After a few days of confusion, after all it's not every day you have to deal with a situation like this, we were able to get our plan of action together and regain control of our space. The night / morning of the fire we had so much going on we wee not really aware of how everything would work as there were so many entities involved. Around 7am on Sunday we had a crew from a large restoration come out at the request of our land lord and property manager. They proceeded to remove all of the excess water and started to bag up all of the wet materials and sort of clean up. We were not really sure how this would be billed and hadn't even spoken to our insurance adjuster at this point so we didn't do much besides retrieve valuables that we had since forgotten. Upon contact with our insurance adjuster we came to find out that we needed to halt all work being done as this would be considered an active crime scene until their forensic investigator had the opportunity to investigate. Further, we needed to be aware of the cost of the current clean up company as we were going to be financially responsible for their efforts. After getting an actual quote for their services to move forward we realized that we may be better served using another company.

It's times like this that the old motto "you learn something new every day" comes to mind. By the time we came to this conclusion the aforementioned company had already began to tear our carpet and flooring up which was admittedly a bit of a shock and really put into perspective what we were going to be looking at. The reality that this was not  going to be a clean up project and more of a complete rebuild quickly set in.We decided to have our own contractors who have done work for us in different capacities for years continue the work. We also received a quote from ServPro that was much more in line with our overall budget and we scheduled them to come out after we had the opportunity to clear out the space as much as possible. This would now include removing the cases, wall structures, flooring and basically everything that was not the still cordoned off area of the fire awaiting further investigators.

On Saturday March 19th I was woken by my wife with the news that we had a fire at the Greenville store. I immediately grabbed my phone and noticed 15 missed calls. I'm not 100% sure why my ringer was turned down so low but there isn't much difference that would have been made if I had answered the first ring. So I headed over to the store and upon arrival there were several fire trucks and police cars. I walked up to the store and was met with a shattered front door and then there it was. The culprit. Our refrigerator had apparently caught fire. The Fire Chief I spoke with said the fire was caused by the refrigerator and it was deemed accidental.

Now for those of you who are unfamiliar, nine times out of ten the fire is not what causes the majority of the damage rather it is the water is the major concern. Sure enough I walked into 3-6" of standing water. Did I mention that it was 22degrees? Oh and now I was tasked with the job of pulling all of our  jewelry that remains in the cases at night... So there I stood freezing, wet feet and legs, pulling 20-30 pieces of Jewelry out of each of our 10 cases. 

Now that a few days have passed thinking back on it.... At 3:30am, in the dark soaking wet and freezing, pulling jewelry from the cases, it was like being on the Titanic an hour after it collided with the iceberg. I know that is a bit overly dramatic but it really was a bit surreal in retrospect. I spent the rest of the day in slight disbelief and exhausted. By the end of the day the remediation company that showed up early in the day Sunday had all of the standing water removed which made it slightly easier to survey the damage. Tomorrow is another day. 

We Buy Gold........... What?
The value of gold has been a topic of conversation now since right about the time of the economic disaster of 2008. In the two years preceding 2008, when all hell was breaking loose in the Mortgage industry, Wall Street and Banking in general we saw the value of Gold begin to creep up incrementally. The year 2006 saw Gold make a reasonable gain of 24% from $513/Oz. to an average of $635/Oz. Then when things started to really boil and burst we saw what at the time seemed like a big jump up to an average of $852.50 through 2007 and 2008. Enter the “We Buy Gold” Business phenomena. Over the next few years we would see gold make a run like never in History up to a high average of $1664 in 2012 to today’s semi stabilized $1200. During this time the general public received a crash course of gold values and the gold selling process. Confusion, deception and misconceptions were rampant and still are to this day.
What it all means.
The value of gold that you see on the news is not what you get when selling your gold. Yes the values are related and directly correlated however you need to have a better understanding of how weight, measures and purities relate to better understand what the daily price of gold really is and more importantly how it affects you and the value of your items. 
“I want to sell some Gold but the price has dropped”.
“Gold has really taken a nose dive. Almost 50 points down”
“You guys must be going crazy with gold moving all over the place”
These are actual quotes among hundreds that we’ve heard over the year… It is human nature to try to relate to anything and everything and the value of gold when in a Jewelry store is no exception. Where people go wrong is not completely understating the relationships between gold market price and jewelry. Truth of the matter is that unless you are dealing in very large quantities of the yellow stuff a minor market fluctuation has such a minor impact on the value of your items you are better off concerning yourself on other aspects of your financial life.

Don’t kick Fido over $4 - Allow me illustrate a simple example.

A client brings in 2 rings and wants today’s value on it, he then adds that his dog ate something bad last week and he had to rush him to the vet. So, he’s really pissed at his dog as he had to wait until today to come in and “Gold just dropped 50 points”. The value of gold today is $1210/Oz and let’s for the sake of example say that gold did just “drop $50” to $1160/Oz. Client A’s two rings are the most common purity of 14Kt and weigh a total of 6 grams. To figure out the value we would need to take the $1160 which is the current market price of pure 24Kt Gold and convert it to the value of 14Kt by multiplying it by 58.5% which would equal $678. Then we would need to take the $687/Oz of 14Kt Gold and convert it to Grams which is one of the more common measurements in Jewelry to get $22/Gram of 14Kt Gold.  Now we’re getting somewhere. So now that we have the value of 14Kt gold per Gram we can assume that the buyer will offer to purchase the gold at between 50% and 75% of that total value. They need to leave a little profit for themselves after all, or what would be the point of “buying gold”, right?  So let’s assume they offer 70% which now bring the value of Client A’s gold to $15.31 per Grams of 14Kt Gold. Wow… $15.31 is a long way from where we started at $1160 now isn’t it?... So Client A’s 2 rings weighing 6 Grams total are worth $91.86. Now here’s where a solid understanding of the relationships above and some perspective comes into play.  Remember Client A was mad at his dog as he caused him to delay his visit and Gold has “dropped $50”. If we go through the same lengthy calculation above (don’t worry I’ll spare you some of the details) using a Gold value of $1210/Oz ($50/Oz more) we arrive at the following $707.85/Oz of 14Kt which equals $22.81/Gram of 14Kt, then take the 70% to get the purchase price per gram which equals $15.97/Gram and multiply by the 6 Grams that the two rings weigh in total for $95.82. So at the end of the day that huge $50 drop only affected the value of Client A’s gold by $3.96 or 4%. Granted, $4 is $4 however keep in mind that a $50 fluctuation in gold either way over night is a huge fluctuation today. More common week to week may be fluctuations of $20-$25 which make that difference around two bucks if that…

Here at the Jewelry Exchange of Delaware, we are more than happy to explain all aspects of gold buying and selling. Our primary goal when you visit us, is to educate you as a consumer so that you can make an informed decision.