All this woodwork has left my corner of the basement an absolute mess.
We had a Parents of Small Children potluck on Saturday. The hosts hired babysitters, and I suddenly realized that I had nothing to do. When I go places, I was used to Hers Truly occupying my time.
I sold off my gold wedding ring. 7 grams of 14k gold netted me $145. I'm sure that I paid more than that. All told, it was a credible amount of money. I sold this to some Sikh's running a Sikh style jewelry shop. Oh-my-fucking-God, they were $10k-20k necklaces sitting on the wall. The work was gorgeous and ostentatious in that traditional Indian way.
In order to understand jewelry, you need to understand markups.
(Materials + Labor + Markup) x (Dealer Markup) = Your Cost.
You will notice that Materials is not a dominant component of the jewelry piece. So, when I sell and item for gold, I am only selling for the Materials. I take a loss on Labor and Markups. In addition, the gold buyer is only paying a percentage of the gold value, further reducing the overall recovery value of the materials. In short, Markups and Labor kills you unless you do the selling with no middle man.
