Tips for Buying and Selling Gold
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
Gold is a safe buy. Not like with gems, where you actually need to be an expert to judge the quality of the stones, buying gold is straight forward if you go to a reputable shop.
Learn how to sell your gold.
The most serious thing to look for in buying gold jewelry separately from the styles is the purity of the gold. The higher the gold content, the more valuable it is. Pure gold is believed too soft for jewelry and is then mixed with other metals. The level used in the alloy is depend on the metal and the way in which it combine with gold. The highest power of gold and copper is attained with 75% gold and 25% copper – 18k gold. With titanium the highest tensile potency is attained with 99% gold and 1% titanum. The period of time and the temperature at which the metals are cooked are also vital. For instance a 99.3% gold and .7% titanium combined heated at 500oC for 1 hour would outcome in a hardness of 229 HV. With a different time or temperature the hardness could be much less.
The demand among Asian buyers for gold with a high fineness, which can be easily transferred into money, but with improved mechanical properties such as resistance to wear, distortion and breakage is leading Thai goldsmiths to the use of titanium. Gold Master and Prima Gold for example mutually use a titanium and gold alloy. However, this represents a very small section of the market in Thailand.
Typically, Thai goldsmith charge a design fee of around per baht of gold if it might be higher depending on the design and production. There is not much scope for bargaining. You might get the price lower a dollar for each baht you buy at most - hardly worth the effort. It is normally best value to buy at least 1 baht of gold, as there is a lowest fee for the design.
It is amazingly good value. It is perhaps no more than 4% high the spot price of gold. When one looks at the beautiful quality of the craftsmanship following complex, centuries old designs it is sometimes hard to believe. You feel guilty about purchasing it so economically. If you buy gold jewelry in the West you will offer more like 40% over the spot price.
Testing the purity of the gold
In testing the purity of gold is tough and requires chipping off a small bit from your jewelry. Yet this does not show the purity of the whole piece, only the bit tested. That is why it is so significant to by gold from a trusted dealer. Most gold shops use a typical fire assay which applies heat to test the purity of the gold.
Selling your gold is easy. Click the link to learn how.