Money Watch – Personal Finance Blog

At the risk of starting to sound like a one-story blog, here’s a couple of updates on selling your gold (and we promise not to mention Money4Gold… woops, we just have).

Firstly, BBC Newsbeat has done a little bit of an investigation into the prices paid by online gold buyers, and surprise surprise, they don’t come off very well:

Newsbeat’s found out that some of the biggest names in the industry are paying just a fraction of the amount that gold could be worth if it was taken to a jeweller or pawnbroker. “Some of the quotes are just shockingly low,” said Alonso Ercilla from the Trading Standards Institute.

The research looked at 3 companies – Cash4Gold, the big American player, CashMyGold (there’s definitely a theme going on with these names, isn’t there?) which is one of the largest UK gold buyers, and high-street jeweller H.Samuel’s very own service. Of the 3, H.Samuel came up with the best offer (eventually), although this was still some way off the valuation made by a bullion dealer.

Whilst it might be annoying, these companies aren’t doing anything wrong in the eyes of Trading Standards:

“Unfortunately there isn’t much Trading Standards can do if people are getting a bad deal, provided the trader is not actually misleading the seller about the gold’s worth, customers need to shop around and try to establish the price per gram. If you are using a website, read their terms and conditions. And don’t automatically take the first price you are offered.”

In the case of Money4Gold (there, we’ve mentioned them again), there have been more problems than just low valuations – the fact they’ve been holding onto people’s gold without any indication when they’ll be getting it back, for one.

What’s particularly annoying is that there looks like there will be continued increases in the advertising these sorts of companies are doing. Cash4Gold has announced that it has signed up gold-tooth toting ex-jungle artist come classical music “star” Goldie (real name Clifford) as the face of its UK advertising campaign. Well known gold expert MC Hammer (he’s not Scottish, despite his name looking like he is) was used in the US, and apparently loves the company so much he now owns part of it.

Interestingly, Cash4Gold said that Goldie was chosen to front the campaign by a “public vote”, although who the other nominees were is anybody’s guess. We reckon it might have been Goldie the Blue Peter dog, Mr T or maybe even DJ Talent. All gold related stars (a couple of whom are not dead and buried in the Blue Peter garden) with slightly more credibility than the breakdancing graffiti artist turned celebrity reality TV sellout Goldie.

Anyway, our advice would be to ignore these adverts and to visit a local jeweller who will hopefully give you a more generous valuation – they will be looking past the gold value and will factor in whether the jewellery has any added value because of its age or design.