Shipping Off

For quite some time, I’ve been fascinated by the whole ‘Send Us Your Gold’ industry.  Are gold buyers in such short supply that the general public has to resort to the postal service to sell their gold?

There have been a few great reports on the industry from a favorite website of mine run by a guy named Rob Cockerham.  This article is about how he actually got paid after sending in a bunch of pieces of scrap metal that he painted with gold spray paint.

The next article describes in great detail how Cash4Gold will offer you a whopping 33% of the actual value of your gold.  Unless you ask for more.  Then they will offer you almost what the gold is worth.

Here’s the thing… Gold is a commodity.  If they really do have their own metal refinery, and they really do melt the gold down and reuse it, then the price they pay you should be commensurate with the actual market value of gold.  Maybe they would take a small percentage for their time, they could even call it a ‘processing fee’.  The above articles are nice illustrations of how willing companies are to screw consumers out of what they actually deserve.  But that’s not what prompted me to write this post.

Over the past week or so, Cash4Gold has been running radio ads touting their ‘Holiday Special’.  The language is extremely vague, but they say, “Send your gold now, and receive an extra 20% off your gold!”. I’m not really sure what that means…  20% “off”?  Does that mean you get 20% more for your gold? 20% less? What exactly is 20% “off”?  Unfortunately, the offers are not on their website so I couldn’t do more research - yet another example of the shadiness of the industry.

After reading the above articles, you’ll see that Cash4Gold offers about 33% of the actual value of your gold at first.  So it’s really easy for them to add another 20% “bonus” to their offer.  That would bring their offer up to about 39% of the actual value of your gold.  As Rob points out, Cash4Gold never offers to give you what your gold is “worth”.  They merely offer to evaluate your gold and then make you an offer.

From a purely business perspective, this is a great model.  You’re taking a slightly illiquid commodity, offering the public a way to turn that commodity into real, spendable dollars.  But you make no promises as to the valuation process - only that the customer will receive “Cash”.

In the end, I guess this all adds up to yet one more case of Buyer Beware.  Cash4Gold has found a niche market here.  The average person has ZERO idea of what Gold is worth.  They make the process as easy as possible to turn that boring asset into real money.  Gold is shiny, but cash has more immediate value.

Have you ever tried to sell something with value like gold or jewelry?  Tell your story in the comments.

Hey all - Sorry for the slightly insipid title, but it will make sense in a minute.

During our trip to Europe in the Fall, Ali (my wife) was invited to participate in a song writers workshop with some of the biggest names in the song writing world.  They (about 20 writers) spent two days on a farm just outside of Oslo creating music.  It was a really amazing experience, and everyone involved turned out two or three songs that were then performed on the Friday night after the workshop.  One of the songs that Ali was involved in writing is called “Why can’t we all just get along?”.  Her co-writers on this one are Chris Barron (of Spin Doctors fame) and Martin Sjølie.  After the workshop, it turns out that Martin and Chris went ahead and did a full blown demo version of the song, complete with Martin working out the instrumentation and Chris on the vocals.

So, for your listening pleasure, please enjoy Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

A heady, “Good WorkAmerica!”, for such a delightful excercise in setting the example of restraint on this, the busiest shopping day of the year.

In the first few hours of today, not one but TWO stories came out about people getting killed during the Black Friday experience.  One story, involving a shooting (they both died) in a Toys R Us, seems to be based around two people who didn’t care for each other and apparently the stress of toy shopping was too much.  Ok, so they were probably going to shoot each other anyway, it’s just too bad that it happened in a toy store.  It’s the second story that really amazes me….

Wal-Mart employee dies on Black Friday after being knocked down by shoppers:

It’s every Black Friday shopper’s and security guard’s worst nightmare.

Overeager shoppers jostling to get into a Wal-Mart on New York’s Long Island trampled an employee to death this morning in the rush to snatch some good deals.

Also caught in that chaos at the Valley Stream, N.Y., store: a 28-year-old pregnant woman and at least three other shoppers who suffered minor injuries.

The employee, a 34-year-old man, suffered “an undetermined death” when a “throng of shoppers … physically broke down the doors, knocking him to the ground,” according to the statement. He was declared dead at a nearby hospital at 6:03 a.m.

According to a police statement, the death happened at 5:03 a.m., minutes after Wal-Marts across the country opened their doors to the holiday rush.

It goes on.  But seriously, “physically broke down the doors”?!?!?  How  much could the prices have possibly been “rolled back”?  Did the clever eighty-eight pricing drive these people to madness?

I guess I can hope that there won’t be any other deaths on this crazy shopping day?  That seems a bit cynical, but seriously…

Well, despite my best efforts to fry a turkey this Thanksgiving, it looks like it’ll have to wait.  I visited numerous stores today, and every single one was sold out of anything even resembling a turkey fryer.

It does work out ok though - Ali and I figured out that we can fit two turkeys in my smoker, so we’ll have to settle for delicious smoked turkey instead.

So, yeah - I’m gonna do it.  Fry a turkey.  That is, of course, if it doesn’t rain.  I’ve been told that a vat of hot oil and rain don’t mix very well.

Does anyone have any good recipes?

After our cross-country train trip to Bergen on Sunday, we’re back in Oslo.  Ali will be posting pictures of the train trip shortly, which, suffice to say, was BEAUTIFUL.

Bergen is a very unique city.  It reminds me of the East Bay of San Francisco, except it’s been there for over 1000 years.  That’s right!  There is even a church with a canon ball stuck in it from an old battle in the harbor.

Anyway - we flew back to Oslo, which only takes about 40 minutes compared with 8 hours on the train.  Price: THE SAME.

That’s all.

We’ve been sightseeing like crazy, so I haven’t had much time to write.  But here I am.  This post is going to be about some of the more interesting observations I’ve noticed in Norway.

• They make very smart use of space.
• When they say “everyone speaks English”, they mean EVERYONE.  And not just “conversational English”, but FLUENT English to the point where you feel really crappy for not speaking at least one other language. (I speak Spanish, so I don’t feel crappy. Oh, and Ali speaks Norwegian)
• the IKEA catalog is second in importance only to the Bible
• Showers have the highest water pressure of any developed country I’ve ever been to.  Ditto for the sink water pressure.
• The back of the milk carton has famous athletes, not missing children.
• Did I mention that everyone speaks English?
• A 300 sq/ft apartment for two people is not uncommon.  That includes the kitchen and bathroom.
• Norwegians are very sensitive about the environment.  Not so much in that crazy political way, but in the sort of way that their climate has changed noticeably in the last few years.
• Washing machines are about 1/3 the size as in the US.
• Gas is about $13 per gallon.

It’s 11:17 in the morning, and I’m going to eat breakfast.

For this:

Well… Maybe not the smallest car EVER, but wow.

I think the part I like the best is that you can park ’straight in’ instead of parallel parking. They’re even electric!

I guess I kind of knew that Norway had a king, but never really gave much thought to it. Anyway, today, as we were walking back through Oslo to our place, we happened upon the “castle”. It’s not really a castle, it actually looks more like a big government building. But, if you notice the flag up in the middle, that means the King and Queen are home.

As we were walking past (you can actually get right up to the front door), we noticed a band playing in the background. Turns out, we were just in time for the changing of the guards.

I don’t really know what the big deal is, but it was an interesting process to watch:

Anyway - That was kind of cool. You can see the rest of the guard pictures here.