Suburban Gold Parties
February 24th, 2009WARNING: This is not a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any financial instrument.
Read to the end…
I don’t know what to make of that. Is this the public participation phase? Or not? Did those guys really sell $5 million worth of gold in one day? Can that possibly be true?
I hope people are diversifying and not setting themselves up for decapitation.
Watch out for a possible double top here. If that pattern emerges, that could be very disappointing for gold bugs… Unless they want to buy more at lower prices.
Via: Los Angeles Times:
As prices soar and personal finances sour, Californians are selling off their old jewelry to generate extra cash.
Juggling glasses of white wine and baggies filled with baubles, dozens of women descended on a well-appointed Orange County home this week to trade in their old golden treasures for hefty checks.
There were earrings from ex-boyfriends, ring settings with missing stones and chain bracelets from sorority sisters. One woman brought in her husband’s wedding ring — from a previous marriage.
Julia Geivet, 39, had hopes of selling an “embarrassing” Italian horn bauble she had owned since eighth grade and a few other small trinkets, which she thought might get her $30.
“I figured I’d come get a little money and socialize and chat,” said Geivet, who was recently laid off as a manager at Verizon Communications Inc. “It might not come out to a lot, but right now, every little bit helps.”
She left with a check for $302.92.
Gold is hot. The precious metal soared $25.70 an ounce Friday to $1,001.80, topping the $1,000 mark for the first time in nearly a year. South African Krugerrands, American Eagles and other gold coins are in demand as people seek safe investment havens in uncertain times.
That has people digging through their drawers and jewelry boxes looking for watchbands, cuff links, chains and bracelets that can be sold to jewelers, pawnshops and other brokers to be melted down to feed the growing demand for gold coins.
The party Geivet attended at the Aliso Viejo home of Mary-Margaret Fincher is a twist on the old suburban Tupperware party. Here, however, it’s the guests who do the selling.
Erin Stevenson, who organized the party through her group My Gold Party CA, appraised the jewelry with assistant Richard Bartoletti as guests debated whether to wear heels or flats during pregnancy.
To test the gold, Stevenson shaved off small flecks with a whirring Dremel tool, blanketing the dark wood of the dining table with a luminous sheen. Later, while Bartoletti peered through a magnifier attached to his eyeglasses, looking for karat stamps on the jewelry, Stevenson weeded out gold impostors with magnets and a special acidic gel.
Fincher, 34, said the parties were popular in her hometown of Atlanta. As the host she gets 10% of what is paid out — which this night was $4,000. One woman walked away with a $1,836.88 check.
Stevenson pays about 65% of the market value, which works out to $5.56 for a gram of 8-karat gold, rising to $15.47 a gram for 22k. She then sells the gold to a refiner for a price just under the market trading price.
…
Precious metals, including silver and platinum, are benefiting from the panicky belief that “everything else has been destroyed,” said Leonard Kaplan of Prospector Asset Management in Evanston, Ill.
Kaplan says the gold market is on its way to becoming another bubble, like technology stocks in the late 1990s and housing for much of this decade.
“Is it going to end badly? Yes,” he said. “The question is where — is it $1,200, or $1,500, or $1,800?”
For now, however, demand appears to be growing. The U.S. Mint shipped 92,000 1-ounce American Eagle coins to its dealer network in January, up sharply from 22,500 in January 2008.
On Cloverfield Boulevard in Santa Monica, Goldline International Inc. caters to investors looking to buy thousands of dollars in gold bars or coins such as the American Eagle.
Chief Executive Mark Albarian said that until late last year his staff was making about 100 sales a day with an average order of about $5,000. Now the firm is closing nearly 300 deals daily with an average order of about $13,000, he said.
On Friday, total sales exceeded $5 million, he said.
“A few years ago, the scene was pretty quiet, but business has pretty much tripled,” Albarian said. “Most businesses worry these days about not having enough customers. Gold businesses worry about running out of product.”
Research Credit: ltcolonelnemo
Check out the zip code 44484 on Google. We live in the freakin rust belt of America. Steel plants have closed in the drove, and are GONE here. We lived through a massive COLLAPSE- a microcosm of what is happening in the U.S. and the world today. The point is WE lived through it. Companies have been closing left and right.
The ladder company, the whatever company. We are somehow used to the bad news.
But it blew my brains out to see a sign waving soul standing out on the road on the intersection of I-80 waving a gold party sign. I would have stopped to take a picture, but I was on my way to pick up my Amish farmer to take him to a meeting where he wants to start a CSA. I was late so I didn’t take the picture.
But oh my.
I think it is so effing ridiculous for people to be trading their gold for dollars at this time. Really, really bad news.
Giving away their Gold for dollars.
I cannot comprehend that People are not thinkin, thinkin, thinkin.
When the dollar becomes something not a worthy medium of exchange, what will you fall back on?
Hmphf.
I’ve got that old gold tooth filling that I’m hanging onto. And I’m not trading it in until Al Franken is seated as the Senator from Minnesota. And then some.
Exchanging gold for dollars right now is so UPSIDE DOWN.