Little cash for a lot of gold

8 February 2010  The Irish Times

The cash-for-gold business is thriving but sellers get a shocking deal for their jewellery.

It's a morning and I’m in an shockingly decorated hotel room on a leafy road in Dublin, trying to sell my wedding ring to a man who is not exactly busy.

He’s been in this place for more than five hours waiting for a gold rush which has yet to materialise. Despite the fact that fliers offering to buy unwanted gold for cold hard cash have been posted through every letterbox in the neighbourhood, I’m his first customer of the day – very bad news for a man who works exclusively on commission.

I hand him the ring. He looks for the carat – 18 – weighs it – 6.6 ounces – and punches a few numbers into a cheap desk calculator before offering me €80 for the ring. I’m horrified as it’s nearly 90 per cent less than the ring cost when bought in a moment of madness from an upmarket jewellers in the city centre several years ago.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/pricewatch/2010/0208/1224263951384.html