in goods.
Despite the current mania, Clark, the gold market analyst, noted that the owners of jewelry bringing old pieces “will probably not be enriched.”
Many will nevertheless try. During a previous peak in gold prices, people said, people asked morticians permission to remove the golden teeth from the mouths of deceased family members.
“You can sell everything that contains gold,” he said. “Some morgues will let you do it.”
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