How to Sell Family Vintage Jewelry?

We explain everything you need to know

In the moment of deepest crisis, when you have searched even the bottom of the last drawer, there are at least five rules to keep in mind if you have decided to sell the family jewels. It is a case of saying: five golden rules. First of all, you must independently weigh the individual objects you have decided to part with.

Therefore, it is necessary to find out how much a single gram of gold is being paid at that moment (there can be significant variations from one week to another, even on the same day). It is also important to know that investment gold bars can command a higher price than gold that has been worked and transformed into chains or rings, unless one considers the value of the gold jewel, for its style, author, or testimony to a historical era.

This is because investment gold is 999/1000 pure, while jewelry gold is 750/1000 . If the item you want to sell is embellished with some stones, it is best to only contact buyers who have gemologists in their team and finally, according to common sense, you should not rush and turn around at least two or three potential buyers. "Who wants to sell the gold they have at home?" says Ferruccio Invernizzi, president of Pronto Gold spa, a metal bank active since February 2011 in the Milan area. "They must focus above all on one thing, transparency. Both in terms of the origin of the materials and the offer received. Selling family gold is a perfectly legal activity, which does not generate cumulative revenue in the tax return (and few people know this either, ed.) and which therefore must be carried out with the utmost transparency.

For this reason I always advise sellers to request a copy of the sales declaration, it is a required document, which summarises the terms of the transaction and which can be contested in the event of any future dispute". Pronto Gold (prontogold.com), aims to close 2012 with a turnover of 40 million euros, all generated by the Milan office near the Central Station, with 25 thousand customers and an average, says Invernizzi, «of almost one hundred transactions a day». Thirteen employees, seven of whom are gemologists and a new private room for large transactions that is about to be built, Pronto Gold's activity differs from normal gold buyers for its corporate structure and authorizations that allow - after 11 days of storage - to melt the metal on site, transforming family jewels into ingots.

REPRODUCTION RESERVED I BUY GOLD

It is in effect a jewelry store with a part of the store (or the entire store) dedicated to the purchase of used products. They can, in essence, buy and sell used gold, but they cannot transform it independently. The used chain brought to the Gold Buyer can be resold, as is, but not melted independently.

METAL BENCH

It is a structure that buys gold both from private individuals and from professional operators (even from gold buyers). Unlike others, after a storage period of 11 days of purchases - and relative report to the Police Headquarters - it can proceed with the melting of the materials and their transformation into ingots.

DISCOVER OUR VINTAGE JEWELRY COLLECTION - CLICK HERE