Gold Rings Arrive

The test rings I ordered from Amazon arrived today. They are 2mm 14k bands at a cost of $59.00 each from amazon. I’ll post a youtube video testing the rings in the next day or so.

Gold Spoof

My friend sent a link to a great spoof of the gold 4 cash commercial. Enjoy

Gold test kit arrives!

My test kit arrived today. The kit contains 5 acid bottles, gold reference pins, and scratch block. This kit will allow me to perform a purity test on the rings to validate their Karat rating. The jewelry is rubbed against the scratch pad which should leave a small deposit of the metal on the pad. As a control the gold pin is also rubbed against the pad. This leaves 2 parallel lines on the pad. Each of the acids has a different karat value. The acid is dropped onto the pad. If the acid changes the color of the line it’s a lesser karat value. I've posted a YouTube video demonstrating the usage of the test kit using my wedding ring.

Ordered the gold for cash packets

I submitted a request to a few of the gold for cash online companies today. The process for most of the companies is as follows:

1. Submit a request for a packet either over the phone or online.
2. They send you a self addressed stamped envelope (SASE) or a label you can print out and place on your own envelope.
3. You send your valuables using the provided envelop. The envelop is insured for a nominal amount, typically around 100 dollars.
4. After receiving your packet the vendor will contact you with a quote. You can choose to accept this quote or have your jewelry mailed back to you. If you accept the quote you will receive the stated amount and the vendor will melt your jewelry.

It should be interesting to see what they offer for the gold rings.

Two gold rings

To start out my experiment I've ordered two gold 14k rings from Amazon. For those who don't already know, gold jewelry is often marked with a number proceeded by a “k”. This k stands for Karat or Carat, depending upon where you’re from. A Karat is a measure of the purity of a precious metal in an alloy. Gold is a soft and expensive metal so it is frequently mixed with a stronger metal, such as nickel, to create a stronger, less expensive mix. The mix of two or more metals together is known as an alloy.


The 14k rings that I've ordered are 58.5% gold. To validate the Karat rating of the rings I've also ordered a gold test kit from Amazon.

Gold For Cash!

It seems you can't go more than a day without seeing at least one of those advertisements offering you cold hard cash for your old gold jewelry. The gold for cash offers have reached such frenzy that even Ed McMahon and MC Hammer were featured on a gold for cash commercial during the last superbowl. It isn’t much of a surprise given that the price of gold has experienced a meteoric rise over the past few years, going from $290.00 per oz in 2000 to over $900.00. With all this activity I thought it might be interesting to take a closer look at these companies and investigate how they work and what, if anything, they would offer.