To Sell Your Precious Metals, Consider an Appraiser

Mike Rivkin
| Special to The Desert Sun

OK, let’s go back to gold and silver. Judging by their recent investigations, there is still a lot of interest in capitalizing on the current rise in precious metals prices. As I write this, the spot price for pure silver is at $32.23 per ounce and gold at a near-record $2,563.51. Many of us have some jewelry or silverware that we don’t use and wouldn’t miss, and now might be a good time to sell. There are dozens of retail shoppers out there clamoring for your attention, but you may want to consider another route if your jewelry or silverware box is overflowing.

Go where retail buyers go: to an appraiser.

While I don’t know of any appraisers here in the Coachella Valley, there are a few in the downtown Los Angeles jewelry district. The area covers several blocks between Hill and Main streets and 3rd to 9th. Most of the buildings date back to the 1920s and the architecture remains beautiful, even if street life has become somewhat difficult. Last week I visited LA Gold Assaying at 635 South Hill Street to see how the process works. The ride is miserable and parking is challenging, but it’s a fascinating part of the jewelry business that most people never see.

My destination was an old building that resembled New York City. We passed an inattentive doorman and took the noisy elevator to the fifth floor. The offices were small and little English was heard, but there was a line of customers waiting that gave us confidence.

The vocalist took our silver, quickly used a magnet to remove any foreign metal, and threw what was left into a blazing furnace, burning at about 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit. The container inside the oven was made of graphite and ceramic and appeared to be about the size of a tube you would use in a bank window. After a few minutes, the molten silver was drained into a mold and dropped into a sink of water to cool. The result was a heavy brick the size of a bar of soap.

The process was repeated with the little gold we had, but gold is more heat resistant than silver and melting took about 20 minutes. This brick was much smaller, about the size of a bar of travel soap.

Once cooled, a small sample of each brick was removed to check purity, and the metals were placed in what looked like a giant scanner. Before long, an on-screen report indicated the purity of each brick to the hundredth of a percent. There is more chemistry involved in determining the purity of gold than silver, but both bricks contained trace elements of platinum and other metals.

It was also interesting to discover that items marked sterling silver or 14k gold are rarely exactly that.

Anyway, some numbers were calculated, the bricks went into a giant safe and we received in cash an amount very close to the spot price of the day. The entire transaction took about 45 minutes.

As for other details worth noting, there weren’t many. No names are taken and no records are kept of who gets what, so there is anonymity to the transaction that may be attractive to some. There is also a melting cost of about $35 and customers can choose to keep their bricks or receive cash. Most appraisers do not purchase finished products such as rings or silverware; everything must first be melted to confirm the metal content.

Our leader unceremoniously hammered our largest pieces of silver so that they would fit into the furnace, making it clear that there is no turning back if you change your mind at the last minute.

And that’s it. When it was all over, my fellow trader who showed up was over $9,000 richer and extremely pleased with the result. My take was much more pedestrian, but still very satisfying.

As with all businesses, some appraisers are more honest than others, and you should watch the entire process carefully to ensure everything is accounted for. It’s a long day and will likely involve some urban anxiety, but you’ll be skipping the middleman and will almost certainly come out ahead.

Mike Rivkin and his wife, Linda, are longtime Rancho Mirage residents. For many years, he was an award-winning catalog editor and is the author of seven books as well as numerous articles. Now, he is the owner of the Palm Springs Antique Galleries. His antiques column appears Sundays in The Desert Sun. Want to send Mike a question about antiques? Send him a message at [email protected].