The Gold Rush: Time to Gather over Food and Jewelry

Alison DeRuiter, a resident of Phoenix, had arrived at a party one time and left it carrying five hundred and forty two dollars. Such a party was held at the home of her friend, and they met for a guest of honor who was actually a representative of a company Gold Rush at Home which is based in the Fountain Hills area. That person was there to look at and possibly buy any old gold items which the guests had brought with them, filling out checks for purchase of some pieces at the same time. The jewelry was just sitting in her drawer gathering dust from her high school years, according to DeRutier. Her mother who is Anna Nixon had been able to collect three hundred dollars for jewelry which she would term as just junk. This is the new business and social craze now: the gold party.

Gold Rush: Starting Out

The Gold Rush at Home was a company started by Beth Maynard sometime in the late 2007 after her twenty year career in the business of mortgage lending. She had joined several dozen entrepreneurs all over the country in this trend. Because the price of gold had skyrocketed to around nine hundred dollars per ounce at the same time that paychecks and the job prospects have ended up shrinking, these gold parties are now being tapped into a very powerful market. People need money and they are very excited to get it and do away with gold and gold jewelry just sitting in their drawers, explained Maynard.

She has been writing checks to a lot of people and they are truly delighted with it. The usual scenario is that they will arrive at a party where they will not spend any cash and then have their jewelry evaluated. Most of them think that their jewelry is worth twenty five dollars, but then they receive a check for one hundred dollars. The Gold Rush at Home parties work by having a representative joining around twelve people who have decided to gather at the home of a friend or a neighbor. She would then consult with the people and weigh their gold and then make an offer that is based on the spot price value of gold on the market. By the end of the day, the host of the part will get around ten percent of the total earnings of the people who attended.

Just the Gold

Maynard does not factor in the decorative or the artistic value of all the items she would asses. She is just after the gold – and then sells it to the refiners. The organizers of these gold parties say that such is the point of the process - that conditioning or the design value of the item is not at all important so there is no reason for the customers to not dig really deep into their pockets to bring out the old pieces which they know they will not wear or display. The gold pieces may even come in the form of broken chains, earring pieces, dental gold and class rings according to Kelly Rostic. Kelly Rostic is a consultant of the company Gold Refinery who also organizes such parties. Gold is not really that much into fashion at the moment, so the average seller would make around one hundred to two hundred dollars during a gold party. The biggest single amount she has given to one guest, however, had amounted to four thousand dollars worth of gold.