A necklace with a broken clasp. Gold earrings missing their match. An old dental bridge needing a patch.
Frances McLemore of Olive Branch put them all in a batch and to the jewelry store she went, to sell them for cash.
McLemore is one of many people around the country cashing in on the rise in gold prices, to a height that hasn't been seen in 28 years.
As McLemore was getting her gold jewelry appraised, gold was sitting at $922 an ounce, down from more than $1,000, but considerably higher than the typical $500 or $600 an ounce price.
Terry W. McMullin is an Olive Branch resident who has been in the jewelry business 34 years. He and his wife, Jackie, put a banner outside Master Jewelers: "We Buy Gold."
He said people started bringing in bags of gold jewelry when the price hit $900 an ounce. Even more prospectors came after it reached $1,000.
One woman brought in "a whole collection of jewelry," McMullin said, worth $50,000 if purchased new. She planned to give the money to her two grown children, both behind on their mortgages.
Some people are having trouble assessing if their jewelry is worth trying to sell.
"A lot of people, believe it or not, don't believe it's worth anything. It's broken," McMullin said. "We're telling people, if you're not sure it's gold, bring it in, we'll test it."
Scratching the jewelry against a stone and testing the mark with sulfuric acid reveals to a trained eye like McMullin whether the piece is gold.
Twenty-four carat is pure gold and pays more. Ten carat is only 41.7 percent gold. The rest is an alloy.
McMullin pays for the gold in the piece, but a piece may be worth more for its antiquity, as in the case of gold coins, which people also have been selling to him.
As for the future of gold prices in the volatile market, McMullin said, "I tell everybody that my crystal ball is no clearer than theirs."
He is not keeping all that gold around very long, however. He is selling while the price is as high as it is.
Source: djournal
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