Anyone who works in precious metal of any type will be very well aware of what sort of pain I mean. In the last 18 months or so the price of metals – especially precious metals – has skyrocketed. Every time you think it can’t get any more expensive … it just does.
Currently I’m paying about AU$0.97 a gram for sterling silver – that’s around double what I’ve paid for it throughout most of my career (US$0.89 at today’s exchange rate).
Even worse, today I purchased some 18k gold for the first time in a very long time. I remember the days where I used to gasp over it being around AU$9 a gram. Today I paid AU$35 (around US$32). Ouch!
And here is what AU$187 worth of gold looks like! Yep, it looks pretty piddly – especially when you consider that it’s only 0.3mm thick (0.1″ or around the same as 30 gauge wire).
Of course everyone who knows a thing or two about precious metal prices is wishing that they’d stocked up on kilograms of the stuff a few years back! Although some people will tell you that those reading this post a year or so in the future will most likely wonder why we didn’t buy it in bulk right now – many people think that the prices are going to get much higher again than they are already.
Ouch. OUCH!!
Anyway, I just felt the need to have a little whine about that! And buyers of jewellery and other precious metal objects should feel free to whine too as of course ultimately they are now paying more too.
