“Just another day in the office, honey”
That’s genuine gold bullion Rockstar’s holding; Kings brought some home from the office to show him (returned it the next day). The largest bar in the box is USD 50,000. Some banks started selling those, not just the paper gold HSBC has had for ages (Over USD 1,400 an ounce! I’m long at USD 900!)
I have this illogical thing whereby if I want to fuel some super-frivolous* purchase like long Gucci gold horsebit necklace, I buy/sell my (quite small, which I’m now regretting because of the massive run since I last bought in) holding of paper gold a bit more actively and chalk up the gains to erm, “discount” the Gucci premium (but really the word I should use is “justify”)… “Illogical” because small buy/sells can cost the most if you have a standard transaction fee on top of the brokerage; not to mention fairly blind buy/selling costs a mint in transaction costs if you’re just making the small amounts from day-to-day fluctuation…
But well Free Gucci Necklace so leave me alone.
*I find designer jewelry the ultimate frivolous purchase; gold is expensive enough with its safe haven status, without it being Gucci.Or <pause of reverence> Chanel. But really its not that different from any other Gucci or Chanel purchase is it, it’s still G or C but with jewelry.
In fact Chanel costume jewelry is going to cost like, HKD 10,000 or HKD 20,000 anyway, prompting people to seriously collect them/ make imitations for sale in Causeway Bay and Mong Kok (unfortunately). Oh, and they sell for about there, even vintage.
So I tell myself that since wholesalers mark up the most for all the tiny little diamonds they use for pave and stuff, may as well go designer. If you want a designer fix, I mean. You pay for the design anyway and you get a Gucci box.
But for at least 0.5 or 1 carat and up… Shopping for an engagement ring donkeys’ years ago was how I formed the opinion. We found that a diamond with the same GIA-certified specifications could cost like, 40% more simply because you bought it from atas jeweller. That’s before you decide to set it in anything, just from sourcing it from atas jeweller instead of from wholesaler. (My favorite is the traders because if you befriend them they send you a whole spreadsheet of 150 diamonds and you can use excel to narrow down your choices)
40% is a whole lot more rock you could afford for the same price and to me even if I rejected some of the non-atas jeweller’s settings (which I did only once and bore the workmanship cost – how much designing do you need for studs and stuff? You just want to make the rock the star – haha geddit?) it’s still totally worth it.
Relatively early on in the financial crisis Bloomberg even had an article about how more rich people were buying large, high-quality diamonds (not just the gold). Hey you can hide diamonds better than the bullion, under your bed, if you don’t trust a bank/ country’s currency. Just Like Grandma.
Can imagine Great Grandmum going You See? In The End Everyone Just Goes Back To Buying Gold/ Jewelry What. My mother already did that to me about bonds and fixed deposit sigh.
Anyway, my beloved maternal grandmother had this collection of old gold coins so I will slowly be setting them into something like this…(Yes that’s Kate Moss in Ben Amun necklace) Soon as I take profit on some of my paper gold…
