Snowflakes of Gold

Especially during these days of little work, I've been trying to come up with ways to earn at least small amounts of money here and there to snowflake towards my e-fund. This weekend I happened to read an article on Time.com about taking advantage of the currently high price of gold by selling your gold jewelry for scrap. I searched around on the Internet for some more information and got to thinking that even my rather pathetic jewelry box might yield something that could bring in some cash.

I should say up front that I have only three or four pieces of jewelry that I think of as being worth anything monetarily and most of those have enough sentimental value that I'd have to be facing either foreclosure or starvation to consider selling them. Most of the jewelry I wear is sterling silver and I also wear a fair amount of handmade or costume jewelry. But after scrounging around through the forgotten recesses of my jewelry box, I did manage to come up with four chain bracelets and two small hoop earrings (unmatched) that I thought might be 14K or 10K and that I knew I'd never miss.

I knew there was store here in town that buys and sells gold and they've been in business for a long time so I figured they were probably a reputable operation. I have to say it took a little bit of effort for me to work up the courage to go in there. I felt a little sheepish about what insignificant little pieces I was bringing in to try to sell. But when I went in there this morning the guy who took care of me was very professional. He went right to testing the gold content of each piece and weighing them without making any comments that might make me feel stupid.

It turned out that only one of the bracelets and one of the earrings was 14K. The other earring was 10K, and the other three bracelets were, in fact, junk. But after weighing up the three gold pieces, he handed me $34 in cash--and I was in and out of there in about five minutes.

I drove directly to the bank and deposited the cash. My e-fund account is now $34 richer, my jewelry box is slightly less cluttered, my donation box to Goodwill just got three costume jewelry chains added to it, and I actually feel a little smarter for having found a way to earn $34 in five minutes.