Wednesday, December 01, 2010

Turning Gold into Gold!

Weighing the gold
With gold prices above a thousand dollars an ounce (and with a very weak idea of how much an ounce weighs) I resolved to sell the ring from my 2nd marriage the next time I went by West Seattle Coins. Why not? I'm very happy with my third (!and final!) marriage and have no need of this relic from my second (!and worst!) one.  It has no artistic value (being a plain gold band, with "ludmila" in cyrillic carved on the inside) and I can think of something better to do with its cash value.

The process was pretty straightforward. There were a couple of people ahead of me, so I looked around at the shiny shiny coins in glass cases. If I were buying instead of selling, I'd have been mightily tempted!

When it got to be my turn, the actual sale itself took about 30 seconds. The guy weighed the ring, made me an offer, and paid in cash. My ring was way under an ounce and of course it wasn't pure gold, but I had a moment of disappointment at the price. Still, upon reflection, it seemed fair and I'm glad I took the money. The gold in the old ring means a lot less to me than the gold in my credit union account!

I would suggest before selling a ring from a past marriage, that you weigh it carefully and then use the google to get some idea of what gold is selling for (...keeping in mind you won't get the "Price Of Gold" since your item isn't pure, plus the shopkeeper has overhead.) If you have some idea of the money you may be getting, then you won't have to make a spot decision whether you're happy with the offer or not.

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