Fall 2000 Gems & Gemology - Gemfrance

JEWELRY RETAILING
Mistakes jewelers make when they retire. Jewelers’ Circular
Keystone, Vol. 170, No. 10, 1999, pp. 142–144.
Wilkerson & Associates (Stuttgart, Arkansas) has assisted
in more than 4,000 jewelry store closings across the U.S.
over the past 30 years. The firm also helps jewelers plan
for retirement well ahead of time, so that costly financial
mistakes are avoided and the maximum potential of the
business is realized.
Possibly the most common mistake retiring jewelers
make is overestimating the value of their inventory. The
typical retiring jeweler almost never recovers his or her
inventory cost, sometimes losing up to 70% by selling to
a bulk buyer. Another common mistake is personally
financing the purchase to allow the new owner time to
become profitable, when in fact the new owner may fail.
Further, many jewelers mistakenly believe that their store
is worth upwards of five times its annual volume.
Wilkerson & Associates recommends that, to prepare
for retirement, jewelers convert as many assets as possible
into cash and savings, increase their turnover, reduce
receivables, and make their store as profitable as possible.
The firm is currently launching a Trade Transition Association
(TTA) to help jewelers properly plan for retirement.
TTA will feature a retirement guidebook and a
newsletter, offer a customized transition plan, and host
educational seminars. MT
The return of the middleman. J. McDonald, GemKey
Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 5, July–August 1999, p. 68.
Online auctions have generated more complaints of fraud
than any other Internet business, creating a new niche for
escrow services. Internet auction sites such as eBay are
simply a venue for auction transactions, and they specifically
state that they do not authenticate users, verify
items offered for sale, or guarantee payments for items.
The opportunities for fraud in this arena are both obvious
and enormous.
Internet escrow services act as middlemen between
the buyer and the seller in much the same way as escrow
services in the real estate and financial securities fields.
Once the parties make a deal, the buyer typically pays the
escrow company the agreed price for the goods. The seller
then ships the buyer the goods for inspection; usually
up to three days are allowed. If the buyer is satisfied, then
the escrow company is notified and immediately transmits
payment to the vendor.
This article identifies four escrow firms and explains
a few variations in their modus operandi, including fee
schedules (e.g., flat or tiered sliding pricing). At least one
of the firms takes responsibility for merchandise that is
lost or damaged in transit in certain situations.
Internet escrow services clearly have utility in various
segments of the gem and jewelry market. Ironically, one
of the advantages of the Internet is that it generally eliminates
the middleman, yet Internet escrow services are an
outgrowth of this marketing medium. AAL
PRECIOUS METALS
Metallurgy of microalloyed 24 carat [sic] golds. C. W.
Corti, Gold Bulletin, Vol. 32, No. 2, 1999, pp. 39–47.
The softness of pure gold (24K) has generally precluded its
use in jewelry manufacturing in most Western societies.
However, 99.0% minimum fineness is the standard in
China and Taiwan, because such purchases are treated as
investments. Accordingly, there is a need for hardened
24K gold that can be manufactured into jewelry. This article
describes a number of alloys that have been developed
with a fineness of 99.5–99.9%. The addition of 0.5 wt.%
or less of an element in the finished product is called
“microalloying”; gold with this fineness can still be called
pure (fine) gold and sold as such (24K).
The theoretical basis for the hardening of gold is
explained, and some potential alloying elements are discussed.
For the small amount of alloyed material to contribute
significantly to solution hardening, it must have a
low density and a smaller atomic size than gold crystals.
These impurities create distortions in the metallic crystal
lattice structure that help prevent slipping along molecular
planes. The elements that have the greatest potential
for gold microalloys, on both a theoretical and experimental
basis, are calcium, beryllium, and the rare-earth metals
(e.g., cerium). Whereas conventional alloying with copper
and silver changes the color of gold, microalloys do not
produce a color change The application of these microalloying
techniques to improving the hardness of 21K or
22K gold is considered as well. Paige Tullos
PIXE in an external microbeam arrangement for the study
of finely decorated Tartesic gold jewellery items. G.
Demortier, F. Fernando-Gomez, M. A. Ontalba Salamanca,
and P. Coquay, Nuclear Instruments and
Methods in Physics Research B, No. 158, 1999, pp.
275–280.
Several ancient recipes for joining gold parts of jewelry
items are known. Some include natural chrysocolla, glue,
or amber, while others use alloys made from a mixture of
copper, silver, and gold. Common soldering techniques were
alloy brazing (the fusion of a metallic alloy at 800°–850°C,
which produces a permanent joining after cooling of a liquid
phase) and solid-state diffusion bonding (the diffusion
at about 900°C of copper from a very fine powder of deoxidized
copper ore to form an alloy). Brazing, diffusion
bonding, local fusion without any additional alloy, and
organic gluing are all present in one particular piece of
jewelry from the Achemenide period (4th century BC).
The concentrations of copper and silver in narrow
areas of finely decorated gold jewelry items of Tartesic
(Spain, 5th–6th century BC) age were determined by the
nondestructive PIXE (proton-induced X-ray emission)
technique to identify the method of soldering. A fragment
of a 5th century BC diadem (crown) recovered in the
necropolis of “El Raso de Candeleda” (Avila) was the main
focus of this study; two pendants of similar age from a different
site were also studied.
288 Gemological Abstracts GEMS & GEMOLOGY Fall 2000