Cash For Gold

Natural beauty in investing may happen very rarely.  Despite all I have learned, there is a lot more in investing that I do not know.  However, I know what my expectations are and I know what my limits are, so when it comes to managing my money, those are the most important things to know.  Beyond that, my opinion has very little influence in the overall marketplace.  Regardless, it is beautiful when I learn people I respect share my same opinions.

My favorite television show is "South Park," and tonight was the second episode of their sixteenth season.  It was entitled "Cash 4 Gold," and as soon as I learned that much about it, I was immediately excited to see it.  I knew they would have fun poking fun at the Cash For Gold places, but as the episode played out, it brought to life my personal opinion on investing in gold, which made my heart smile.

My former-roommate (who's currently a highly successful investment banker) told me a couple years ago that the biggest use of gold today is for making jewelry in India.  If that's the source "demand" of gold, then the rest of the marketplace's "demand" is bunk!  It does not surprise me that the American investors have gone from high-tech stocks (which was a natural bubble) to the rest estate market (which was a bubble that got inflated by a lot of hot air), and now Pat Boone's "Gold IRAs" have taken the advertising time and space previously held to hock REITs.  For the record, there is no Gold IRA anymore than there is a Green IRA or a Red IRA.  The marketing ploy of that commercial alone is absurd.

In no uncertain terms, the "South Park" episode drew correlation between the elderly population buying items on Home Shopping Network and the excessive supply of "jewelers" who are ready and able to purchase gold.  Although the episode pinpointed how unbalanced the supply and demand for gold are in this country, it opted against targeting those individuals who are encouraging people to invest their IRA and other retirement accounts with gold.  Perhaps the average person is not exposed to those ads as often as I am, or (unfortunately) they aren't smart enough to understand that a spoof is not a good method for investing, and that episode may insire another several thousand wannabe-Cartmans to move their money to gold.

I sold a gold ring for my best friend a couple weeks ago, which I absolutely HATED to do, but I went to a jeweler who had been buying gold for as long as I have been living in my current location (over 13 years now), so I felt as though she got a good deal.  Immediately after the sale, I started kicking myself because I wish I had thought to "shop" it around to a few of these nefarious "Cash For Gold" places, and see how their offers stood up against this place.  According to "South Park," we would likely have been offered a high of $8.75 or a low of a seven-layer Taco Bell burrito.

In reality, gold is at a pretty big high right now, so it's a SELLERS market.  I am so weary of the metals market right now that I told my friend to NOT sell gold at first, and then I realized that this was the best time to SELL gold since she was interested, so I convinced her to sell and she got $50 for an otherwise worthless piece of jewelry.

Although, I hate to think how much her mother paid to give it as a gift however many years ago.