CHEYENNE — When people bring their gold jewelry in to sell, Brian Snyder at Bohemian Metals in Cheyenne doesn’t just see a gold chain or a ring. He sees a story.
“It represents people’s lives,” he said. “When you have all of their stuff, their rings and jewelry that they’ve acquired over their lifetime, you can tell a little bit of a story on it.”
It’s a chain of Hawaiian vacations, marriages, anniversaries and family heirlooms that stir his imagination, and, sometimes, make him wonder why this person would want to sell such fine pieces.
Lately, Snyder is asking that question a lot more often. Record high prices of gold right now are bringing a different kind of gold rush to his store. Instead of people rushing to somewhere like South Pass City looking for gold, people are instead cleaning out their old jewelry drawers and cabinets and bringing it to Snyder for cash of the non-glittering variety.
Snyder is one of several shops in Wyoming that will pay straight cash for gold, whether it’s nuggets from Alaska, old-time pieces of eight, or gold rings and chains.
Snyder estimates he’s seeing 50% more people than usual bringing in gold and silver jewelry to sell for the spot metal value now that prices for gold are trending above $3,000 and hitting new records.
On Monday, the price of gold was about $3,300, down a hundred or so. By Friday, it was down a little more, but still trending at $3,200 or so.
That high price often leaves folks pleasantly surprised at how much their tiny pile of jewelry is now worth.
This reporter, for example, brought in a tiny cache of rings kept mainly for sentimental reasons, just to see how the process works. It was worth a surprising $500 on the spot, if this reporter had wanted to cash in.
How The Process Works
Snyder looks at the kind of gold a jewelry item is made of. White gold, for example, is a cheaper blend of gold and nickel.
“I don’t like white gold myself, because it’s really brittle,” he said. “Silver is superior to white gold.”
White gold began during the Great Depression. It was a way to spread gold out a little thinner, making wedding rings more affordable.
White gold is one of the more problematic metals Snyder deals with.
“If there’s a way for someone to trick or rip you off, it’s been invented,” he said. “And white gold is probably where the most fraud is.”
People will buy 14 Karat or 18 Karat stamps for white metals they’re trying to pass off as a higher grade of white gold than it really is.
“And that’s the other thing. This is generally a cash business,” Snyder said. “So, if someone’s traveling and they’ve got some hokey stuff, I’m paying cash. So, I’m never going to see them again.”
Snyder also looks at a metal’s purity, which is measured in karats, usually stamped directly on the ring itself. Then he uses the jewelry’s weight to figure out how much actual gold each piece of jewelry has.
Gems, meanwhile, are something a gold seller might sometimes make a separate deal on, if they are particularly nice.
Know The Value Before You Sell
Snyder does recommend those selling their gold take a few steps ahead of visiting a buyer, to ensure they’re not getting cheated.
Every piece of jewelry should have a stamp identifying how many karats of gold are present.
A 10 Karat (K) gold piece is 41.7% pure gold by weight, while 14K is 58.3% and 18K is 75%.
A 24K piece is 99.9% pure gold. This is extremely rare for jewelry because the metal would generally be too soft.
The weight of the jewelry with the percentage purity gives a rough idea how much gold, by weight, is present. Then a quick check of the commodity tells you about what your jewelry is worth in terms of metal alone.
Buyers will typically offer between 70% to 80% of the melt value of the gold. The 20% premium covers the costs for the buyer, who ultimately has to pay someone to test and refine the gold.
“In the last couple of months, I’ve made two trips down to the refinery myself,” Snyder said. “We’re kind of living in weird times, so I don’t even know what’s normal anymore. But people are coming in, and I’m just going with it.”
Snyder often uses the gold he buys to make new pieces of jewelry.
“I have the option of requesting they send me the equivalent amount of gold back at casting rate,” he said. “That way I can get my materials cheaper.”
When In Doubt Don’t Throw It Out
Gold’s not the only precious metal right now that’s higher than normal, Snyder added. Silver is also trending much higher, as are metals like palladium.
One of his customers, who has an uncle who was a dentist, had some old dental work sitting around in a box in her kitchen collecting dust. She’d considered throwing it out, but her husband thought the metal might be worth something.
Good thing they decided to bring it to Snyder instead of throwing it out. It turned out to be worth a lot more than they had expected.
“Some of it was pretty gruesome looking,” Snyder said. “There were like partials, and a few fake teeth, and things like that.”
While the box of old dental work didn’t end up having a lot of gold value, it had quite a bit of palladium. Snyder cut them a check for $3,600.
“They were really flabbergasted about that,” Snyder said. “And it was in large part due to all of the palladium they used to use in the dental industry years ago.”
The couple took their windfall to a nearby furniture store, where they bought an expensive table instead of dentures collecting dust.
Snyder said there are some buyers who will also buy plated gold jewelry. In that case, they’re buying in bulk to make the economics work, and taking a higher premium to cover the cost of refinement.
What’s Driving Prices Up?
Normally when gold prices are high, what Snyder is used to seeing is either fears about recession or the value of a dollar driving people to buy up gold.
But this time, the price of gold is sky-high for other reasons, according to Josh Phair, who is the owner and CEO of both the Scottsdale Mint and The Wyoming Reserve in Casper.
Phair has a unique vantage point on the movement of gold and silver. The Scottsdale Mint designs, manufactures and distributes precious metal products to foreign governments and private banks, as well as collectors and investors, around the world.
“This is all about central banks,” he told Cowboy State Daily. “It has nothing to do with retail. Nothing. In fact, most of the retail public have been net sellers over the last year and a half. This is all based on central banks deleveraging their balance sheets.”
Phair said he saw that kind of activity pick up just after Russia invaded Ukraine.
“You had nations like China, which decided they wanted to buy lots of gold and basically sell out of U.S. dollar instruments,” he said. “And so, China has been kind of in a race to acquire a lot of gold. And there have been a lot of rumors about the BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates— about them creating a competitor, an alternative to the U.S. dollar that would be backed by gold.”
That activity picked up speed after the November General Election, Phair added.
“Starting in December, a record amount of gold has been imported into the United States,” he said. “Like record amounts. There’s basically competition for gold. Everyone’s moving it jurisdictionally.
They’re moving it into their own country. Germany wants it back in Germany. China wants it in China. The U.S. wants it in the U.S.”
That’s been draining stockpiles, Phair added, such as the one at the Bank of England.
Phair: Gold’s Rise Isn’t Finished
Consumers, Phair added, have yet to really pile in on the gold-buying frenzy.
Part of that could be that gold bugs who want to keep gold in case of apocalypse already have as much stockpiled for that as they wish, and don’t feel the need to buy this commodity while it’s sky-high.
But Phair doesn’t think gold has reached the end of its rise and sees that a consumer wave could yet be coming, depending on how tariffs shake out.
“When does gold go really big?” he said. “When we have greater fear. And I think we’re starting to see a little bit of fear about the implications of the tariffs, the trade wars, and what’s going to happen to the economy. That’s when people feel like, “Oh my gosh, the stock market’s gonna go down a lot.’ That’s when people rotate, and then they kind of park (money) in gold.”
Analysts at J.P. Morgan are predicting gold could go as high as $6,000 by 2029. Phair wouldn’t hazard a guess on how high gold might go, but said he does believe it hasn’t reached the end of its rise yet.
“Unless you think we’re going to have world peace tomorrow and that all the governments are going to stop printing money and actually balance their budgets, gold is absolutely the underpinning,” he said. “And it’s been this for thousands of years. It’s constant.”
Phair said as he sees it, gold has been outperforming the S&P 500 for the past 20 years, and outperforming just about everything else, including bitcoin.
America hasn’t had a currency crisis, Phair added, or there might be more consumers buying up gold.
“Other cultures like Germany, for example, it’s very common for the majority of the population there to buy gold and silver with every paycheck. Because they remember, some of the elderly people remember, currency wipeouts, and they don’t trust the Euro.”
Phair believes, to the extent Americans see problems with the dollar, that, too, could drive more “upside” for gold in years to come.
“Even the (U.S.) Treasury Secretary is talking about the possibility of gold being part of the sovereign wealth fund,” Phair said. “So, I think as people kind of understand what’s happening, they may start to look at gold as a way to kind of underpin their family finances. There’s just a diversification outside of the system.”
Gold’s Good In A Portfolio, But Caution Is Warranted
Gold does tend to hold its value, Cheyenne financial advisor Bryan Pedersen told Cowboy State Daily.
“There’s this saying that’s a couple thousand years old that an ounce of gold should buy a fine man’s suit,” he said. “And that’s actually from an ounce of gold should buy a fine toga. It was a Roman quote. So, you could buy a really nice toga in Ancient Rome for one ounce of gold.”
These days, a designer, Armani suit is going for around $2,400, Pedersen said.
“So, you might be a little high on gold right now, if you’re basing it on a fine man’s suit,” he said. “But, so, a lot of times gold has been a store of value.”
Pedersen does feel gold has a place in anyone’s financial portfolio, but he cautions his clients against holding more than 5% of their portfolio’s total value in commodities — including gold — at any one time.
“You don’t want to have half of your allocation in gold, because the swings are too high,” he said. “And that’s true for any commodity. That’s pork prices, cocoa beans, crypto — anything that trades like a commodity.”
About That Apocalypse
While some tout gold as ideal to have on hand if society collapses or the dollar collapses, Pedersen doesn’t believe that’s how things would play out in such a scenario.
“You have real-life, historical examples of this,” he said. “You go back to the 90s, when the Russian ruble collapsed. That was a real thing. So let’s say we’re a couple of Russians, and we live in St. Petersburg or Moscow, and we’ve got this brick of gold and we want to ride the subway in Moscow.”
The turnstile still requires a coin to function.
“You can’t walk up to the turnstile to shave off a little chunk of gold brick and shove it in the turnstile and walk through,” Pedersen said. “You still need a ruble. You still need the coin of the realm to operate the subway and get through the turnstile.”
Buying a can of soup with a gold brick also has logistical problems, Pedersen suggested, like making sure the gold is real, for one.
“And then who is going to make change for that?” he said. “That soup will just cost you the whole brick of gold.”
In a sky is falling scenario, Pedersen said rather than buying gold it probably makes more sense to put that money into shelf-stable food, water and ammunition.
“It’s not the safety net people believe it is,” Pedersen said. “I’m not against gold, a small allocation in your portfolio is great. We have some gold coins I inherited from my grandfather. My kids call them pirate money and my wife wears them on a necklace. That’s what we do with them.”
Contact Renee Jean at renee@cowboystatedaily.com
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
