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GoldMoney's Mene aims to bring monetary jewelry west from Asia
2:40p ET Sunday, November 18, 2018
Dear Friend of GATA and Gold:
Explaining this week why GoldMoney has gotten into the jewelry business with a new company called Mene, CEO Roy Sebag makes a point not fully recognized in the gold business in the West: that most gold jewelry owned in Asia is not for mere decoration but also for savings and investment. That is, it's monetary jewelry.
Summarizing his travel to India and China two years ago, Sebag writes:
"What we discovered was that the concept of 'jewelry' in the East was vastly different than it is in the West. In the most basic sense, jewelry in the East is overwhelmingly made from either 24-karat pure (99.99 percent) or 22-karat (92 percent) gold. This stands in striking contradistinction to the way jewelry is made in the West, where I have never seen a jeweller sell an item with a purity in excess of 18 karats (75 percent), and, more often than not, the purity of the precious metal in jewelry is much lower than even that.
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"This means that jewelry in the East is really a vehicle for pure gold ownership, with a sophisticated economy around it, including financing, lending, and layaway firms. This economy services an estimated $2 trillion in jewelry owned by an estimated 2 billion people in China and India alone. Far-reaching and resulting from thousands of years of evolution, this decentralized jewelry economy possesses an impressive integrity.
"No matter where we traveled or which jeweler, manufacturer, or lender we visited, this pure-gold jewelry was always bought or sold using the following simple formula: [(Purity of Gold) x (Weight of Gold) x (Daily Market Value of Gold)] + 7-10 percent markup for design.
"Regardless of purchaser, this clear formula resulted in a condition wherein the consumer clearly understood that he or she was not merely buying jewelry but was truly acquiring gold."
So Mene aims to bring monetary jewelry to the West.
Sebag doesn't mention it, but there may be an argument for monetary jewelry quite apart from savings and investment: likely insurance against another round of confiscation of gold held in frankly monetary formats.
Sebag's commentary is headlined "Jewelry Worth Its Weight in Gold" and it's posted at GoldMoney's internet site here:
https://www.goldmoney.com/research/goldmoney-insights/jewelry-worth-its-...
CHRIS POWELL, Secretary/Treasurer
Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee Inc.
CPowell@GATA.org
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