A carat is a unit of weight principally used for measuring diamonds and gemstomes. Each carat is exactly equal to 200 milgrams, or 0.2 grams. The origin of the word comes from the carab seed, which is a seed that was thought to have very little variance in weight and could therefor be used as a consistent form of measurement. In reality however, there was a significant variation in weight between the seeds and as a result of this dishonest classical gold traders could have two sets of carab seeds – a heavier one used for buying (heavy seeds make the same piece weigh less carabs) than for selling.  Clever customers would pick up a handful of their own carab seeds on the way to sell their gold to ensure fair treatment.   

What is a karat?

A karat (usually spelt with a K to avoid confusion with carat) is a measure of the purity of gold.  A karat of gold refers to the number of parts per 24 that are pure gold. As an example, 24 karat gold is 100% pure and 10 karat gold jewellery is, by weight, 10 parts gold and 14 parts other metals or 41.6% pure.   

The origin of karat as a measure of purity actually originated from the use of carat as a measure of weight. There is some debate over whether the use of karat came from the Roman coin the “solidus” or the German coin the “mark”, but whichever coin it was the story is the same. The mark/solidus weighed 24 carats or 4.8 grams so people would refer to the coin as 24 carat. When a coin of the same weight but less purity was minted people referred to the new coin as a lower carat even though the weight remained the same. A 12 carat coin for example would weigh 24 carats, but only contain 12 carats worth of gold (as it was only 12/24 = 50% pure).  From there it became understood and accepted that carat would be used as a measure of purity with a base of 24.

The conventionally spelling when using carat to refer to a purity of gold was changed to karat to avoid confusion, although the spelling of carat is still often used to purity.

What is a carrot?

A carat is an orange vegetable worth nothing near gold or diamonds unless you are sufficiently hungry. 

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1) Get to know your gold: Knowing the weight, purity and general value of your gold will decrease your chances of being taken to the cleaners by a gold buyer in Vancouver. Many gold buyers know the balance of information is in their favour and will take advantage of your lack of knowledge.

To figure out the weight, a good digital kitchen scale will probably give you the best idea, but another (less exact) option is to simply compare its weight to another item with a known weight. For example, hold a loonie in one hand and your gold in the other, do they weigh about the same? Most Loonies weigh about 7 grams (the newer ones are a little less). If it’s less than the loonie, try a quarter, they weigh about 4.5 grams. The purity of your gold jewelry is usually indicated by a hallmark, a small number usually located in an inconspicuous spot. It will likely say 10k, 14k or 18k but some European jewelry is stamped with a 417, 585 or 750, gold from Asia is usually stamped 22k, 917 or 999.

Most reputable gold buyers will post their prices per gram online listed by the purity. Our buying prices can be found here. Simply find the price for your purity of gold jewelry and multiply it by the weight and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what your gold is worth!

2) Shop Around: Many gold buyers will start off with a low offer hoping you’ll bite. Their buyers are usually paid on commission and will earn more if you accept a lower offer. Our buyers are not paid commissions and offer the highest payout up front. This is why it’s important to check prices first, be sure that you are at least being offered the rates they post online. Many gold buyers will post impossibly high prices online to lure you in, only to lowball and deduct once you are in their office assuming you will negotiate up from the lower value.

3) Check out Ratings: Most established businesses are assigned a rating by the Better Business Bureau based on the number of complaints they have received from actual customers. The BBB compares the number of complaints to the volume of business that is conducted as well as the typical complaint rates for businesses in that industry (unfortunately in the gold buying industry this rate is usually quite high). Click here to see the BBB ratings of gold buyers in the Lower Mainland. Always make sure that the gold buyer you are dealing with is listed by the BBB and is not a typical “here today, gone tomorrow” establishment.

With so many gold buyers in the Vancouver area it can be hard to find the right place to sell your gold jewelry and get the fair payout you’re looking for. However keeping the three tips above in mind when you sell gold jewelry, you can rest assured that you won’t cave to pressure sales tactics and improve your gold selling experience, leaving you happy, educated and with some extra cash in your pocket!

The post How To Sell Gold Jewelry in Vancouver With Peace of Mind appeared first on Vancouver Gold.

My colleague Gregory Neilson recently shared his thoughts on the inflationary pressure that is affecting the price of gold, you can read his blog post on gold price here.

Read the First Blog Post in This Series: Who is Charlie Pollock?

Read Blog Post #2: The History of the High Gold Prices

Read Blog Post #3: Comparing Gold, Stocks and Commodities

Read Blog Post #4: Jewellery Demand for Physical Gold

Read Blog Post #5: Investment Demand For Gold

Read Blog Post #6: Gold Supply

http://www.gold.org/investment/statistics/demand_and_supply_statistics/

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The post What’s Next For the Gold Price? appeared first on Vancouver Gold.

About 2/3 of gold supply annually comes from mine production. The remaining supply comes from recycled gold and when prices are higher more people consider selling. The long term increases in supply that come with the higher prices obviously create downwards pressure on gold price.
 

Read the Final Blog Post in This Series: What’s Next?

Read the First Blog Post in This Series: Who is Charlie Pollock?

Read Blog Post #2: The History of High Gold Prices

Read Blog Post #3: Comparing Gold, Stocks and Commodities

Read Blog Post #4: Jewellery Demand for Physical Gold

Read Blog Post #5: Investment Demand for Gold

My colleague Gregory Neilson recently shared his thoughts on the inflationary pressure that is affecting gold prices, you can read his blog post on gold prices here.

#vancouvergold  

The post Gold Supply appeared first on Vancouver Gold.

Bad news about the economy in the US and Europe sent more and more investors to gold as a perceived safe haven. The more investors who bought in, the higher prices rose justifying their purchase and creating a self-fulfilling prophesy. The fundamental problem is that this is the description of a market bubble. The fear is that the market created a pyramid scheme effect whereby the value and use of gold had barely increased but the speculative force caused prices to rise to a point that may not be sustainable in the long run.

Even the types of events that might usually lift prices can sometimes have the opposite effect because of real world supply pressure. The recent fall in prices is partly attributed to the idea that the struggling Cypress might sell their gold reserves to raise money. This comes after part of the previous rise in gold prices having been a result of investors rushing to gold to protect their wealth against the economic troubles in Europe. 

Read the Next Blog Post in This Series: Gold Supply

Read the First Blog Post in This Series: Who is Charlie Pollock?

Read Blog Post #2: The History of High Gold Prices

Read Blog Post #3: Comparing Gold, Stocks and Commodities

Read Blog Post #6: Gold Supply

Read The Final Blog Post in This Series: What’s Next?

My colleague Gregory Neilson recently shared his thoughts on the inflationary pressure that is affecting gold prices, you can read his blog post on gold prices here.

#vancouvergold  

The post Investment Demand for Gold appeared first on Vancouver Gold.

The huge factors increasing jewellery demand are the booming economies of Asia, with a particular focus on India and China where gold traditions are paired with a rapidly growing middle class. This may sound like a very promising factor contributing high demand for jewellery but I believe that, in these markets, gold jewellery is purchased as an investment and a store of wealth.

The jewellery culture in Asia is far different from North America; with high purity and heavy gold pieces trading for a very small jewellery premium, and mostly in the physical gold content. People have been buying jewellery in these markets because the consensus was that it's smart investment and that prices will continue to rise. I think that with the recent fall in gold prices, jewellery demand in these countries will be tested.

Read the Next Blog Post in This Series: Investment Demand for Gold

Read the First Blog Post in This Series: Who is Charlie Pollock?

Read Blog Post #2: The History of High Gold Prices

Read Blog Post #3: Comparing Gold, Stocks and Commodities

Read Blog Post #6: Gold Supply

Read The Final Blog Post in This Series: What’s Next?

My colleague Gregory Neilson recently shared his thoughts on the inflationary pressure that is affecting gold prices, you can read his blog post on gold prices here.

#vancouvergold  

The post Jewellery Demand for Physical Gold appeared first on Vancouver Gold.

The traditional narrative about gold prices is that gold is a safe haven investment and a way to protect your wealth against one of the following: inflation, weakness in the US dollar, and economic or political turmoil. These ideas are largely the result of gold’s historical use as a currency (or as a means of physically backing a currency) but in reality the most significant link between gold price and any of these factors exists simply because investors perceive that there is some link (and know that others do as well) and purchase accordingly. I would argue that a speculative link is not meaningful and can create a bubble that will eventually burst.

Unlike an investment like stocks, where the investor owns a piece of a company’s assets and profits, gold is a commodity (in the same category as agricultural outputs, oil, and building materials etc.). Stock prices are a result of the markets judgement of a company’s value taking into account, among other things, assets, profits, growth and risk. Commodities, on the other hand, are typically goods that can be spent, consumed or used. 

With most stocks and commodities, the market gives frequent signals as to where the price should be. A stock that is expected to experience large growth, for example, will probably decline if the quarterly numbers come in below expectations (even if the company still made money and grew). These frequent corrections make long term speculation less common and reduce the likelihood of a long term bubble. 

For a typical commodity, like corn for instance, the value comes from the intersection of supply and demand that creates the price. For example, if more consumers or industries demand corn, the prices will rise. Similarly, if there is a poor year for growing corn, the scarcity might cause prices to rise because of the lack of supply. Speculative markets for corn and other commodities certainly exist (the Chicago Mercantile Exchange being the large one), but the prices receive frequent feedback from the market and the commodities are typically consumed. 

Unfortunately, gold is different. 

Very little of the demand for gold comes from practical uses and purposes. Unlike other commodities, gold is not consumed by being eaten, fuelling cars, or used in construction. Almost all the gold that has ever been mined is still available for circulation. Only about ten percent of gold sold each year is used for its practical properties, the majority of which is used in technology. Even this gold is not spent or consumed – the tiny amounts of gold used in electronics are still so valuable that they are worth salvaging and very often will be melted, refined and added back into circulation. The rest of gold demand is split between jewellery demand (43%), Investment demand (35%) and official sector purchases (12%). 

Read the Next Blog Post in This Series: Jewellery Demand for Physical Gold

Read the First Blog Post in This Series: Who is Charlie Pollock?

Read Blog Post #2: The History of High Gold Prices

Read Blog Post #5: Investment Demand for Gold

Read Blog Post #6: Gold Supply

Read The Final Blog Post in This Series: What’s Next?

My colleague Gregory Neilson recently shared his thoughts on the inflationary pressure that is affecting gold prices, you can read his blog post on gold prices here.
#vancouvergold  

The post Comparing Gold, Stocks and Commodities appeared first on Vancouver Gold.

First, a quick look at what gold was going in the decades leading up to the climb of the 2000s. 

For twenty years starting in the early 1980s, it was not a very pulse pounding time to be a gold investor. Gold was hovering around $300/ounce, but no real gains or losses were made. The 1970s though had been an exciting decade for gold with the end of the gold standard (pegging gold to $35/ounce) in August of 1971 allowing gold prices to move freely for the first time. Amid strong oil prices, high inflation and geo-political concerns, gold prices took off and prices shot up to $850/ounce (correcting for inflation that would work out to over $2000/ounce in today’s dollars). Then the bubble burst and, after a bumpy ride for a couple of years, prices levelled out around $300 with very little action.

In the short history of freely floating gold prices, the rapid rise and fall of value in the 1970s demonstrate that the prices can be quite volatile and the stagnation in the 1980s and 1990s demonstrate that prices have not always been rising. 

Read The Next Blog Post in This Series: Comparing Gold, Stocks and Commodities

Read the First Blog Post in This Series: Who is Charlie Pollock?

Read Blog Post #4: Jewellery Demand for Physical Gold

Read Blog Post #5: Investment Demand for Gold

Read Blog Post #6: Gold Supply

Read The Final Blog Post in This Series: What’s Next?

My colleague Gregory Neilson recently shared his thoughts on the inflationary pressure that is affecting gold prices, you can read his blog post on gold prices here.

#vancouvergold  

The post History of High Gold Prices appeared first on Vancouver Gold.

I have run Vancouver Gold, a precious metal dealer with seven locations across the country, for the past three years. While I am not an expert financial analyst, I have been a keen observer of movements in gold prices and their causes. I studied economics at Queen’s University and wrote an undergraduate thesis on the determinants of gold price.

I am a little late to the party in writing this post;  a couple of days ago, on Friday April 12th and Monday April 15th, gold prices experienced their sharpest two day decline since the last gold bubble burst in the early 1980s. Gold prices fell roughly $210 from $1560 to $1350 per ounce, a two-year low. 

Previously, I have been on-record as a firm believer in the rising gold prices being a bubble that could burst. In this series of blog posts I look at the causes and some of the effects of the (possible) precious metals bubble. 

Charlie Pollock
CEO Vancouver Gold

Read The Next Blog Post in This Series: The History of High Gold Prices

Read Blog Post #3: Comparing Gold, Stocks and Commodities

Read Blog Post #4: Jewellery Demand for Physical Gold

Read Blog Post #5: Investment Demand for Gold

Read Blog Post #6: Gold Supply

Read The Final Blog Post in This Series: What’s Next?

My colleague Gregory Neilson recently shared his thoughts on the inflationary pressure that is affecting gold prices, you can read his blog post on gold prices here.

#vancouvergold  

The post Who Is Charlie Pollock? appeared first on Vancouver Gold.

The truth is that price charts, weights and stamps found on most gold buyers’ websites, including our own, mean nothing if you’ve just got a bit of gold and no way of weighing or testing it.

That’s why we’ve been busy uploading pictures and the prices we paid for some of our recent purchases. Lots of jewellery is mass-manufactured, so you might actually find exactly what you’re trying to sell in our list of items we’ve already bought. Find out exactly what your gold is worth!

You’ll see that it really doesn’t matter what your gold looks like; whether it’s broken, worn-out or just plain ugly, it doesn’t matter! Vancouver Gold pays strictly for the precious-metal content in your jewelry.

You’ll also notice there’s a loonie placed in each picture, just to give you a common reference point in case you’re wondering what size the piece is.

With a 150% highest payout guarantee, and as the only gold buyer in the Lower Mainland to be accredited by the Better Business Bureau, trust in Vancouver Gold.

Click the link below to see pictures and prices of our recent gold purchases.

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Example Vancouver Gold Purchases – Actual Gold Selling Prices! Vancouver Gold Buyer – We Post our Gold Buying Prices Daily. Vancouver Gold Proudly shares its Industry-Leading Purchase Prices. Call 604-876-GOLD Today.

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