We want to sell YOUR gently used jewelry.

We would love the opportunity to sell your

gently used jewelry for you on consignment.

Over the last couple of years we have paid out thousands of dollars to people by selling their jewelry for them. If you have some patience, you can realize much more money for your jewelry when you let us sell it on consignment versus what you will be paid for the scrap value of the gold or if you sell it to a pawn shop or a jeweler.

Here is an example. This 18kt white gold pin and pendant combination had a scrap value of  $181.00. There is not much gold weight here - the price included paying for the melee diamonds.

 

Instead, we reached an agreed upon price range and the seller ended up with $525.00 after a couple of months. Even without a calculator you know $525 is way better than $181!

 

We sold a diamond for a lady last year - the best offer she received from a number of jewelry stores in Grand Rapids to buy it out right was $700.00. By leaving it with us on consignment, she ended up with $1,300.00 - almost double her best offer.

 

How it works: bring your jewelry in and let Cliff take a look at it. We want to price it attractively, by that we mean 30-50% less than new. We agree upon a price or price range that the sale will net YOU and then we give you a receipt for the item(s). We make between 20% to 30% commission on consignment. When it sells, we send you a check.

 

Everybody wins.

The buyer saves money on nice jewelry, YOU get MORE for your

jewelry and Chimera makes some money.

Win-win-win.

He pays MORE for gold? Not more than Chimera Design.

There is a business down the street and the owner is always claiming that they pay the most for gold of ANYONE. Well, we don't make a lot of claims here - but I will tell you that when I bought the gent's 10kt ring in the picture above today for $57.70, the guy told me he had been offered $50 down the street.

We are always buying gold and silver at great prices. We will claim to pay more than most places - we can because we spend ZERO on advertising.

Also - in addition to our prices, if you spend the money in the store - like for a new ring or a repair - then we give you 20% on top of our cash price.

Sell Chimera your sterling flatware and serving dishes.

When we opened nine years ago silver was $2.75 per ounce.
Today it is over 13 times that amount - $37.65!
We just paid out over $1,000.00 for a set of sterling flatware.
Bring in your sterling silver serving dishes, flatware, and jewelry - you just might have a nice little pile of money sitting in your drawers, cupboards, and jewelry box.

Better value for your old gold at Chimera Design.

Wow, just had another eye opening experience yesterday. A young couple was looking for a wedding band and some jewelry to give to their mom's at their upcoming wedding. They had a 14kt gold ring that weighed 4.9 grams they wanted to sell or trade in.
I told them they could have $58.77 in cash or $73.50 if they traded the gold in on something we made for them. Being bright young people they opted for the trade in value and then told me they were offered $17 and some change for the same ring from the Gold and Silver exchange that very day. That is only $3.46 per gram!!
We would have paid them almost three and a half times in cash and we gave them OVER FOUR TIMES the amount the Gold and Silver exchange offered them in trade.

Buying gold - Chimera Design vs Gold and Silver Exchange

We did a fund raiser with the Lowell Women's Club yesterday that involved buying old gold. Had a lady come in with a stash and my price to her was $165. When I handed her the check she told me that the Gold and Silver Exchange (a place set up by one of the Grand Rapids Malls) offered her a little more than $80 for the same gold.
Twice as much from Chimera Design!!

When a family member leaves you jewelry.

For goodness sake, do not throw it out before letting someone check it over for you. Many times there are hidden treasures in mom or grandmother's jewelry boxes.
With the price of gold way up, even an old class ring or knotted bunch of broken gold chains could translate into some cash for you. If you have inherited a big old pile of jewelry and don't know for sure what is and is not valuable, bring it in to the store and we will help you sort out the good from the bad and give you options and suggestions on what to do with what you have. Many times we can remount or remodel a sentimental piece of jewelry so that it can live on in your family. We also have a lot of cases where some old gold will pay some or all of the bill on refurbishing the old jewelry.

Selling gold - A true tale from the streets of Lowell.

A young lady came in yesterday with a 14kt yellow gold necklace she no longer wore. I weighed it up and offered her $50.28 for the value of the scrap gold. She smiled. She lives in a town about 18 miles to the East of us and she took it into a pawn shop there and they offered $6.00 for the same necklace. We paid her over EIGHT TIMES what they offered her.

Some tips about selling your gold.

Today gold is at $850 an ounce, but what does that mean when it comes down to your old class ring? Well, the ounce price of gold is for PURE gold. Almost all gold jewelry has alloy metals in it. The alloys make the gold harder to scratch and more durable. They can also help to "color" the gold. Additional copper gives us rose gold, nickel helps make gold "white", etc.

18kt gold (750 in Europe) is 75% gold with 25% alloys.
14kt gold (585 in Europe) is 58.5% gold with 41.5% alloys.
10kt gold (417 in Europe) is 41.7% gold with 58.3% alloys.

So if an ounce of pure gold is trading for $850, then an ounce of 10kt gold (typical class ring) would be trading at roughly $354.45 per ounce. Not many people have class rings that weigh an ounce, most jewelry is measured in grams and there are 31.1 grams in an ounce. Most refiners charge jewelry stores a fee to refine the gold - anywhere from 2% to 5%. The store owner wants to stay in business, plus he or she is taking a risk because the price of gold flucuates daily (sometimes hourly) so you can figure the store will want to make somewhere between 20% to 50%. (And even more in some cases - see below) So if your class ring weighs 7.8 grams you can expect to get around $60.92 for it - figuring 2% for the refiner and 30% for the store owner.

BE CAREFUL with your gold. I recently had a gentleman come in with 4 rings, 3 were 10kt and one was 14kt. He asked what I would pay him for them. I checked them, weighed them and got the current gold price and did my calculations. I told him I could pay $100.30 for the rings. He got a big smile and told me he had sent the same rings to someplace advertising on television and they sent him a check for $15.68!! He knew better and now so do you!