Finding the Best Place to Sell Gold Jewellery In Singapore

About a decade ago, Heartland Boy’s father had purchased some gold jewellery and gave them to each of his child. This was his way to distribute the windfall he received from the lottery, added with the firm belief that he had gifted an appreciating asset to his children. Ever since Heartland Boy started to become more financially literate in 2013, he has been waiting for the right moment to sell that piece of gold jewellery. Well, it took an economic crisis but the moment had finally arrived. After spending some time to find the best place to sell gold jewellery in Singapore, Heartland Boy finally sold his piece of old gold jewellery.

Reasons For Selling Gold Jewellery

There are a couple of reasons why Heartland Boy felt that the time was right to dispose of the gold jewelry.

1. Gold Price At All-Time High

The time was right to sell his gold jewellery because gold price touched record highs last week on new fears for the economy. Since his dad had bought the gold jewellery for investment, Heartland Boy opined that surely now is the best time to reap the investment.

Since he is no expert in forecasting gold price, he is contented to be selling at the peak. Basically, a novice shouldn’t be that wrong by buying low and selling high right?

2. Gold Jewellery Is A Poor Way of Investing In Gold

Don’t get Heartland Boy wrong. He believes that gold serves as a good hedge in one’s portfolio. The results speak for itself- we are in the middle of one of the worst economic crises and gold prices just scorched record highs. However, Heartland Boy believes that the traditional way of buying gold jewellery is a poor way to get exposure into this asset class.

By buying gold jewellery, one has to pay GST, workmanship costs as well as the profit margin of the retailer. This suggests that the odds are terribly stacked against the buyer and leaves them in a huge hole just to break even, let alone the potential to reap any capital gains. Even after selling the gold jewellery during a period when gold was at record prices, Heartland Boy is still doubtful whether any profits was actually made after deducting all these costs.

It is for these reasons that Heartland Boy thinks that there are clearly better ways to invest in gold. Having made up his mind to sell the gold jewellery, he commenced a quick research on finding the best place to sell gold jewellery in Singapore.

Option 1: Chinatown and the heartlands

Some readers have given him the advice that the best place to sell gold jewellery in Singapore is probably Chinatown or the heartlands. Since Heartland Boy was in Toa Payoh to run some errands, he shopped around to get a selling price of his gold jewellery. It was also important to inform the pawn shops that you are selling and not pawning as there could be a small price difference between the two.

As seen in Diagram 2, Heartland Boy had 2 purities of gold – 999 (same as 24K) and 916 gold. Therefore, he received separate quotes for both gold purities based on their respective weights. Actually, he found that most shops were very competitive in their pricing. Eventually, this quick ground work gave him a pretty good benchmark valuation on his gold jewellery.

Option 2: BullionStar

Before stepping into BullionStar, Heartland Boy held very high hopes. This was because this place received good reviews online by the blogging community as a place to buy and invest in physical gold. It is possible to purchase gold bullion in the form of gold coin, ingots or gold bar at BullionStar for investment.

The entire shopping experience definitely did not disappoint. The customer officer who served him was professional and courteous. He carefully inspected the gold and pointed to the prevailing prices for the respective purities on his monitor. There was full transparency and Heartland Boy could not even negotiate the prices upwards. In summary, Heartland Boy felt that the setting was comparable to that of a retail bank. The only part that fell short, and probably the most important of all, was the prices offered. It was the lowest amongst the 3 options presented in this article. As such, Heartland Boy took his gold jewellery elsewhere.

Best Place to Sell Gold Jewellery: His Neighbourhood

After trawling Singapore under the hot sun for half a day, the best price Heartland Boy obtained was actually from a pawn shop (ValueMax outlet) right in his neighbourhood! How ironic! The final price was 1.9% and 3.1% higher than Option 1 and Option 2 respectively. The movement might seem small in percentage terms but it easily translated into half a month worth of groceries for his household! Pardon him for being so “uncle” and thinking in grocery terms. Interestingly, he also received the amount in cold hard cash, which he also had not expected! Afterall, this was his first experience selling gold jewellery.

This pretty much summed up the experience of him trying to find the best place to sell gold jewellery in Singapore. He is not sure if he got the best deal (most probably not) since he did not try very hard as he only had 1 piece of jewelry to sell. It will be hard to justify spending more time than the half day that he devoted to finding the best price for his gold jewellery.

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