The goldHow gold is priced
The price is asum you can check.
Nothing in the cabinet wears a ticket. Every piece is priced at the counter, while you watch, from three numbers. Two of them you can check yourself. The third we agree on together.
Take the sumapart.
Buy a bangle here and you hear all three numbers said out loud before the total. Here they are, in the order the counter says them.
The weight
Gold is bought by the gram, so the piece goes on the scale first and you read the pan with us. A heavy bangle costs more than a light one because it holds more gold, and for no other reason.
The scale sits on the counter, not out the back. Ask about a piece and it is weighed in front of you before anyone talks money.
The day’s rate
The second number is what a gram of gold is worth that morning. The world market sets it before we open, and it moves every trading day. You can look it up on your phone while we quote, which is rather the point.
The rate for 22 carat sits above the rate for 21 because more of each gram is gold. Each metal has its own page: 22 carat and 21 carat.
The making
The third number is ours. The making covers the work in the piece: a plain chain carries a small one, fine filigree carries more. It is the only part of the price the market cannot move, and it is settled before the total is, so you know which part of what you paid is gold and which part is work.
On a made-to-order piece we quote the making up front, from your photograph. How a custom order works →
Half the sum keeps.
the weight times the day’s rate plus the making
the weight times the day’s rate with the making no longer counted
The making pays for work that is already done, so it is spent once and stays spent. The gold is never spent. Years on, the bangle is still the same grams of 22 carat, priced at whatever the rate says that morning, and that is the whole difference between the two lines above. What the scale says about old gold →
No tickets, because the rate will not hold still.
The market writes a new rate every trading morning. A ticket priced on Tuesday is quietly wrong by Friday, and a cabinet of wrong tickets helps nobody. So the pricing waits until you ask, then happens in front of you at that day’s number.
The one cost of doing it this way is that the number lives at the counter, not on a tag.
Asked at this counter
Three questions that follow the pricing around. The rest of what people ask has a page of its own.
- Can you quote over the phone?
- Ring and ask. We can talk through the piece and that day’s rate, but the proper number happens at the counter, with the piece on the scale.
- Does a quote hold?
- The weight and the making do not move, but the rate is that morning’s, so the sum changes when the rate does. Ask at the counter how long a number can be held.
- Why no prices online?
- They would be wrong within the week, the same way a ticket would. The counter works from that morning’s rate, six days a week, and runs the sum in front of you when you ask.
Today’s rate isone question away.
We do not set the rate and we cannot print it. Ask at the counter for 21 or 22 carat and the sum happens in front of you, at that morning’s number.
364-378 Prospect Road, Kilburn SA 5084
Tuesday to Sunday, 10:30am – 6pm