Yeah, I've seen those commercials as well. But around where I live, lots of people will take your jewelery and not give you anything, and I trust them about the same amount. :P However, I will say at least those gold payout commercials aren't using Billy Mayes.

Send us your gold and we'll send you some Orange Glo!

send us your gold and we'll send you some PRUNE DRANK!

Send me some gold and I'll send you 500 twinkies!

gotcha - you didn't say how much i had to fork over... i can buy a sheet of leaf-gold quite cheap at the arts&crafts store

Ahh Crap! *sobs*

send me some powerthirst and I'll send you 400 BABIES!

Can I eat them?

I'll send you the gold flakes at the bottom of my Goldschlager bottle. Mmm twinkie.

I said some! You're just sending flakes... That's highway robbery!

Yuh gotta get the Billy Mayes double 'Thumbs up' in there too.

Yeah, a nd best thing is its on all television all over the states and its been on since ever since i can remember.

Well of course they wouldn't give back the full amount for the gold. They wouldn't stay a business for very long if they sold it for the same amount as they paid for it.

But people mailing said items in without properly finding out monetary values and such, or selling it the proper way, that is a scame.

They wont be able to stay in business long if they are scamming, and some ave been around for quite awhile.
And of course you wont get full value, as there is going to be the fee for it, like a conversion or traders fee.

If you have gold, hold onto it. These places are scams, they want your gold because the price of it is raising right now and they know they can make a profit by hoarding and selling later when the price peeks.

Haha, yeah. I've seen those. The english -and- Spanish versions.

In fact, im kinda tired of seeing them x.x. One of them comes on almost every commercial break.

isnt there one for diamonds also!

and you put the gold or diamonds in this crappy envelope

lol theft time

Diamonds are the biggest scam ever. Their value is entirely controlled by a monopoly and part of that control involves determining how much a diamond depreciates in value once purchased; something like 80%.

I've hidden my gold

Then the leprechauns will steal it!

Pirates vs. Leprechauns!

That's not the only gold scam. There's also guys who set up shop in hotels and tell you to bring in your gold and silver coins to exchange them for cash. But in their ads they list the prices they'll pay with according to some odd units of measurement for the weight, rather than specifying ounces like everyone else. I did the conversion to ounces and I realised why they did this.

First, they did it because it makes it difficult for you to compare prices. And second, after doing the calculation and realising that the price they listed was only like 80% of the current value, it occured to me that to print this ad they would have needed to guess what the price of gold was going to be so that they didn't buy it at a higher price than it was currrently selling for. So of course they guessed way low.

In short, you'd be much better off selling your gold to a reputable dealer, because then you can check the price that day and make sure they're not skimming too much off it. You'll always get less than the current price, but at least you can maximize your gains.

... gold does have a different unit of measurement, dear. It's called a troy ounce. There is also the purity to consider.

That's why you can say "Which weighs more? A pound of gold or a pound of feathers?" and the correct answer is the feathers, because a troy ounce is less than a regular ounce.

That doesn't make any sense. A troy ounce may be less than a regular ounce, but a pound is still a pound.

Also they weren't using troy ounces either. They were using some weird archaic unit of measurement. I really can't remember the name, it was something as odd as giving you the price of something by the halfpenny.

A pound in troy ounces is not the same as a pound in regular ounces.

That still doesn't make sense. A pound is a pound. And a pound is measured in ounces. If it were measured in troy ounces it would be a troy pound or something.

Missing information is what separates riddles from trick questions.

I hate trick questions!

- Francis

Never heard of that...glad i was to lazy to pick up the phone to call them then X3 hehehe

I hate those commercials. Yeah, I'm all up for idiots losing money (like those dumb "pay $20 for this $20-worth silver (.009(silver plated(pure silver))) certificatess"), but I HATE that part where that lady comes on and is all staring off into space saying "I turned in my diamond band from my first wedding and made a bundle". ....if I was a stuff-on-TV-doer, I would still be rejected to send in my golds because of that brod.

Besides, Chef Tony, David Oreck, and Billy Mays are the only dudes stuff I'd waste my money on =P

Well, you could always just mail them some gold painted junk, they pay you for it!

Reminds me of mmorpg opportunists. "You're a harvester, right?! Can you get me 1000 fairy weed for free? Hey, I'm actually helping you level up so be grateful! >=C"

Every time the economy gets rough these vultures come out and promise to give you a good exchange.

Ah ringing in a new era of crazy old gold prospectors!

Those commercials are everywhere, it's especially annoying when the air them twice in one commercial break. :P

its even worse when its twice in a row like this morning ugh.

i go to yardsales looking for cheap priced jewelry that I can sell to jewelry stores for cash. mostly it's the ones that I don't like that gets sold and the local jewelers give good rates and have it spelled out on a board.

Heheh. Because it's so hard to find a pawn shop these days, right?

Unless the pawn shops are in on this scam too!

"Sure, I'll give you money for that priceless family heirloom. Hand it over and I'll tell you what it's worth. ... ... okay, here's a dollar. Transaction closed, no refunds."

They've already gotten the gold out of the US. Read up on the great depression and what they did in regards to gold, and the ability of citizens to own bouillon.

Dude, I swear the first time I saw that commercial I laughed at how obvious of a scam that is. Not only are they probably not going to give you anything of what the gold might be worth, but who's to say they send you anything at all?

How can you prove that the gold you put in the mail even gets there. They can claim that it was lost in the mail and they never recieved it, so you don't get any cash while that smile and shrug while hiding your gold under their chair. I thought that was the dumbest idea ever, but I bet like 20 million people fell for it.

It's a great idea, it's just dumb to participate :3

Especially with the worth of "gold" skyrocketting due to the crash in the stock market. Someone is getting rich off this, and I really doubt it's the people foolish enough to mail in their precious metals.

Ha ha!! Yeah, that's so true. The one thing I am curious on though... The ad claims that gold is at its all time high in value so far. How can that be NOW if the economy is going to shit? Or have I forgotten all of the stuff i learned in accounting and business classes?

yes you forgot it *puts gold stuff in the letter for the ads* XD

Gold's value hasn't really changed much in the past 80 years. Instead you see how much the US dollar is losing value compared to it.

hehe, so I'm not the only one XD

I also thought something was kind of fishy when I saw the first ads... I mean... come on... we all have feet to find out what the real value is for what we have XD

There's lots of businesses out there that prey upon consumers that don't take the time to ask questions. Unfortunately, I work for one of them :p But we're a minor evil. Just a reseller on eBay that could definitely make it clearer our products are refurbs :p

When you get right down to it, the entire idea really isn't that different than pawn shops. I don't see it as a scam so much as taking advantage of people's economic concerns.

Besides, the biggest scam I know of is bottled water. There is no logical reason for filtered city water to cost more than gas.

Blah blah blah weight blah blah blah steal.

Duh. It's a scam. They don't have to use troy ounces or not give you money back to scam you.
That's not what they're doing. What they're doing is exploiting the fact that the worth of American currancy is going down. See, our currency system is based off of Gold and Silver. So even if they give you the currency's worth of gold, the gold will be worth more than currency because it's only a representation of how much "gold" you have.

Actually most, if not all, world governments left the gold standard behind a while time ago.

Then what the heck is our money actually worth then?

(Cuz that's as far as I know on the subject matter.)

Then what the heck is our money actually worth then?

(Cuz that's as far as I know on the subject matter.)

Thats a VERY complected question, but the short version is that a dollar, yen, pound, euro, etc. is only worth what people believe it is worth. A government can print all the money it wants, but that doesn't mean that the same amount of money will always go the same distance. Fluctuations in the supply and demand of printed money affects the perceived value of said money just as much as fluctuations of goods or commodities. That is why currency trading is a thriving market, yet the very thing good being traded (currency) has no intrinsic or guaranteed value. There are a few exceptions to this case, some currencies have a locked value when compared to another, but they are certainly not the norm.

So you can actually trade your money for for money of the same equivelent and later trade it back when you can get a larger amount?

So you can actually trade your money for for money of the same equivelent and later trade it back when you can get a larger amount?

Of course! Money is just another commodity after all. That is what financial analysts mean when they are talking about a weak or strong dollar.

For example, right now a Euro is worth about 1.28 US dollars, while in July it was worth about 1.58 dollars. So if you had purchased $100 in euros during the july high and sold them now, you would only only have ~$80. So this is a situation where you would have lost money, by investing in nothing but money. :)

Yay...So now it's kinda like selling turnips in Animal Crossing?

I've never played Animal Crossing, so I can't speak to that, but I do know that the current system of currency trading has been around for quite some time.

That's nothing. Ever heard of Runescape? I was the "Trust game" master. Whoever trusted me with the best equipment got 1 million gold or some other ridiculous thing. When I haggled everything I could get I skedaddled. But that was then.
Now's the time to buy-buy-buy gold and silver. Its a classic trend that gold, silver, and other precious metals rise in price during economic hardship, and the depression certainly isn't going to get better fast.

The first time I saw that ad I was was thinking about how they probably pay like Gamestop, I'd never trust sending anything like that in the mail. Even more so if it's basically saying on the envelope what it is. That's avlot like sending a Xbox 360 back to get if fixed in the box it came in... it goes though too many paws to trust none are going to take it along the way.

Ha, Ha! They are not getting my doubloon!

If someone is stupid enough to send his gold that way, then he deserves to lose it. Remember a sucker is born every two minutes or so...

I"m glad I'm not the only one who noticed that about those damn comercials...

You want the Biggest Scam ever. I have seen commercials for what is the equivalent of Phone sex done with text messages. $2 a message. Anyone stupid enough to do that deserves the Massive phone bill they will recieve. I mean You have to text them to STOP as well...... What a scam.

oh man, I've seen those too, those are gold :D