Day time TV

and there are ads offering to "buy your gold" that (anecdotally) pay about

I really can't understand why someone with some jewellery to sell doesn't just go into a local jewellers and see what they will pay first.

tim

As the saying goes, a fool and his (or her) money are soon parted. And there are enough fools out there for parting them from their money to be a viable business model.

Mark

One must not forget also the elderly and vulnerable who DO need protecting.

Iain

Indeed. I'm not justifying it, merely explaining it. It's all too easy for those of us with at least half a brain to think that no-one would be stupid enough to fall for these things. But people do, and enough of them do for it to be worthwhile creating businesses that rely on them doing it.

Mark

My mother-in-law went into 2 local jewellers to value an early 19th century 22ct ring (a big bugger too) plus diamond that she'd had bequeathed to her about 50 years ago.

One said £307, one said £312.

She said to the one offering £312, ok, I'll take it..........at which point she was advised that the scrap value was about £40 and that's all they would pay.

The second one repeated this except said £35.

Local jewellers are not paragons of virtue, trust me........

I have a recording of the final 6+ minutes of a telephone scam of an indian sounding gentleman who was trying to pursuade me that he was an MS contractor who had been instructed by MS to link into my computer and correct a 'problem'. Most of it was quite believable, but then some issues on Data Protection cropped up. Then, when he finally asked me what operating system I was using (despite having information from MS!), it just confirmed the scam.

Who does not get the occasional program crash? Those who use BT also are aware of the system they use to authorise someone to link in to a computer. He was extremely convincing. I would hate to think the very high percentage success rate that he was achieving.

The first sight I had of the Nigerian-419 scam was in the mid-80s. That was received by fax. I checked it out with the company auditors who confirmed it was a scam. Its success can be seen in that it is still very much around.

Iain

When most people ask for a valuation, what they most commonly need it for is for insurance purposes. And in that case, the value that matters is what it would cost to replace it, not what you would get if you sold it.

Mark

Plus the high street jeweller is probably not in the business of selling second-hand stuff. Hence they offer an opinion of what it might fetch at auction or whatever, but they're not interested in buying it themselves.

Pete

"Mark Goodge" wrote

Ahem - why not hang around outside a jeweller and offer someone trying to sell one, a quid more than the jeweller offered!

If a jeweller could get one for X then your "cost to replace" could be only just over X...

My mother-in-law went into 2 local jewellers to value an early 19th century 22ct ring (a big bugger too) plus diamond that she'd had bequeathed to her about 50 years ago.

One said 307, one said 312.

She said to the one offering 312, ok, I'll take it..........at which point she was advised that the scrap value was about 40 and that's all they would pay.

The second one repeated this except said 35.

Local jewellers are not paragons of virtue, trust me........

----------------------------------------------------

But it does give you a value to use as a starting point.

If the jeweller is only going to give you 35 pounds the company on the telly is going to give you less.

So you can decide that it's not worth the bother whilst you still have the items in your hand

tim

However, when the something is sold the amount the seller receives[1] is exactly the same as the amount the buyer pays. The valuation the jewellers provided was the price at which they would sell the items. With the amount they were prepared to pay, they would have been making over 600% profit (allowing for VAT on the subsequent sale) if they had bought the items and then resold them. This seems like rather a large markup.

So if you wanted £100 today, and paid it back a week later, it would cost you about £6.30 for the loan.

That doesn't sound unreasonable.

In message , Tim wrote

No, the cost to replace is only worth that amount of money if there is someone to buy it.

The cost to replace could also include charges for someone to find a source of replacement and for attending auctions etc., which could be many times its actual value.

Much of the stuff not meeting the expected value is possibly from the Ratner collection.

In message , tim.... wrote

One of the Radio 4 "money type" programmes did a survey and the high street jeweller came near the bottom of the list, having the worst offers. The online/postal outfits were better although there was a massive variation in the price offered. In general they were only treating the items as scrap by weight, usually excluding catches and clasps because they were base metal.

How much does it weigh? Gold is about £21 per gram at the moment, and a jeweller will give you a bit less than that. The ring is worth a lot more than its weight in gold because it is an early 19th century piece. Selling it for scrap is not the best way to realise its value.

Obviously, but you would still expect the jeweller to make a better offer because they have lower overheads than companies running a TV campaign and it's much easier for the punter to walk away if the offer is insulting.

I'm surprised that they didn't

tim

That's the flaw in the APR figure. Short term loans of a few days show such a result.

However, it's not £6.30, it's more like £13/14 including "fees" so its around 14% per week. Furthermore, this is the rate for lower risk customers as they must have a bank account and proof of income.

did that once only it was a shotgun...

I was on holiday at the time and visiting a gun shop when an old boy came in with his beloved hammer 12 bore Farmers Gun. The shop owner said it was worth very little and did not want to buy it.

The old boy walked out followed by me whereupon I said I'll give you 20 for it and he accepted. I still have it to this day, 30+ years on.