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With real gold and precious gems, one can hold onto a store of value that can help people be less afraid of financial emergencies, while the sentimental value prevents people from selling it unless they really have to.
You won’t be taking your jewelry to the next world, so don’t get too attached to it.
Who’ll insure that the safe deposit box enjoys it.
Buying gold jewelry for investment is not a good idea. You get around 1/3 of the price you paid for it. The value in jewelry is only for gold scrap. So you get only the current scrap gold prices, which is usually a third of what you bought it for unless you keep it for 10+ years, with inflation and all, maybe you’ll get it for what you paid. Unless gold really skyrockets from the price you paid for the jewelry , like when it shot up from $800 up to 1600$ in a matter of months, you usually get much less than what you bought it for. But that rarely happens. It has been relatively stable at approximately $1200 for years already.
It is better to invest in scrap gold. You don’t pay for labor, designers, many middlemen, etc. . You get way more for a bar of gold than a peice of jewelry.
Not that my own opinion is shayach in my situation…I can’t pay $1000 now for a bar of now and have it lying in my attic for 10 years …
“…It’s for a store of value that you never actually use…” Huh? I thought it was ” for financial emergencies”…I don’t get it , but whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Jewelry has both intrinsic value and extrinsic value.
Intrinsic is the worth of the metal and stones
Extrinsic is the beauty of the design, emotions or quality of workmanship.What is expensive to one may be cheap or reasonable to others.
For 35 years I have worn a Rolex watch as my daily watch. It was $1600 at tax free when I bought it and a Seiko was about $100. $46 per year is not expensive for an accurate, waterproof, durable timepiece. I’ll probably wear it the rest of my life and then my eldest son will own it. It’s gold content at the time of purchase was about $300. I paid for the name and workmanship as well.
As for jewelry and gold being portable, my mother’s side was German. They did not believe in keeping assets that could not be transported in a hurry. Cash gold and jewels were always held in a safe at home. My OPA said you never know when you have to cross a border quickly and you can’t sew real; estate in your suit lining or bribe a border guard with it.
Yes, we do pass jewelry down in the family. Mrs. CTL wears my great grandmother’s engagement diamond. All our daughters in law received engagement stones from the family vault. I don’t expect that these would ever be sold. They know they are merely the safekeepers for the generation, not the owners
CTLAWER, I personally would hate wearing jewelry as “safekeeping” and not being the owner…I don’t think it’s right to give jewelry that way. When I bought jewelry for my daughter-in law I only thought if she’ll like it and my husband and I gave it to HER, not for safekeeping.
A diamond is only part of jewelry we buy for kallahs. The bracelet, earrings, diamond setting, and pearls, cost much more than a diamond and to buy it to have “for financial emergencies” is not a good idea. Most kallahs will sell their jewelry after 15 years because of changing styles.If you invest in diamonds only, that’s like investing in gold only. Buying diamonds does not mean buying jewelry, diamonds itself are not jewelry pieces. And I believe that genuine diamonds will drop in value once genuine, lab created diamonds will be mass produced. Even deBeers will be selling these diamonds.
Jewelry at retail cost is not a very good investment over the long term. The markups by retailers and designers raise your cost basis so as to diminish returns. Even at wholesale prices, it’s not something to count on it put your children thorugh yeshiva and pay for chasunahs.
At best, the long term prices for gold stay about the same, after adjusting for inflation. In that sense, some, depending on their tolerance for volatility, use it as a hedge against catasrophe. Harder to tell for diamonds as the supply might be artificially constrained by DeBeers.
In times of crisis, human greed, materialism, and ego make gold and silver, diamonds an other gems commodities that can be traded for something, even if not equivalent in cash to what you originally paid for the item.
It all depends on the individual investor’s needs for portfolio diversivication, tolerance for risk, utility of marginal return on investment, and other factors. The intrinsic value of gold and diamonds remains fairly high because there are few functional substitutes in industrial applications. But the intrinsic value is not the same as market price. Even if you feel like you need and want precious minerals and gems as investments, you have to “know the price of tomatos” before you buy them, so you can tell if you are getting a reasonable price or not.
@Philosopher
I don’t know how long your family has been in its current country and what heirlooms (Jewelry, silver, etc) have passed down in the family.
My family arrived in the USA in the 1860s and early 1870s and has accumulated a century and a half of heirlooms.
The concept of being the safe-keeper of these heirlooms and the duty to pass them on to future generations has been instilled in us from early childhood.
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My eldest DIL has my paternal grandmother’s engagement diamond. The setting and side stones were designed and made for DIL. She has my maternal great-grandmother’s Pearls.
My eldest SIL proudly wears my Maternal Grandfather’s gold watch. My daughter have it to him when the got engaged. He has promised it to his eldest granddaughter to give to her Chasan when the time arrives in the future.
This is not to say that we do not also buy new jewelry as gifts in the family, but the heirlooms and family continuity have special meaning.
When I married Mrs. CTL….she was given a choice of 4 engagement stones that had been in the family for 4 generations. She chose a stone that had been worn by my great grandmother who had the same first name as Mrs. CTL.
I’ve had the pleasure of buying her much jewelry over our almost 45 years of marriage and she looks forward to passing it on to our children, grandchildren, etc.My wife a”h said to me, either buy me real jewelry or don’t buy me anything. She was happy to wear it, it made her feel good.
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