Will the gold drop affect the prices of Jewelry?

Cakes

I have been looking to buy a nice 14 KT gold chain similar to one of these and was wondering if I should wait. Are there any jewelers on here that can lend some advice?

BTW which of the two below do you like better?

Thanks,


Diamond cut style gold chain

Cuban style gold chain

BAJJERFAN

Depending on the markup, you be smarter to wait until they buy inventory at a lower price.

bestmr

Jewelry has such a huge mark up, it's unreal. I don't see it going down in price for a while.
Personally, I like the diamond one better.

Cakes

Thanks, good suggestions so far, keep em coming.

Baley

short answer: retail and other "new" jewelry, little or no decrease in jewelry prices when gold goes down, as relatively little of the price is the metal.

wholesale new stuff perhaps, but scrap and other "used" that trades by weight: drop in gold prices should make the items proportionally cheaper when ugly to ordinary.

Nice (beautiful, artistic, historic, tasteful, useful) stuff brings what the market will bear, as always

s4ny

Reminds me of a conversation I had in a watch store.
I was looking at 2 watches, the same model in stainless steel and gold.

Each was identical other than the case. The stainless steel model was $3500, the
gold model was $8500. I commented to the salesman that the difference was
$5000, and there was maybe $1000 worth of gold in the watch.

His comment was that it is more difficult to work with gold.

Of course, the ancients worked with gold for thousands of years.
I think they would have found stainless steel more of a challenge.

MGLICKER

<< <i>Jewelry has such a huge mark up, it's unreal. I don't see it going down in price for a while.
Personally, I like the diamond one better. >>



Not necessarily. My close friend is a jeweler, he marks up his gold chains 60% from cost and will deal a bit off of that. After Christmas, find a local seller and you can probably strike a good deal, based on the lower spot prices.

johnny9434

<< <i>Depending on the markup, you be smarter to wait until they buy inventory at a lower price. >>

agreed with

Coulport

Wait for after Christmas sales or if they offer pre inventory bargains.

I had a rope chain (not diamond cut) with a Mexico 20 peso Aztec calendar. Looked real nice. Don't wear it any more. I now have a Thai baht in 22K that I rarely take off.

For flash, I prefer the Cuban of the 2 you have shown.

morgantype

FWIW

I picked up a nice gold chain back in 2010 when gold was about 1200 or so.

I ended up paying 53-54 per gram for 18k.

If you have the ability, I would go to your local jewelery mart and see what they have there. Ie where a lot of the wholesaling goes on.

If you can avoid it I would stay away from zales etc.

You might even try to call some of the gold vendors and do a deal over the phone if you are not local to ny/la jewelery marts.

Good luck!

MGLICKER

Bunch of nice stuff actually sells on Ebay near melt, if you know what you are looking for and how to authenticate it.

Weiss

+1 and a thumbs up for the baht necklace. I was fortunate to find Vietnamese jewelers who took a small portion of the value of the gold in the necklace as their fee for creating a piece to my specifications.

I asked for a 24k gold necklace weighing 2 ounces, for which I paid $1120.

Of course, that was April of 2005

PerryHall

I'm surprised that no one has suggested that you to post on the BST that you are looking for a gold chain with a description what you want. It certainly can't hurt and it won't cost anything.

TwoSides2aCoin

It's the purity factor I worry about in such times, but I really like "baht".

ricko

Gold jewelry prices will not be affected without a precipitous drop in gold value...... and even then, it will be slow and small. Cheers, RickO

Weiss

<< <i>It's the purity factor I worry about in such times, but I really like "baht". >>



That is an excellent point. You have to find jewelers you trust. Just to be safe, I had my coin/bullion guy test my necklace. The highest touchstone acid he had was 22k and it tested that high easily.

yellowkid

No. Never buy new jewelry. How ridiculous is it to list a MSRP of almost $10,000 and offer it for a quarter of that?

Baley

With fashion jewelry, ya pay a lot extra over melt for brand new (this year's mfg) inventory, for QA certified perfect condition, and brand name lables, and fancy cases, and overhead and profit for folks who buy wholesale in quantity and get the stuff packaged and sell retail a piece at a time..

sound familiar?

Cakes

<< <i>With fashion jewelry, ya pay a lot extra over melt for brand new (this year's mfg) inventory, for QA certified perfect condition, and brand name lables, and fancy cases, and overhead and profit for folks who buy wholesale in quantity and get the stuff packaged and sell retail a piece at a time..

sound familiar? >>



Good suggestions, thanks.

Enjoy the Holiday's everyone.

BC