Antiques Business Articles | Fine Estate Sales, Antiques and Collectibles

The Value of Gold and Silver Collectibles

May 14, 2010

Take Care as Antiques Dealers, Collectors, or Sellers!

The value of gold and silver as pegged to the precious metals spot market price is now often times higher than the value of the gold or silver as an object of utility.

The Gold and Silver Rush Is On…

Today the spot price of Gold and Silver is at or almost at historic highs. This means three things:

If you are an Antiques Dealer, some of the items in your case or within your online store are worth more as precious metals, than for their perceived value as objects.Take care, many savvy dealers and pickers are buying the undervalued gold and silver that they are finding online or in antiques stores, and reselling those items to metals dealers. How do I know this? Because these pickers are coming to my estate sales with scales.
By the way, I don’t see anything wrong with this, it’s just the nature of the business.
If you are an Antiques Collector, you are going to pay more for gold and silver objects that you collect now. It’s also likely that you are going to be buying less, and selling more.
Now is the perfect time to cull through and refine your collection. One of the distresses of times like these, is that a whole lot of antique, and vintage gold and silver is now on its way to the smelters.

This does have a silver lining though, if you pardon the pun – it will have the future effect of making Antique, and Vintage gold and silver objects of jewelry, flatware and hollow ware far more scarce, and hence more valuable.

But that’s the future, for today, exercise caution.
If you are trying to sell your gold or silver, than take heart, you are finally going to do well, because the gold and silver market is finally on your side. Today you can expect to be paid much higher prices than ever before.

How Much Are Gold and Silver Objects Worth?

There are two basic ways to figure the value of gold and silver…

Object Value
Precious Metals Spot Market Value

Object Value: As I stated above the spot metals market values for gold and silver is in many cases exceeding the perceived value of gold and silver as objects of utility, beauty, jewelry and so on.

But, and this is a big ol’ warning. This is not always the case. There are still many items of gold and silver that have object value many times worth their weight in gold and silver, notwithstanding the price of gold and silver today.

So take heed, do your homework . Tiffany, Shreve and Co., as well as objects of gold and silver by makers too numerous to list, have values as objects many times in excess of their value as gold or silver.

Precious Metals Spot Market Value: The first thing to know about selling gold or silver on the open market to a gold or silver metals dealer, is that there are two kinds of “Ounces.”

Avoirdupois Ounce = 28.34 Grams
Troy Ounce = 31.10 Grams

So when you pop your gold and silver objects onto a gram scale, make sure you weigh them using the Troy Ounce system to figure out how many grams they actually weigh.

All Gold and Silver Is Weighed In Troy Ounces!

Here is a way to put this into perspective…

When weighing gold the following formulas apply.

24k Gold (.999) = 31.1 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

22k Gold (.916) = 28.48 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

18k Gold (.750) = 23.32 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

14k Gold (.585) = 18.19 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

10k Gold (.416) = 12.93 Pure Grams Of Gold Per Weighed Ounce.

When weighing Silver the following formulas apply.

Pure Silver = 31.1 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.950 = Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.935 = 29.54 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.925 Silver = 28.76 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.916 Silver = 28.48 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.900 Silver = 27.99 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

.800 Silver = 24.88 Pure Grams of Silver Per Weighed Ounce.

So what can you sell your gold and silver for today?

The per gram price for 14k gold today is – $22.57

The per gram price for sterling (.925) today is – .56 cents

But that’s not what a precious metals dealer will pay you. You can expect them to pay within the range of between 70% and 85% of the spot metal price for your gold and 65% to 75% for your silver.

I have seen many people sell their gold jewelry for as little as 50% of spot metals market prices, especially when they sell to national metals buyers they have found through T.V., Radio, and Print media. As well as by those who attend those nifty Gold and Silver parties at friends homes.

I am always in the market for collections of sterling, be they English, European, Mexican, Russian or American – Jewelry or Other Objects of Sterling.

Good Luck!

Martin Codina

415-235-7238

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2 Comments | Antique Value Guides, Antiques Business Articles | Permalink
Posted by Martin

Give Antiques and Collectibles Visitors What They Want

February 28, 2010

Or They Won’t Buy Your Antiques

It’s That Simple

Here’s The Big Web Secret: It ain’t personal; whether a visitor buys an antique or stays on your website is dependent on one thing and one thing only. Is your site useful to their search, to their objective for visiting your site in the first place. If not, they will leave, your bounce rate will remain high, and your Google Analytic’s will sink, and your site will tumble and fall through layer upon layer towards eventual mediocrity. And the biggest secret of all, is that the way your fortunes will fail, poised as they were on your ineffectual web strategies, won’t be personal.

Let Me Explain: It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve spent on your site, how fancy your logo is, how many hours you spent on your message. It only matters what the consumer of your little bit of PHP or HTML wants – that the information consumer, like the retail consumers of old, is always right. Yes they are, they are always right; what they want, how they want to see it, and how they will respond, is entirely in the hand that holds the mouse.

Please know that their surfing habits are just like your surfing habits, and like you, visitors to your site who do not either understand your sites navigation, or who do not resonate with your content will leave, and they will leave quickly.

And It Won’t Be Personal: The wind of their quick exit is impersonal. That’s just the way it is. They don’t know you, don’t care necessarily, and will only stay on your site if there is something in it for them. So give them something…

Websites and Antiques Have To Be Useful

It’s That Simple!

Antique Marketing Secret #1: In today’s economy it’s more true than in times of boom, that buyers tend to wear their practical shopping hats when shopping for antiques. Yeah they want items that look good, that are stylish, that have value, but more than ever what they buy has to provide a practical solution to something that is missing in their home.

Shoppers leave antique stores without buying, when the store they are visiting can not match their desire with anything useful to the utility of their search.

Websites Too, Have Secrets: Think of your website as the answers to questions – not the questions you pose, or the answers you found on a get rich quick SEO marketing site…the only questions that your site should answer, are the questions being posed by visitors to your site.

You see, your visitors are smarter than you about what they want to find on your website, they know what they want to find, and again, if they don’t find what they are looking for, they will leave quickly.

And It Won’t Be Personal: If you want people to stay, to enjoy what they read, then find out what they want to read. Every page on your website is like a test. This site for example has about 300 pages on it. Here in order of visitor preference are the top 5 most visited pages on this site:

When visitors get to these pages they tend to stay, they tend to read, and more importantly, they tend to take action, by either buying, or letting others know via various social networking platforms about this site. Here Are Mine: MY Twitter Profile – My Facebook Fan Page – My Stumbleupon

Visitors Stay On Websites When Given Something Of Value

It’s That Simple

Look At This Site: Notice the paucity of advertising, yes there is a bit here and there, but not much. My focus is clear: I want to give, and have given a lot of valuable Antiques and Collectibles Research Information away for free, as my gift of gratitude to the industry that has supported me for the last 14 years. I am not afraid that this gift of information about where and how to find an Estate Sales Professional will undermined me, to the contrary, I know that my Estate Sales Business has grown from this…I watch this happen everyday.

Your Antique Store or Website Can Do The Same: The Big Guys in the antiques business are slowly taking over, buying up URLs, setting up innumerable shopping sites, and slowly taking over the internet for searches related to antiques, collectibles, estate sales and so on. I describe this process here as Big Business Is Making A Web Mall Of The Antiques Business.

Take Control Of Local Antiques Searches: In the same way that you sweep and clean your store, and manage your store’s presentation, give some attention to the internet, to the way shoppers are looking for the kind of antiques you sell…never allow for them to find an antique on the internet – from some far away store or dealer, when they could find it down the street in your store.

Don’t let the big boys control your physical mall because they are more sophisticated about how to exploit and capture local search terms and present the answers to antiques and collectibles web queries on their websites.

Good Luck Out There…

Martin Codina