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Card guy needs help with Gold Question.
thedutymon
Posts: 4,323 ✭
Evening,
From across the street over on the Card forums, have a question about some Gold. Was moving and came across a Not Gold Plated, but 24K "Gold Dipped" 2 Foot Rose from a wedding present about 25 years ago. It weighs at 5.7 ounces, is about as thick as your pinky at the bottom of the stem and has 7 leaves and a full bloomed flower. I cut the stem at the fat part in two places and it is almost solid with a little organic material, I scrapped it out with a file on the 3-4 inch section and it is now about pure Gold in that section, the section weighs 11 grams. I would imagine the Friend who gave it to me in 1987 paid over $1000 for it, it would be her style!!
Two questions, is there some substance I could soak it in to eliminate the orgainic material if I break it into a bunch of pieces? I called a shop in Denver and they weren't interested because it was too much trouble, I call BS, I just think they were lazy. This is labeled 24K Gold and is not some little wedding ring, it is Solid and if I was to guess I would say it is probably weight wise at least 40%-60% 24K Gold. That's 3+ ounces of 24K Gold. This is worth a few bucks
Secondly, any ideas of how to best dispose of it money wise, I want to make a few dollars off it and am much wiser than send me an envelope and I'll send you my Gold so you can rip me off!!
Thanks for any Help !!
Neil
From across the street over on the Card forums, have a question about some Gold. Was moving and came across a Not Gold Plated, but 24K "Gold Dipped" 2 Foot Rose from a wedding present about 25 years ago. It weighs at 5.7 ounces, is about as thick as your pinky at the bottom of the stem and has 7 leaves and a full bloomed flower. I cut the stem at the fat part in two places and it is almost solid with a little organic material, I scrapped it out with a file on the 3-4 inch section and it is now about pure Gold in that section, the section weighs 11 grams. I would imagine the Friend who gave it to me in 1987 paid over $1000 for it, it would be her style!!
Two questions, is there some substance I could soak it in to eliminate the orgainic material if I break it into a bunch of pieces? I called a shop in Denver and they weren't interested because it was too much trouble, I call BS, I just think they were lazy. This is labeled 24K Gold and is not some little wedding ring, it is Solid and if I was to guess I would say it is probably weight wise at least 40%-60% 24K Gold. That's 3+ ounces of 24K Gold. This is worth a few bucks
Secondly, any ideas of how to best dispose of it money wise, I want to make a few dollars off it and am much wiser than send me an envelope and I'll send you my Gold so you can rip me off!!
Thanks for any Help !!
Neil
Actually Collect Non Sport, but am just so full of myself I post all over the place !!!!!!!
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Comments
suspect. I doubt that the rose weighs more than a gram or two now. Perhaps a lapidary or such club.
Maybe a highschool Science teacher could help. I don't think I'd try it yourself if you do not already
have the equipment as liquid gold is damn hot and dangerous.
Good luck!
bob
Hmmmm.
I agree with Bob that the organic material probably doesn't weigh that much at all. Gold is zillions of times heavier than water (ok, 19.3 times) and a rose in it's natural state would have been mostly water.
I'd call around to a few gold scrap buyers. Maybe one of them will be more helpful, but don't just give it away.
Melting it to burn off the organics is an option, but it still leaves you with the problem of selling a lump of metal. I assume it will need to be assayed. Whoever does assaying might be able to accept it in the raw form and facilitate a transaction.
But I'm guessing - no real help from me, sorry.
I think you're better off finding a dealer that buys scrap, they'll probably buy it as it is.
It's marked 24K and they can test it.
Not sure how you decided it's only 40-60% gold by weight. A rose wouldn't weigh much and dipping it in gold and time since 1987 should have reduced any moisture in it. Seems like it would be almost all gold by weight. I'm guessing a good dealer would test it and buy it at a decent price above the 40-60% that you estimated.
Another idea might be send it directly to a refiner, look on the PM forum and someone might know a good one to use.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
<< <i>I bet the rose is dipped in some type of conductive material (possibly some type of copper powder with a plastic binder) and then gold plated at room temperature which means that the gold content won't be that great. The melting point of gold is very high and the rose would have burned if you just dipped it in the molten gold. This is just speculation on my part since I'm no expert of gold covered roses. >>
That is likely, though I too have no experience in gold-coated roses.
Find a place that will do a fire assay for a fee. You are going to have to front some money here, and if it turns out to be virtually nothing you may lose money, but you will know. If it should net out at a quarter of an ounce of gold, or more, you will be ahead.
The fire assay will burn off the organics and other materials.
Let us know what happens.
<< <i>
<< <i>I bet the rose is dipped in some type of conductive material (possibly some type of copper powder with a plastic binder) and then gold plated at room temperature which means that the gold content won't be that great. The melting point of gold is very high and the rose would have burned if you just dipped it in the molten gold. This is just speculation on my part since I'm no expert of gold covered roses. >>
That is likely, though I too have no experience in gold-coated roses.
Find a place that will do a fire assay for a fee. You are going to have to front some money here, and if it turns out to be virtually nothing you may lose money, but you will know. If it should net out at a quarter of an ounce of gold, or more, you will be ahead.
The fire assay will burn off the organics and other materials.
Let us know what happens. >>
Would it make sense to cut it somewhere with a jeweler's file to check how thick the gold coating is? If the gold is microscopically thin, you might want to just enjoy it as is or give it away as a gift.
Worry is the interest you pay on a debt you may not owe.
"Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value---zero."----Voltaire
"Everything you say should be true, but not everything true should be said."----Voltaire
<< <i>
<< <i>
<< <i>I bet the rose is dipped in some type of conductive material (possibly some type of copper powder with a plastic binder) and then gold plated at room temperature which means that the gold content won't be that great. The melting point of gold is very high and the rose would have burned if you just dipped it in the molten gold. This is just speculation on my part since I'm no expert of gold covered roses. >>
Let us know what happens. >>
Would it make sense to cut it somewhere with a jeweler's file to check how thick the gold coating is? If the gold is microscopically thin, you might want to just enjoy it as is or give it away as a gift. >>
Morning,
The flower was broken off the stem when I found it in the Box, so I had access to the inside through this break. I think your theories about some sort of preservative coating are probably correct. When I read the answer's this morning I was a t first disappointed figuring out that it was some sort of 1/128th coating or some such and worth very little. So I decided to do a little further surgery and pealed an inch of the top where its broken with some pliers. There is almost no organic material inside, just a teeny bit of debris. There is indeed a coating inside the outer Metal, it looks like a copper very thin Tin Foil, more coppery than the Gold. The Gold seperated completely from this inner coating in some places and one chunk in the scan is .07 ounces, and this is for one little piece. Its characteristics are like very thick Tin foil, maybe a 64th of an inch thick, very hard to bend.
Th Leafs scanned are at .25 ounces each and I have 7 of them, the stem weighs 3.80 ounces. The Flower is in a box somewhere, I saw it while packing, but not since, it was broken and seperate then. After my little surgery I feel my original estimate was a bit off, the Copper inner being wafer thin and almost no organic material makes me feel comfortable that it would pan out at 70-80% the outer coating of Gold.
I live in the Mountains of Colorado, Ski areas, other than Rich people Jewelry and Art shops in Vail, very remote rural so don't have access to Big City stuff, I will probably have to make a trip to Denver some weekend to get this resolved.
I've attached scans as somebody asked, now I need to find that flower because from my memory it weighs as much as the stem.
Neil