Money for Gold – the Need to be Careful

The rising prices of gold have forced many of the people around the world to sell their old and broken jewelry against a hefty amount of cash. The business has become so huge and popular that proper marketing campaigns with dedicated websites have been setup in order to ease the process of exchanging money in return for gold. Many of the customers are not aware with the amount of scams that surround this industry and how people get robbed by what we call through legal means and buy your gold on unethical prices. The first of the scams that you can face is in the form of a rigged scale. Many people who are involved with this business rig their scale. They don’t properly calibrate the scale and deceive the customers through this rigged scale. Many of the people do it on purpose in order to get more money than the actual price. They under weigh your gold. Many authorities have conducted some serious raids on such businesses but it’s not humanly possible to check every one in the market if he has a rigged scale or not. Also they adjust wrong prices for wrong pieces of gold. We know that there are different categories of gold against which your item of gold is evaluated.

They let deceptive buyer under quote the actual gold. So one of the precautions that a person can take while exchanging gold for money is to check the certification, that is, if they have properly calibrated the scale or not. You should also ask the shopkeepers to display the certificate, in plain view, on the wall where it can be properly read by the visiting customers. Failure to do so, you must immediately inform the relevant authorities.Many of the shopkeepers and business men don’t give you the proper money for the proper karat amount. This is one of the complexities associated with the gold business as there is a lot of jewelry that is unmarked or improperly labeled. There might be pieces that are marked 18k but actually they might be 14k. There are also some pieces that are marked as 10k but are actually 14k.

Finding a gold item that is under marked is very difficult but over marking a gold item is actually very common. Honest gold buyers will make sure they properly weigh the gold items in front of you to give you the right karat measurement. This is usually performed through acid testing. There are also some electrical machines to test the weight of the gold item along with some special scales.Acid testing is the most common of all the tests. Don’t buy the word from the shopkeeper about how much your gold weighs unless until you see the acid test done by them infront of you. Some shopkeepers will deny this and will try to convince you with the amount of years they have been in the business and you being the first ever customer,to ask for taking the test right in front. These tests are not 100% accurate but they tell you if your gold item is real or not and if the jewelry is 10k, 14k, or 18k etc.