http://www.zihala.com/ounces-metallic/
How Internet Precious Metals Buyers Determine Gold Value
Internet buyers of precious metals, receive numerous inquiries about how they determine the current value of the gold, platinum and silver items received from sellers. Sellers apparently don’t understand how the buyers arrive at the value of the property they send in..
There are two primary factors that the buyers use. The first is what an ounce of gold is worth on the commodities market at any given time and the second is the actual amount of pure gold that any jewelry item contains.
The Current Value of Gold
Gold is a commodity traded worldwide. The price at any given time depends mainly upon supply and demand. When the demand exceeds the available supply, the price rises; when the supply is greater than the demand, it falls. Supply and demand are affected by several other factors including the value of the U.S. dollar; the price of oil, inflation rate, etc. These factors are too complex for discussion here. Currently, gold is valued at all-time record-high prices. And while the actual price varies over any given trading day, this price has remained high for many months now and is predicted to continue rising well into 2011.
Gold Purity
When an Internet precious metals buyer receives a seller’s gold, platinum or silver items, they have to be assayed to determine purity. Most gold jewelry is marked with a symbol such as 24K, 18K, 14K or 10K that indicates just what percentage of the total weight of a setting is gold. The rest is other alloys added to improve the hardness, color and durability of the jewelry. Buyers only pay for the gold content because the other alloys have little if any value. Here’s another point: Precious metals are measured in Troy Ounces which is a bit more (1 Troy Ounce = 1.097 Avoirdupois Ounce) than the familiar ounces we use in everyday life. Therefore, if the current spot market price for gold is $1,400/ounce, it is a Troy ounce. Moreover, while there are 16 ounces in each pound under the Avoirdupois system, a Troy pound contains just 12 ounces.
A Troy ounce can be expressed as smaller quantities known as Pennyweights or DWT. 1 Troy ounce contains 20 DWT. That means, for example, that at $1,400/Ounce, each pennyweight is valued at 1/20th or $70.00. Therefore, if a seller sends-in a heavy gold chain that contains 20 DWT of 24K gold (99.99% Gold) it would have a total current value of approximately $1,400.00.
One other factor influences the assay process, the actual percentage of pure gold content in a given piece. If a piece of gold jewelry is marked 18K, for example, it contains 75% gold; 14K contains 58.33% gold; 12K has 50% gold and 10K has just 41.67% gold. Therefore, if the gold chain mentioned in the paragraph above was marked 18K instead of 24K, it would be worth 25% less or $1,050.00. As the Karat number goes down, the amount of gold content goes down and the value drops correspondingly.
Internet buyers generally buy gold of any age, type or place of manufacture and also buy platinum and silver, which are valued through the same basic process. Sellers then some percentage of the actual value of their property since the buyer must take some deduction for their company overhead along with a small profit.
Regrettably, there are some buyers who only return 10-25% of the actual assayed value to the seller. That’s one important reason for sellers to check out any company they plan to sell to with the Better Business Bureau and other Internet sites that record customer complaints. I suggest an impartial review site that shows the Better Business Bureau records for the top 10 Internet precious metals buyers.
This site can be found st: http://cashforgoldcomplaints.com/ .
About the Author
Barry Briskman is a freelancer provider of SEO website content and copywriting for PR, articles and more. He spent his entire working career as an Account Manager and Copywriter for major U.S. ad/PR agencies. Mr. Briskman holds a BSEE degree and an MBA-Marketing and has more than 35 years of employment history. His website can be found at: http://writerpro1.com/ .
Capresso 13423 Impressa S9 One Touch 96OZ. Platinum Metallic Espresso Machine