Estate and Legacy Jewellery

 For what it's worth

 The price of gold rose less during six centuries than the past 50 years, it is interesting that back in 1344 gold was worth about 23 shillings an ounce. By the 16th century it doubled to 46 shillings an ounce and by the 17th. Century it was as much as 84-86 shillings an ounce and there it remained for many years. It is interesting that between 1717 right up to 1931 the price stayed at this figure with the exception other than the ten years between 1915 and 1925.

 While we are talking of values, jewellery represents only a fraction of the world output of the worlds gold. The vast majority mined from the ground goes back into the ground, into vaults such as those at Fort Knox and that gold still remains the currency of international trade and serves to prop up the economies of many countries, though not the U.K. anymore.

When Britain left the gold standard back in 1932 the price rose rapidly to 130 shillings and 140s by 1935 this period to Jewellers was known as the gold rush. The then Chancellor of the Exchequer  appealed to the patriotism of the Nation to sell their sovereigns to the banks for the face value of 20 shillings, yes you guessed it, avarice prevailed and so thousands of people took their sovereigns to the welcoming jewellery companies around the country for them to sell at 25 to 27 shillings. The price of gold has continued to rise since then by 1949 it had risen to 248s and in 1999 reached the £174.00. I can tell you today it is £617.46 an ounce and on this day only last year it stood at £449.44, however  I think at the moment though the price is coming down as in February this year it was as high as £669.00 these prices are reflected in the exchange rate of the euro today’s price of £617.46, the euro is 1.124 to the £.

The price is always referred to as the fine gold price so I will explain the difference. Fine gold is expressed as 24 carat because it is 999 parts per 1000 which is as fine as it can be, there are no alloys present.
If we divide 1000 by 24 it equals 41.666666 for 1 part, so to understand and find what content there is in 18ct. gold x by 18 which equals 749.9999 and the same for the rest  9ct. 14ct. or whatever. You can see for yourself that 9ct only contains 374.99999 so there is more alloy than gold and so makes it half the price of 18ct. it is as simple as that.

Just to finish the word carat owes its origin to the Italian word carato and the Greek word karation which means “fruit of the carob tree”. This little bean was used in ancient times as a counter weight for weighing gems and gold, needless to say the traders usually had 2 sets, a small size for buying and a larger set for selling or visa versa to take advantage of the ill-informed.