Word: goldings
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That chain still means a lot to me, symbolizing my triumphs against adversity, which include getting a job in journalism while wearing a gold chain. But lately I've been looking at that chain differently. With gold climbing from $275 an ounce in 2000 to an all-time high of more than $1,000 earlier this year, late-night commercials for companies like Cash4Gold--the 271st fastest-growing company in the country according to Inc. magazine and the most embarrassingly named company according to this one--are asking me to mail in my gold for cash. My chain, in these...
...really wanting to part with it, I called my mom to get her to talk me out of selling it. "When are you doing this?" she asked. "I have a lot of gold I'd love to get rid of. I wear more costumey, fun stuff. I think it's younger-looking." I do not have a particularly sentimental mother...
...really was going to sell my chain, I didn't want to do it at some seedy pawnshop or through an infomercial company. It turns out a lot of people feel the same way. Gold parties, at which friends gather over drinks after raiding their senile mom's drawers for heirlooms to melt down, have become this recession's dance marathons. I called January Thomas, who just quit her sales job in Michigan to run her new company, My Gold Party mygoldparty.com) She sent me a $700 kit with a jeweler's loupe, a scale and a machine that tests...
Thomas warned me to have plenty of money in my account, since I'd probably be writing checks for about $300 to every person who came to my party. I was supposed to use the karat-testing machine, that day's price of gold, a chart in her book and a calculator to give people about 75% of the value of their gold, since 5% was going to the refinery and 10% to cover the cost of the party. I got to keep the rest. This seemed like the most difficult party in the world to run other than...
...make fun of me. This was one of the few parties at which, instead of inviting writers, I would have been far better off loading up the e-vite list with meth addicts. After a while, some let me test their jewelry "for fun." When my machine read not gold, I found myself comforting people, telling them that their parents probably didn't know or that brass was the platinum of the early...