Joel Stein Sells His Gold

By Joel Stein

Though I had even higher aspirations, apparently my mom was so impressed with my graduation from sixth grade that she bought me a gift: an incredibly cool gold-chain necklace. The chain said to all who saw it, Sure, I may look like an honor student who is bad at sports and gets stomachaches before parties, but I am actually capable of horrific violence, passionate lovemaking and savage indifference to a tribe of orcs with my +2 broadsword. I wore that chain every day, from sixth grade to 17th grade, when my new girlfriend told me I had to take it off if I wanted to have sex. And when you're a struggling 22-year-old with two roommates, you don't hold on to sentimentality in the face of such demands. I would have taken out my gold fillings.

That chain still means a lot to me, symbolizing my triumphs against adversity, which include getting a job in journalism while wearing a gold chain. But lately I've been looking at that chain differently. With gold climbing from $275 an ounce in 2000 to an all-time high of more than $1,000 earlier this year, late-night commercials for companies like Cash4Gold--the 271st fastest-growing company in the country according to Inc. magazine and the most embarrassingly named company according to this one--are asking me to mail in my gold for cash. My chain, in these hard times, might buy me my last prix fixe meal.

Not really wanting to part with it, I called my mom to get her to talk me out of selling it. "When are you doing this?" she asked. "I have a lot of gold I'd love to get rid of. I wear more costumey, fun stuff. I think it's younger-looking." I do not have a particularly sentimental mother.

But if I really was going to sell my chain, I didn't want to do it at some seedy pawnshop or through an infomercial company. It turns out a lot of people feel the same way. Gold parties, at which friends gather over drinks after raiding their senile mom's drawers for heirlooms to melt down, have become this recession's dance marathons. I called January Thomas, who just quit her sales job in Michigan to run her new company, My Gold Party mygoldparty.com) She sent me a $700 kit with a jeweler's loupe, a scale and a machine that tests how many karats a piece of gold has. I had not felt so Jewish since my Bar Mitzvah.

Thomas warned me to have plenty of money in my account, since I'd probably be writing checks for about $300 to every person who came to my party. I was supposed to use the karat-testing machine, that day's price of gold, a chart in her book and a calculator to give people about 75% of the value of their gold, since 5% was going to the refinery and 10% to cover the cost of the party. I got to keep the rest. This seemed like the most difficult party in the world to run other than the Democrats'.

On Sunday afternoon, I served wine and Greek food to 20 of my friends, who I thought had come to sell their jewelry but actually came to make fun of me. This was one of the few parties at which, instead of inviting writers, I would have been far better off loading up the e-vite list with meth addicts. After a while, some let me test their jewelry "for fun." When my machine read not gold, I found myself comforting people, telling them that their parents probably didn't know or that brass was the platinum of the early '80s.

But soon I was writing Ali a check for $104 for a necklace and earrings and Alex one for $223 for two chains. Not only wasn't I sure of my math and karat-checking abilities, but also I was pretty sure that Ali tricked me, since she handed me a gold-covered piece of chocolate as well. I may have lost a lot of money on this essay.

When my friend Duncan gave me his confirmation pendant with an engraving of the Virgin Mary, I looked at it through my loupe and offered him $210. He was greatly impressed. "If this was high school, that would be gone," he said. Apparently Duncan had some pressing cash needs in high school that he chose not to expound upon. But even amid the recession, Duncan took his necklace back, happier with it than he'd ever been. "I feel like my dad was validated for all those years of telling me to hold on to my medal," he said. "It might go back on my rearview mirror."

After everyone left, I put my chain on the scale. It's only 12 karat, but it could be smelted down for $265. I'm wearing it right now. At least until my wife notices it.