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Introduction.

Whether you’re short of money or just want to convert some physical assets you own to cash, a dilemma facing quite a lot of people these days is should they look for personal loans or sell gold artifacts and jewellery that they own? The idea of selling gold for cash these days seems inescapable, not only do we get junk mail delivered to our homes and computers about it , but selling gold seems to be the latest way to get a party started. No more Tupperware, lingerie or sex toy parties - no the very latest fad is to have a gold selling party!

Who’s selling their gold?

Have you got a hand full of gold to sell?

It is no coincidence that the comment above about gold selling parties was prefixed with comments about Tupperware, lingerie and sex toys. One of the biggest markets at present for people looking to sell gold is - the female market. OK, before you jump in and either say or presume - that’s because they’ve got all the ‘bling’; whilst there might be an element of truth in that it’s not the full story. The fact of the matter is that on average women are less inclined to try and borrow money if they’re in need of some cash. One reason for that, especially if they’re a single person with children, is that they know many finance houses will treat them as bad risk customers and hit them with big interest rates on bad credit loans. So, selling gold will be an attractive alternative to them. However, there are of course those women who do just want to sell one lot of gold to go out and buy some new ‘bling’; especially if they’ve just dumped one boyfriend! On that point one thing you might like to ruminate on is that any gold you sell will be scrapped, even if it’s adorned with jewels it’ll all just go into the melting pot as they only want the scrap gold.

Will you get value for your money from selling gold?

Do you want to keep all your bling?

With gold prices at around the $1000 an ounce, Gold is indeed a precious element and worth investing in, in fact only a few weeks ago it was peaking at over $1200 an ounce. Now you don’t need to sell much gold to make your self a tidy sum of money at those sorts of prices. Pretty well any 18 carat wedding ring could net you around $300, as for heavy gold bangles and chains - well you could be into some serious money. Following on from that comment, you need to remember here that the $1000 and ounce is for pure gold, so an ounce of 9 carat gold isn’t worth $1000. Also, you have to remember that the $1000 an ounce is what would be paid for a plain ounce of gold. Your gold, in the form of jewellery or artifacts, actually has a much higher value than that, because of the skill that was put into making it. So, the true value of your gold could actually be much greater than the current market price for pure gold. The problem that then arises is - is that by selling your gold at a ‘gold party’ it may well not realize its true value, so what are the alternatives?

Sell it or pawn it?

There’s a difference between the price of gold and the value of gold items!

The following are offered as facts - it really is up to you to make the call on what to do. First of all selling your gold. Depending on the organization that you sell your gold through you may or may not get a decent return on it. One vital point here is - how valuable is it to you? If the gold is just some trinket you no longer like or want, then perhaps getting great value for money isn’t the first thing on your mind. But what about those items that you actually treasure and love and are reluctant to let go of, you’ll want to maximize the cash you can make to do them justice won’t you? If a friend is running a ‘gold party’ chances are you might get a decent price for the gold. Don’t expect to get the full value of it, even if it were to be 24 carat, as the buyer will be looking to make a profit when they sell it too, but gold parties by and large are dependant on networks of friends and would soon collapse if people thought they were being ripped off. Selling your gold through one of the online or mail gold buying businesses, or even those you see set up in shopping malls, is another matter. Here you need to be very cool and level headed. Consumer reports are citing examples of people being offered as little as 3% of the true value of the gold with 10% being an average figure; and some people even being told that gold with clear Hallmarks - isn’t the real thing. On average, pawning something you can reasonably expect to get 25 to 33% of the value in cash, better than some gold buyers and you have the chance to redeem it later too.

The loan alternative.

If you need cash, don't sell or pawn your gold - take out a loan.

Bearing in mind what we’ve just said, on a returns basis you really would be better off looking for a cash personal loan. Sell gold for as little as 3% of its value and you are really giving the buyer 97% in interest - and you lose the gold items themselves. Taking out a personal loan, by shopping around for online loans, you can get interest rates from around 15% - even on a high risk loan spread over a long period. Bearing in mind our earlier comment about some women being reticent to apply for loans, there are internet companies that specialize in providing women online loans or alternatively you could consider approaching one of the excellent social lending websites, and ask for a person-to-person loan instead.

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