I am disappointed in the modern age ladies who think that gold is an outdated tradition or that it doesn’t show beauty. Quite the opposite! Gold is both a way to adorn yourself and a long term investment, worth 10x what you would pay for a diamond piece of jewelry. Hear me out:diamond is a man-made rock, yes its extremely beautiful and shiny but it is like a car. As soon as you walk out of the store, it loses 70% of its value. It’s a status symbol more than anything that was made cool and exclusive by extremely clever Jewish businessmen.
Whereas gold is a precious metal that is limited in quantity and can never lose its value because can neither create more of it or lose any of it. It just gets recycled over and over and so life goes on. What I recently discovered on my trip to Dubai is that gold jewelry tastes differ from all around the world based on the styles and purity of the gold. The gold centre in the Gold Souk located in the Deira neighbourhood houses the largest selection of gold wholesale business in the entire region.
The purity of gold starts from 24k which is 100% pure and 21k is 21/24=87.5% purity and so on and so forth. The remainder is mixed in alloys like copper and brass which means that the less pure the gold, the stronger the metal as it is mixed in with stronger harder metals. In India and the south asian subcontinents, they prefer jewelry with 24k purity which is very soft and yellow. The Arab world likes 21k jewelry. Europeans and north Americans tend to go for very neutral gold between 9-14k. This leaves the 18k category.It’s difficult to classify this category by region as it is quickly becoming the go to choice for “fancy people”.
The taste of the younger generation with purchasing power is changing and shifting from their traditional families who would normally prefer heavily pure gold as family heirlooms to buying gold as a fashion accessory for themselves. 18k gold isn’t too yellow and quite fashionable in the market. In big cities like Shanghai and Beijing, there is actually a 20-30% year after year demand for 18k jewelry with elegant designs. It’s becoming clear to see that the 18k category of gold jewelry is moving up in the world.
Speaking with a local businessman who owns a wholesale jewelry business, he does not see this industry going anywhere but up because the demand continues to rise. The gold jewelry market was worth 278 billion USD and estimated to rise up to 480 billion USD by 2025. Fine jewelry is normally seen as a luxury only to be bought in brick and mortar stores but the covid-19 pandemic has shifted consumer behaviour. It has becoming increasingly normal to buy fine jewelry online and the trends will most likely continue in the future. See graph below.
The moral of the story is that gold jewelry shouldn’t be overlooked as old and outdated because if you look hard enough, there are so many beautiful and unique designs that will stay fashionable for a lifetime.And , if you do get bored of it you sell it for also the same price as you bought it because the value of gold never goes down. Don’t be fooled, my friends. Diamond jewelry is shiny but it’s mostly fiat. It’s best to diversify your collection.
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