GoldSmart Network ™

There’s an old saying that says if something sounds too good to be true it probably is, and it was never so true as in the gold business.  Over the course of my thirty years in this industry I think I may have heard them all, from schemes to recover gold from sea water to [...]

Crime as old as time.  In the news today we hear of 75-100 oz gold bars which were purchased using a fraudulent bank draft for about 1.9Million. The purchase price in itself seems a little fishy since the price for gold today hit $1,440/ troy ounce, the seller sold these bars in mid Feb. for [...]

The word “hallmark” is used generically to refer to the karat stamp and makers trademark on all gold jewellery, but the term in fact has a very specific and very old meaning.  Here is a quote from the web site of The Goldsmiths’ Company of London England where the term “hallmark” originated: “The Assay Office [...]

Jewellers Vigilance Canada is the Canadian ethics watchdog for the jewellery, diamond, watch and precious metals industries in Canada, not to be confused with the Jewellers Vigilance Committee which is US based and has no jurisdiction in Canada. This is a summary of what JVC does for the jewellery and watch industry, taken from the [...]

Sadly, one of the things we frequently have to do is inform someone that a nice looking piece of jewellery, convincingly stamped “18K”, is in fact not gold at all.  Frequently it turns out that these items were purchased in a foreign country while on holiday.  This doesn’t mean that buying jewellery as a souvenir [...]