Those crazy NPR Planet Money kids took the money they had left over from their failed toxic asset investment – affectionately known as “Toxie” – and put it all into the next big bubble: gold! For $419 they got one shiny gold coin. In 6 months they’ll sell it, regardless of prices, and in the meantime, report on what happens to it. [More]
gold
Museum That Lets Visitors Handle Gold Directly Has Gold Stolen
By 8.24.10
A 74-ounce gold bar that was salvaged from the ocean floor in 1980 was stolen from the Mel Fisher museum last week. It’s valued at $550,000, and it was kept on display in a special case that let visitors stick their hands in to lift it. Supposedly the case was designed to prevent any removal of the bar, but somehow a guy managed to pull it out and put it in his pants pocket before walking out. The insurance company is offering a $10,000 reward for its return. [More]
Gold Buyer Ripped Off Consumers With Spring Rigged Scale
By 7.7.10
It sounds like a carnival trick, a spring secured underneath the weighing platform that would push back when items were weighed. [More]
Harper's Magazine: Insider Reveals How You Get Jacked When Selling Jewelry
By 5.19.10
Struggling to make next month’s rent, you might be tempted to dig out some necklaces and rings you don’t wear and try to sell it to your friendly neighborhood jeweler. But you might actually be buying a ticket to a sick magic show. The jeweler performs a blistering series of slight of hand tricks, whipping out calculators, spouting off fees, keeping your eye on the supposedly worthless diamonds under a tenth of a carat while double-deducting for the base metal. By the end, you slink out in a dizzied blur, accepting 1/5th of what the piece is actually worth. In this exclusive excerpt from the latest issue of Harper’s, ex-jeweler Clancy Martin takes you on a journey to the dark underbelly of the jewelry game. [More]
Ex-Jeweler Dissects "Buying Roadshow" Ads
By 5.18.10
The ads are cheesy as all get out: “Buying Roadshow” “Instant Cash For All” “Will pay up to 1100%” in giant block letters and starbursts. And the crazy thing is that they’re really good at packing in suckers eager to sell their “scrap jewelry,” dreaming of riches, but eventually convinced to be happy walking away with a few bucks. Over at Harper’s Magazine, ex-jeweler Clancy Martin takes apart these ads piece by piece and reveals what really goes on behind the black curtain. For instance: [More]
Sears And Kmart Want To Buy Your Gold
By 5.17.10
The next time you want to sell some old gold jewelry, you can just take it to your nearest Kmart or Sears. The retailers have announced a partnership with something called Pro Gold Network, which basically amounts to, “You can pick up a mailer and instructions at our jewelry departments.” Remember, though, that mail-in services almost always pay less than what you can get locally from a jeweler or pawn shop, or by selling to a refinery directly. Here’s what Pro Gold Network will pay so you can compare rates. [More]
Is Gold Fever The Next Bacon Bubble?
By 5.17.10
Gold prices may be setting new highs almost daily, but to commodity traders, the shiny metal is just another line on a graph. And it’s a line that’s starting to look very familiar to some traders, who see a pattern similar to one that played out recently with hogs. Prices for pigs flew to new highs, and then started drifting back into the mud. [More]
No, The Government Isn't Coming For Your Gold
By 5.14.10
Goldline, a company that sells gold coins, has an important announcement: coin collectors made out well in the 1930s and were protected from “the whims and vagaries of a spendthrift government.” [More]
Gold-Dispensing ATM Converts Pesky Cash To 24K Bars
By 5.13.10
Next time you’re in Abu Dhabi and have to get some gold in a hurry (and we’ve all been in that situation, right?), you can just drop in to the Emirates Palace hotel, pop a few bills into the ATM and walk out with gold bars. The machine, Gold To Go, monitors gold prices and automatically updates its pricing every 10 minutes. [More]
Cash4Gold Supports Regulations Proposed By Congress
By 5.12.10
Cash4Gold supports legislation designed to regulate it and its competitors, according to a letter from the company’s president, Jeff Aronson. “Cash4Gold supports HR 4501, the Guarantee of a Legitimate Deal Act, and the provisions outlined in the bill,” Aronson wrote to two congressman who are backing the bill.
Here's Something We Won't Be Investigating
By 11.18.09
We asked for permission but our boss said, “No.”
SNL Gold Skit Original Ad Revealed
By 10.1.09
Here at Consumerist, we love gold. Precious, glowing, brilliant, sexy gold. You might be familiar with the Kristen Wiig crazy Monex gold skit on SNL, but have you seen the original Monex commercial it was based on? We present here both the original and the parody for your viewing and comparing pleasure.
Unemployed Man With Metal Detector Finds Priceless Gold Treasure
By 9.27.09
An unemployed man in England, scouring a farmer’s fields with his metal detector, made a fantastic discovery of gold treasure. No, really, Ancient gold treasure.
Hotel Gold-Buying Events Soil The Good Name Of Cash4Gold
By 6.23.09
Cash4Gold has an important message that they want us in the media to bring to the public. As the most respected name in direct-to-consumer gold ripoffs, Cash4Gold is “greatly concerned” that other entities are fraudulently using their good name for in-person gold-buying events.
Cash4Gold Goes On Tour – Consumerist Waits For The Live Album
By 6.4.09
Load up the VW bus and all of your valuables, everyone! Cash4Gold is on tour! Yes, they hold in-person gold-buying events in hotels—Sean ran across this one in Tyson’s Corner/Falls Church, Virginia. In case you trust them enough to give you a fair price on your jewelry, but not enough to send that jewelry through the mail.
100 Kilos Of Gold Art Show Cancelled
By 3.6.09
100 kilos of gold bricks will not be arriving at the Gagosian Gallery in Santa Monica, California this weekend. The bricks were to have been the centerpiece of a show called One Ton One Kilo by artist Chris Burden. The gold was bought from Stanford Coins and Bullion, part of the Stanford Financial group. You know, Stanford, the mini-Madoff guy accused of bilking investors in an $8-billion ponzi scheme. Now the transfer is frozen while the SEC investigates Stanford. It appears that large-scale conceptual sculpture is but the latest unexpected casualty of the economic crisis.
Cash4Gold Counters Critics With Super Polite Blog Posts
By 2.10.09
Cash4Gold has decided to counter a mounting stream of criticism – a Yahoo! tech article, a Red Tapes Chronicle MSNBC article, posts at Cockeyed and an insider confession at Complaintsboard – by putting up a series of debunking posts on their blog. I don’t know about you but the more four-syllable words a questionable company uses and the more their pronouncements sound like an Intro to Rhetoric term paper, the more I trust them. [cash4gold.blogspot.com] (Thanks to Merck23!)
Florida AG Examining Cash4Gold Complaints
By 2.5.09
The Florida Attorney General‘s office is looking into nearly 60 complaints they’ve received about Cash4Gold.com. A number of them complain about sending in valuable jewelry and getting pennies back, and then the company not sending their stuff back as promised.
