Posted: 05 Jul 2014 06:58 PM PDT

Added by Steve Killings on July 5, 2014.
Saved under Business, Steve Killings
Tags: gold

Gold

Gold prices have seen an unexpected rise in 2014 and people with used gold jewelry are wondering if this is the right time to sell. Here are five secrets that buyers do not want sellers to know when they purchase their used gold jewelry.

The price index switch. U.S. buyers of gold jewelry will use one of two gold price indices to set their purchase prices: the New York Spot Gold price or the London Fix price. They will typically use the index that their refiner uses, but sometimes shady buyers will say they use one index when they are actually using the other. The reason is the price difference. The New York Spot gold price is a price index of gold transactions principally in the United States, while the London Fix price indexes European and international markets.

While the prices are often close, the London Fix will show international gold price trends sooner since the majority of gold transactions occur outside the United States. In other words, if there is an upward spike in international gold prices, the London Fix will show it first, followed by the New York Spot Gold price. A U.S. buyer could set their gold purchasing price at the New York Spot Gold price knowing they will get a little extra by selling it at the London Fix. The best advice for a seller is to watch the London Fix and sell to a buyer who sets their price at the London Fix when the index is high. That way, the seller knows he/she is getting the best international market price up front when the market is right.

Knowing weights and measures is crucial. When buyers advertise their purchase rates they often try to impress customers with the per ounce price for refined 99.99 percent gold. Currently the London PM fix for a pure troy ounce of gold is $1,319.25, an increase of $94.75 since January 1. While this amount may seem like a lot, no common jewelry manufactured today is 99.99 percent gold, nor is it anywhere near a troy ounce. Most gold buyers will use the metric system to weigh gold jewelry. A typical gold wedding band for men will weigh between 3-6 metric grams, for women 2-4 grams, depending on the gold alloy.

There are 31.1 grams in a troy ounce, the international standard measure for gold transactions. So, a 3.1 gram wedding band would be worth $131.92 on the international market today, but only if it were made of 99.99 percent gold, which it is not. Some gold buyers will use the English system of pennyweights and grains. One troy ounce is 20 pennyweights and a pennyweight consists of 24 grains. The best advice is to accurately measure gold jewelry before presenting it for purchase. That way sellers can have independent verification of the weight of their jewelry before the buyer puts it on their scales.

Knowing Karats is crucial. Everyone knows at some level that a 10 karat gold wedding ring is not 99.99 percent gold. The amount of gold in the metal used to make jewelry, called an alloy, is measured in 1/24th parts. So, ten karat gold alloy is 10/24th parts gold, or 41.67 percent. 14 karat gold alloy is 14/24th parts gold, or 58.33 percent. It is called an alloy because there are other periodic elements in gold jewelry. For reputable manufacturers, common yellow gold jewelry will consist of gold, copper, zinc and silver.

Each of these periodic elements lends particular characteristics to the alloy, which jewelry manufacturers have determined to be optimal for daily wear, durability and looks. White gold jewelry will include enough nickel to turn the alloy white, for instance. Owners of ten karat gold jewelry should realize that less than half of their jewelry's metal alloy consists of actual gold, yet ten karat is commonly marketed, many believe falsely, as "gold."

Calculating and comparing the best price. Armed with the international market index price and knowing the weight and percentage of gold in their jewelry, sellers can now hunt for the best purchase price from buyers. The best advice is to create an index for their jewelry that the seller can quickly compare prices to. A typical scenario goes like this. The optimal value of a 14 karat gold necklace that weights 8.4 grams can be calculated on the current London PM Fix, which today is $1,319.25 per troy ounce. There are 31.1 grams in a troy ounce which works out to be $42.42 per gram. A necklace weighing 8.4 grams will thus be worth $356.32 if it were made of 99.99 percent gold. Since the necklace is 14 karat, or 58.3 percent gold, it is optimally worth $207.74, which is 58.3 percent of $356.32.

Sellers will never get the optimal 100 percent value for their gold jewelry, because buyers themselves only get, at most, between 95 to 98 percent from their refiners and also pass other costs to the seller, like overhead. This optimal number is only an index to compare prices to.

Shop local for the best price. The last of the five secrets to selling gold jewelry is one of the most important. Internet buyers of gold have some of the worst purchase price rates, often ranging in the area of 50 percent. In other words, the 14 karat necklace which was calculated above to be optimally worth $207.74 will be purchased by most Internet cash-for-gold shops for around $104. The best deals can be found among local buyers and jewelry stores. Shopping locally also has the advantage of being able to quickly compare prices and haggle. Sellers can expect to get anywhere from 70-80 percent of the optimal value of their gold jewelry, sometimes more depending on the buyers' circumstances and interest. The best advice is to shoot for 90 percent or more and come down by haggling. Buyers will still get profit at even 90 percent, but maybe not enough to their liking.

The perceived value of gold jewelry is often much different from its actual market value. Every seller of gold jewelry knows that people will often attribute value, sentimental or otherwise, to gold jewelry which will often be very different from its real market value. Buyers of used gold jewelry will use this same perception to buy jewelry from people who believe the jewelry to be useless, or have no value. But sellers who are armed with these five secrets to selling their gold jewelry will be better prepared to get the best price in this upturned gold market.

By Steve Killings

Sources:
Wall Street Journal
Forbes
The Street

Two decades later, 'Jamaica Gold' still seeking market sweet spot ...

Posted: 28 Jun 2014 06:18 AM PDT

Tameka Gordon, Business Reporter

For more than a year, Jamaica Cane Product Sales Limited (JCPS) has been partnering with an overseas company to package sugar for the local market under its two-decade-old 'Jamaica Gold' brand.

The brown sugar product, prior to the divestment of the sugar sector some five to six years ago, was packaged at the Monymusk factory in Clarendon, but its supply has been inconsistent.

It was off the market temporarily, but returned on January 2013 and is now packed by an entity called Caribbean Depot Limited (CDL) under a three-year contract.

Sugar supplied to Caribbean Depot for the production of Jamaica Gold was doubled this year from 3,000 tonnes to 6,000 tonnes, and JCPS aims to almost double supplies to the factory again by 2015.

To gin up retail sales, JCPS has launched a marketing campaign around the pre-packaged product, which is sometimes priced at a premium relative to bulk sugar that, traditionally, is spooned into small plastic bags for sale by supermarkets and other grocery outlets.

At a top retail outlet in Kingston, for example, a two-kilogramme package of Jamaica Gold was priced at $308 or $154 per kg, while the bulk product cost $246 or $123 per kg. However, other outlets have quoted Jamaica Gold prices as low as $125 per kg and bulk sugar at $128 per kg.

JCPS General Manager Karl James is aiming for a change of mindset in which households eschew tradition in favour of a value-added product that can be traced to a production floor.

"The Bureau of Standards and the international market are demanding that we do sugar for direct consumption under the current packaging rather than what prevails in the market now, where the supermarket operator buys a 50-kilogramme bag from JCPS and then packages it at the back of the supermarket," said James.

However, the public education and information coordinator for Bureau of Standards Jamaica, Ellis Laing, says the agency is not mandating a change in the retail sugar market, but is merely pushing for shops to add labels to the bulk supplies to reflect information such as product type, weight and price.

The same applies to other bulk products, such as flour, rice and cornmeal, according to Laing.

James said his company's partnership is not with Caribbean Depot - although that is the entity named on its sugar product - but with an overseas operation called Commodities Specialist Company (CSC).

A search of Companies Office records yielded no registrations for CSC, but the owners of Caribbean Depot Limited are listed as an American company called Caribbean Distributors Limited LLC, American Paul Farmer and Jamaican Deion Henry.

Henry and Michael Jureidini, who is also Jamaican, are listed as co-owners of another local company called Caribbean Depot Distributors Limited (CDDL).

Jureidini is the general manager for Caribbean Depot Limited, but he said CDL and CDDL are separate operations, though they share the same Kingston address.

Jureidini said Caribbean Depot is 95-98 per cent foreign owned. Neither he nor James would confirm the precise relationship between CDL and Commodities Specialist Company, which is said to be based in the United States.

The Caribbean Depot boss said, when pressed, that the Financial Gleaner was delving into "irrelevant information".

JCPS is Caribbean Depot's sole client, but Jureidini says the factory is in the process of expansion and will, in 2015, be seeking new contracts to package other granular products.

"We are looking around because we can process any granular product of up to five-kilogramme packs," he told the Financial Gleaner.

Under its arrangement with JCPS, Caribbean Depot does no refining of the sugar. Like the supermarkets, it simply spoons the crystals into packaging supplied by JCPS and seals it - the only difference being that its production process is mechanised.

James says JCPS supplies the sugar for packaging and distributes the end product.

"We have a contract with them for three years to package sugar for us. We supply, on a weekly basis, the sugar that we want them to package, they deliver to us the sugar they have packaged and we take it to our warehouse for distribution," said James.

The Jamaica Gold bags are said to be made in Mexico, but James did not name the company.

Jamaica Gold first hit the market in 1993-94, with the trademark registered to 2017, James said.

The product's hiatus from the market happened during a period when sugar production had hit a downturn.

When Jamaica Gold returned to production in 2013, the product was supported by imports.

"The business of Jamaica Gold was restarted with imported sugar, with some 3,000 tonnes bought for packaging in the first year," said James.

Now, all inputs are sourced from Jamaican factories, including, Jureidini said, those owned by Pan Caribbean Sugar Company, which handles the distribution of its own sugar.

JCPS markets sugar on behalf of all other factory operators in the sector.

"They source the supply for CDL, we package it and resend it to them. All we ask is that the sugar be made in Jamaica, be relatively dry and as clean as possible," said Jureidini of the JCPS partnership.

CDL processed some 6,000 tonnes of sugar during November 2013 to May 2014, James said.

Next year, the target is 10,000 tonnes, which James believes is doable with the installation of new equipment acquired by CDL.

"It's new, but we want to get to 10,000 tonnes before the end of the second year, which ends in April 2015," he told the Financial Gleaner.

"We are aiming to get it to a level where it can be exported to other countries."

An order is already being processed for a Caribbean island, he adds.

Jamaica Gold is JCPS' only value-added product.

tameka.gordon@gleanerjm.com

Group Coaching: Spot Gold/Silver and Currency Trading di CTC ...

Posted: 20 May 2014 08:33 PM PDT

Salam semua.

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Tarikh: 1 (Ahad) dan 2 (Isnin) Jun 2014
Masa: 9.00 pagi sehingga jam 5.00 petang.
Fee RM1500 seorang.
*Maksimum kelas hanya 10 orang dan sekarang hanya tinggal 5 tempat kosong sahaja lagi.

CTC, Menara Amcorp

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Spot Gold | Five Secrets to Selling Gold Jewelry - Guardian Liberty Voice | News2Gold

Spot Gold | Five Secrets to Selling <b>Gold</b> Jewelry - Guardian Liberty Voice | News2Gold

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