As mentioned in a previous post, “gold karat” is a measurement of the amount or purity of gold in your jewelry. “Karat” should not be confused with “carat”, which is a weight measurement used for diamonds. We are talking Karat here with a capital “K”. The first and easiest way to tell the gold content is by looking for a stamp in the piece itself. This is often found on the inside of a ring, the back of charms, the tag or clasp of a chain, or even on the wire of gold earrings. It can be very small and often requires some magnification to read (Especially if you are over 40 . The most common gold karats in the US are 10k, 14k, and 18k. Often it is stamped in percentage or decimal, .417, .585 and .750 respectively. If there is no mark or it is warn away, then you need a jeweler or goldsmith to acid test your gold. Most local jeweler can do this for you if you are selling your old gold to them.

When buying or selling gold for cash or as an investment you will often hear the phrase “gold spot price” or “spot price”. The term comes from traders on commodity exchanges settling on a price right there on the spot. These might be markets in London, New York, Tokyo or any other commodity or financial exchange in the world. These spot prices are used by a number of people when dealing in gold, including gold jewelry. If I call a distributor and ask to buy 100 gold chains, I am quoted a price based on the spot price that day and the weight of the jewelry. There is more added to the price, like mark up, but that is where the price figuring starts. When prices are mentioned about gold they are quoted per ounce. That is a TROY ounce, not a US ounce. There are 31.1 grams to a troy ounce. As I am writing this, the spot price of gold is $820.00 US per ounce.

The short answer as of this writing……HECK YEA!! Gold has been trading at record high prices! Looking back about 10 years, gold was trading at about $300.00 US per ounce. It did not fluctuate to much for about 8 years, hitting around $400.00 in 2004. Since then it has hit as high as $1000 per ounce in
2008. I am not an expert at forcasting metal prices, so I can’t predict wether it will go up or down. It is just my opinion that if gold is over $600 an ounce, I’m getting my money while I can. You need to decide for yourself or consult a local expert.