Archive for July 10th, 2006

Is it time to cash in gold jewelry?

Is it time to cash in gold jewelry?
Dallas Morning News 
High prices are leading to major meltdown
02:59 PM CDT on Sunday, July 9, 2006

New York Times News Service
Gold and silver prices have fallen from the peaks they reached two months ago, but after five years of steady increases, they are still at levels that are spurring people to cash in unwanted jewelry for its scrap value.
In Patchogue, N.Y., one gold buyer, Jim Sarno, owner of Budget Buy and Sell, says customers have been hauling in jewelry boxes and emptying them onto his countertops. The sudden and unrestrained exhibition of personal belongings often means only one thing: The people are there to sell.

“If you aren’t wearing your jewelry, you are losing money,” said Lisa Hubbard, executive director of the international jewelry division of Sotheby’s. “Focus on what the cash would do for you.”
Scrapping gold for cash is an appealing option for those who are getting rid of odds and ends — like a single earring or a broken chain — and can be profitable, especially if you have an accumulation of castoffs. Outlets for sales range from local jewelers or gold buyers to smelters who advertise on the Internet; gold buying is highly competitive, and shopping around is advisable.
“Show the jewelry to two or three active buyers,” suggested Russell Fogarty, a wholesaler at Kazanjian & Fogarty in Beverly Hills, Calif. “Buyers base their offering prices for modern gold items by first weighing them and determining the actual gold content. If the pieces are wearable and relatively desirable, the offer will be above the intrinsic value of the gold.” But simple gold chains, he said, would go for less.
Keep in mind that prices offered by buyers are for pure material, and that nearly all gold, platinum and silver jewelry is made of alloyed substances that require the addition of other metals to make them strong enough to withstand daily wear and tear. Gold that is 14 karat is 58 percent pure gold, while 18 karat means 75 percent and 24 karat is 100 percent; the price paid will reflect the amount of actual gold that is bought.
Gold now sells for $633 an ounce, down from $725 in May. But that is much more than about $265 an ounce in July 2001. Jon Nadler, a precious-metals analyst at the bullion dealer Kitco.com, does not expect the price to fall below $540 an ounce, and he says it could hit $730 next year.
The resale market for antique and estate jewelry is so closely scrutinized for valuable items that much of what is sold for scrap is instead salvaged and sold as jewelry. “Even the smelters and scrap buyers are smarter than” to let some items be melted down, explained Barry Weber, the chief executive of Edith Weber & Associates in New York, a gallery specializing in rare, antique and estate jewelry, who often appears on “Antiques Roadshow.” “They pick out anything that has greater than scrap value,” and it ends up in retailers’ showcases.
Janet Levy, a principal at J.&S.S. DeYoung, a 170-year-old wholesale firm in New York, advises consulting a specialist — saying the education received may pay off well. “If you go to a jeweler rather than a refiner,” she said, “and he or she notices that you have a period piece rather than something that can be scrapped, you can get a huge added value.”
Getting a professional appraisal is informative and reassuring; it also avoids mistakes. Levy suggests seeking out someone with credentials that are recognized in the jewelry trade. “Look for someone with jewelry trade affiliations, such as the American Gem Society,” or someone who has training with the Gemological Institute of America, which requires rigorous educational standards to be met before a candidate is deemed an expert. Knowing that an affiliation with either group will increase consumer confidence, members often display their qualifications in shop windows or on business cards.
Generally speaking, jewelers with these credentials are expected to examine jewelry with greater skill. “We recently bought a piece with an alexandrite in it that was set in yellow gold” and was thus very valuable, said Alan Levy, Levy’s husband and also a principal at DeYoung. “To the ordinary person, it would not have looked like very much. That’s why it’s good to go to someone who is knowledgeable.”
Experts should also have the resources to investigate further if necessary. “We get calls from people every day asking for information on pieces a client has brought them for evaluation,” Janet Levy said. “What is wonderful today is that we have the Internet and digital photography so that we can give them a very good idea of what it is they are looking at.”
Daphne Lingon, senior jewelry specialist at Christie’s, suggests asking questions of anyone performing an evaluation:
—What is the metal, and should it be tested for gold content? After 1898, all jewelry made in the United States containing gold was required to be stamped with its number of karats; the most common mark is 14k. Unmarked jewelry should be tested.
—When was the item made, and has it been repaired? According to jewelry industry analysts, the age and condition are, in most cases, vital for assessing value.
If a piece is desirable on the secondhand market, it may be worth substantially more than the value of the metal and gemstones.
Keep in mind that smaller firms may be selective because they need to keep their markets in mind. “Ask them if they sell the type of jewelry you have,” Hubbard of Sotheby’s advised. “The estate jewelry market is about so much more than just the metal.”
Then there are companies, like Circa Inc., that will buy most anything. Circa, based in New York, also has offices in Chicago, San Francisco and Palm Beach, Fla., and sells jewelry to dealers and retailers across the country. “We have a market for almost any type of jewelry,” said Chris DelGatto, its chief executive and co-founder.
Designer names are persuasive; whether the jewel is antique, estate or contemporary, collectors regularly respond to them. “I would be reluctant to sell any jewelry for scrap that has any kind of name associated with it,” Weber said.
And bear in mind that fashion can be fickle. “There’s a renewed interest in big, chunky charm bracelets as fashion,” he said. “It’s the kind of jewelry that years ago was basically traded for scrap value. Now it’s being traded at jewelry value.”
So what was once the bane of the jewelry drawer can sometimes be deemed a charming vestige of a life lived, of mementos collected or given along the way.
Because so much jewelry is now called “collectible,” adding that je ne sais quoi to the price tag, can bargains still be found? While there are always exceptions, the reality is that there are few, if any, true bargains anymore, most dealers say.
And even though high market prices for gold may prompt people to unload old jewelry, secondhand jewelry is a market all its own, with prices generally unaffected by the precious-metals markets.
“Jewelry as a collectible is pretty well insulated from a commodities market,” Weber said. “In the case of fine estate jewelry, essentially you are buying art that happens to be made from jewelry materials.”
Many dealers base prices on what they have paid, rather than an item’s worth as determined by metal weight and gem quality. “The first thing to understand is that I haven’t changed any of my prices since gold has gone up,” said Benjamin Macklowe of Macklowe Gallery in New York, which specializes in decorative arts, including jewelry. “The best way to get really good value is to buy things that are aesthetically challenging and interesting; the greatest value remains in its design and beauty.”
At auctions, one can often buy estate jewelry below market prices. “Generally, the prices at auction are 30 to 50 percent less than retail,” said Gloria Lieberman, vice president and director of fine jewelry at Skinner Inc., the Boston auction house. “We prepare our auction prices three months earlier than the sale, so the jewelry is not up to market value.”
Auction houses offer a mix of antique, estate and contemporary pieces. For jewelry from periods that are favored by collectors, like Art Deco and Edwardian, it’s more difficult to reveal a sleeper, but among items from periods like the 1950s, ’60s or ’70s, you may uncover a gem.

Add comment July 10th, 2006

Jewelry collection now a mangled mess

Jewelry collection now a mangled mess
Collection from safe reduced to mangled mess
The Daily Item

It was around 10 o’clock at night on a Friday in August, almost two years ago, when Donna Deitrick went to the Shamokin asbestos removal business owned by her and her now ex-husband, Robert Yoncuski.
As she loaded things she considered her property into a truck that belonged to the business, a Shamokin police officer stopped by to see what she was doing there, Ms. Deitrick recalled in a Friday morning interview.
Ms. Deitrick told him and showed him her identification. Apparently satisfied that she was entitled to take the items, the police officer left, but Mr. Yoncuski then showed up.

He parked his truck so that she couldn’t leave and then went to talk to a couple police officers who were parked nearby. Ms. Deitrick yelled at the group that Mr. Yoncuski wasn’t supposed to be near her since she’d obtained a protection-from-abuse order against him. But no one moved Mr. Yoncuski’s truck, so she did.
The she got back into the truck that she’d loaded up and began to drive away. A short time later, a police officer pulled her over. When he asked her for the vehicle registration and insurance, she provided it. But the officer replied that Mr. Yoncuski said he’d taken her off the insurance policy, so she couldn’t drive the truck. Without insurance, she had to get a ride, the police officer told her.
She called a friend on the telephone and he came to get her. When they arrived at her West Cameron Township house, the front door had been busted open.
And when she made it to her bedroom, she discovered her safe was gone.
Inside it was $700,000 belonging to Ms. Deitrick’s brother, Kenneth Deitrick, and a multi-million-dollar jewelry collection she’d gathered over 40 years.
No one knows the value of the jewelry in the safe, Ms. Deitrick’s attorney Greg Moro, said. That’s partly because all of the appraisals done on Ms. Deitrick’s jewelry had been kept together. In the safe.
Current estimates put the missing jewelry’s worth at $4 million. Among the missing items are the wedding rings of Ms. Deitrick’s mother and grandmother.
But dozens of boxes of jewelry were returned to Ms. Deitrick, including a clump of gold chains that been balled together. Much of the jewelry was returned in a tattered black plastic garbage bag, Ms. Deitrick said.
And many of the pieces — including numerous antique gold watches — were damaged. About half of the rings were returned minus the jewels.
Ms. Deitrick has hired a jeweler who has spent more than four months trying to determine which pieces can be repaired, and she and a friend spent countless hours painstakingly unwinding the tangled web of golden chains. “It’s depressing,” Ms. Deitrick said after describing the chore of trying to clean up the mud-covered and water-damaged pieces of jewelry.
While the disappearance of Ms. Deitrick’s safe prompted much local media coverage, the condition of the items when they were returned hasn’t been publicly discussed until now, Mr. Moro said.
“This is much worse than people think it is,” he said. “When this all comes out in court, there’s going to be a substantial amount of restitution,” he said.
All of which begs the question: Who damaged Ms. Deitrick’s jewels?
Mr. Yoncuski has been charged with stealing the safe and its contents. But, as for the damage to the jewels, he had a pretty good alibi during much of the time that the safe was missing.
He was in jail.
Mr. Yoncuski was incarcerated for six months on a contempt of court charge for refusing a judge’s order to explain where the missing safe was. He got out of jail in February 2005 by finally disclosing the safe’s whereabouts. It was found buried on a property near Dorsnife. But the safe was empty. The jewelry was returned to police separately. Ms. Deitrick has yet to learn where it was before she was called to come to the state police barracks to claim her property.
Last summer, Mr. Yoncuski formally admitted that he took the safe. But after another six months of delays before sentencing on the charges, he changed his position. This spring, he told a Northumberland County judge that he wished to withdraw his guilty plea, because as his attorney explained in court, “(Mr. Yoncuski) maintains his innocence.”
On Friday morning, Mr. Yoncuski was scheduled to have a pre-trial conference, but that was postponed because attorneys will be in court Aug. 8 to address a pre-trial motion in the case, a court administrator said.
The delay in bringing the case to trial has left, Ms. Deitrick tremendously frustrated.
“I think Donna would just like to see this resolved,” Mr. Moro said. “I want this to move along and finish up.
The attorney said Ms. Deitrick will seek to recover her loss through the civil court system, but those efforts won’t occur before the criminal case against Mr. Yoncuski is completed one or another.
If Mr. Yoncuski is convicted of stealing the safe and jewelry, then a judge would most likely order him to repay Ms. Deitrick. “But the longer it goes on, the more difficult it’s going to be to collect restitution,” Mr. Moro said.
“I don’t think I’m getting a fair shake … People say to me, ‘If I stole a pack of cigarettes, I’d be sitting in jail. But Bob took all of that jewelry from you and he’s still walking around free,” Ms. Deitrick said.

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