Last week I posted that I had just sold my 10K gold teaching award medal and wondered whether others could guess how much I received for it, given that I live in a small town in a rural area of Ontario.
I had posted that the medal was about 2 ounces. It turns out it was only 54 grams, not 62 grams, which is one reason all the estimates were a bit high. But the major point that people overlooked is that transaction costs for selling old gold are pretty high for those of us who live in the boonies and who do not wish to spend hours packaging, shipping, and possibly doing that several times to receive various estimates.
Quite frankly, I had gone into the buyer's temporary site in a jewelry store in a nearby even smaller town with the reservation price of only $250, expecting that the lack of major competition would lead the buyer to extract a truckload of monopsonistic returns. She offered about $400 initially and finally agreed to pay me $454 Cdn, much less than any of the people commenting on that earlier post had expected.
At the same time, Eliot had some good insight about my motives in selling the medal. I figured that if I didn't sell it, it would become a part of my estate when I die, and my heirs would sell it as part of a box of crud for only a song to someone who buys up boxes of stuff at estate sales. And, as Eliot noted, I really don't have a tonne of warm feelings about the issuer of the award.
should of gone lower... i play price is right rules
Posted by: Eliot Rosewater | November 04, 2009 at 12:33 AM
PS. The reason I knew of your dissatisfaction with uwo econ is if you search "UWO economics" is sessions search (Google but you get points towards sessions outerwear products; I am well on my way to earning a toque.) it returns your post on the subject before the official department site, something I find amusing. I have a feeling you will get satisfaction from this.
the search link:
http://sessions.searchpluswin.com/?sourceid=Mozilla-search&q=uwo+economics
Posted by: Eliot Rosewater | November 06, 2009 at 01:22 AM
That is amusing Eliot. Even with the Google search, that posting comes up 5th or so.
But there is so much more. Send me your real e-mail address and I'll fill you in.
Posted by: EclectEcon | November 06, 2009 at 05:22 AM