Ask Your Goldsmith:
About Old Gold

Out of your old broken gold we can make a new and unique piece of Jewellery!

It could be especially meaningful for you, if the old gold belonged to your family for many generations, or was given to you or your family by someone very special. Now you can gather all the old broken chains or single earrings, old wedding bands and other broken gold, to make a new hand made and unique item. For just a fraction of the cost of a mass produced item of equal weight, we can make almost anything you want.

Items like bangles, wedding bands, solid hoop earrings or a pendant can be made from your old yellow gold. Mind you, if both 10 Kt gold and 14 Kt gold are melted together, we would only be able to stamp the new item with the lower Kt. This is something to bear in mind if you have old pieces of differing purities.

If we do an assay on your melted gold for you, then we would know the exact fine gold content. This sort of work would be $50.00 extra - but then we are 100% sure about the fine gold content of your pieces. If you would like, we can raise the percentage of fine gold in your items by adding the right amount of 24 Kt gold. Therefore, by raising the level of fine gold content, we would raise it to a higher Karat. Thus we could raise the gold content of 10 Kt gold to 14 Kt simply by adding the right amount of fine gold (24 Kt) to your existing gold! This would increase the value of your new item, but would still cost much less than buying the item brand new.

Scale of gold markings 37.5% fine gold content 41.6% fine gold content 58.5% fine gold content 75.0% fine gold content 99.9% fine gold content

North America 9 Kt 10 Kt 14 Kt 18 Kt 24 Kt

Europe .375 .416 .585 .750 .999

All gold items with a Kt stamp also have to be stamped with a legal registered trademark under Canadian and International Law. It is a guarantee by the licensed goldsmith or large gold manufacturer that the fine gold content is exact as stamped and shown by the Kt mark. Watch for that stamp on ALL items when you buy gold. There must be a trade mark shown next to the 10 Kt, 14Kt, or 18 KT stamp (European marks are .375, .585, .750 or .900). If there are no stamps, do not buy the item, as you have no guarantee of what you are buying

As an example of pricing, in making a plain or hammered bangle from customers gold. A 30 gram 14 Kt bangle would cost you around $900 in most stores, as an imported mass produced item. To hand-make a bangle out of 30 grams of your scrap gold, we would charge you between $180 and $250.00, depending on the shape and the finish of the bangle.

On the other hand, most stores would take your 30 grams of 14 Kt gold and pay you $6 to $8 per gram as scrap gold, or allow the same amount as a "trade-in." Just ask them how much they would pay for your scrap gold! In other words, they would pay you only $180-240 for what is basically the same item they would make you pay $900 for! On a run of the mill production item of equal weight as your old gold!

Our hand-made unique bangle on the other hand will only cost you between $180 and $250. And it is a hand-made item, created from scratch from your own gold, which perhaps has more meaning to you, because of your sentimental attachment for the gold being used! We only charge for our labour, which is only $6 to $8 per gram, to hand-make your old gold into a suitable Jewellery item for you. This new creation would likely be valued at four times as much or more, as a finished piece of new and unique Jewellery.

Lastly, by trading in your old gold in some Jewellery store and letting them make the big sale, with them keeping your traded old gold to boot, even though it has the same weight as your newly bought Jewellery item - they win, you lose!

For more information, please read my other articles about Buying and Selling Jewellery, Taking Care of Your Jewellery and Have Your Old Gold Reworked Into New Hand Made Jewellery!

Have a Question? Get the Answer! info@westyorkjewellers.com

Sincerely,

Hartmut Reinsch
President
West York Jewellers
January 2003