Jewellery shopping is probably one of the most enjoyable and stressful, one reason that it is both enjoyable and stressful at the same time is because it is expensive and secondly, very few people actually know much about jewellery apart from how they look. Thus paying a lot of money for something you know relatively little about is akin to a blind man buying artwork. First and foremost what people need to know about jewellery is how to actually assess jewellery in terms of monetary value and examine the reasons that they are buying jewellery thoroughly before actually buying them.
One thing that could be said outright about buying jewellery is that if you are buying jewellery for investment purposes – stop! It is better for gold buyers to purchase gold bars, or low premium jewellery such as P.A.M.P gold that do not carry workmanship costs and save your money. However if you are buying jewellery for the sake of owning them for a lifetime then understanding the material (precious metals) that are usually used to make jewellery would be a good start.
Jewellery is mostly made containing platinum, 18K/ 14K gold or palladium all of which are highly valuable and rare metals. In most case scenarios jewellery made from platinum contains 95 % platinum and 5 % alloys whereas 18 K gold is 75 % gold and 25 % other metals, 14 K gold contains 58.3 % gold with the remainder 41.7 % consisting of other alloys and palladium in turn is much like platinum with 95 % palladium and the remainder 5 % consisting of other metals.
There are 2 reasons as to why jewellers use other metals in the mix; one is to harden them while the other reason is to tint the hue of the jewellery. As for the resale value, in most cases it is better to sell gold jewellery as second hand items to other individuals, this way you would still be able to recover the value of the workmanship on top of the worth of the precious metal content. Selling jewellery to precious metal dealers is mainly a good idea for damaged or worn jewellery as the money that you would have paid for the jewellery craftsmanship is immediately omitted and you will only recover money that you paid for the precious metal content in the jewellery item.
From the same perspective, if you are looking to buy a ring or necklace as a gift, instead of buying it new from a jeweller, it would be wise to buy from another individual. Most jewellery are kept in mint condition by their owners, and look new (gold, platinum and palladium never loses shine or lustre – making it one of the reasons that these metals are considered valuable), by doing so, you will be save more than 20 % of the actual price of the jewellery piece if you were to buy it from the store due to the fact that you will not be paying the 30 usual ‘margin’ that people buying jewellery pay for craftsmanship and other overhead costs that are transferred to customers by the jewellers above the precious metal content.
The primary reason as to why most people purchase jewelry is due to the fact that they simply want to look good and in some cases maintain their status in society. The fact that they pay for the content of the precious metal in the trinket plus the artisan or for the workmanship becomes unimportant because the buyer actually likes what he or she sees and decides to own it.
The fact the gold content is a sideline investment factor should be considered as a bonus or plus point in buying gold jewelry and be left at that.