Is pure gold jewelry "impure" if it is burned by fire? It’s all a routine! Trendy News reporter secretly investigates high-priced gold recycling scam gold nuggets | stain | scam
Recently, some readers reported that there have been some suspected scams of "door-to-door gold recycling" in Hangzhou. Some merchants communicated online and quoted high prices, but used various means to claim that the gold was "problematic" during door-to-door recycling, and then lowered the price to collect it.
Is there anything fishy about door-to-door gold recycling? In the past few days, reporters have conducted undercover investigations to investigate various "routines" behind the gold recycling market.
On April 11, the market price of gold that day was 552 yuan/gram.
Through the channel reported by readers, the reporter used WeChat to contact a recycler named "A Mingyu Gold Watches and Bags Luxury Goods Recycling Mortgage", and took photos of about 0.97 grams of gold jewelry previously purchased at the China Gold official flagship store to report to the reporter. its consultation.
After looking at the photos, the other party quoted a recycling price of 560 yuan/gram, which was slightly higher than the market recycling price that day.
"Inspect the goods in person and pay in person." The recycler said that he was in Nanjing and could immediately contact the master in Hangzhou to come to collect the goods. Later, a man whose phone number was registered in Sichuan called the reporter. The reporter repeatedly confirmed whether additional fees such as depreciation fees and handling fees were charged, but the other party denied it.
At 2 pm that day, the reporter saw the man on Stadium Road in Hangzhou. After taking the reporter's gold jewelry, he looked at it briefly and said: "Your hollow jewelry is covered with a layer of craft gold. Normal gold gets brighter as it burns, but if it is soldered with solder, it will become brighter." There will be stains, and if that happens, the value of the gold will be significantly reduced."
The man showed reporters the gold jewelry he had just recycled, which was full of stains. "If your gold is burned out later and it looks like this, you can only recycle it at a low price."
Then, the man put the reporter's small gold nugget of about 1 gram into a small bowl with a dark gray bottom. After repeatedly burning it with a high-temperature spray gun for 11 seconds, he used tweezers to pick out the gold nugget, and several variegated stains appeared on it.
The other party said that although the gold is pure gold, it is mixed with "craftsmanship". After recycling, they need to send it to a specialized agency to separate these substances before sending the gold to the gold factory for recycling. This will incur additional costs, so the maximum is only It can be recycled at a price of 480 yuan/gram.
The reporter refused and asked him the name of his company. The other party said that he had many companies and was unwilling to disclose the details, and then turned and left.
Is there really such a thing as "craft gold"? The reporter then asked the official customer service staff of China Gold, Chow Tai Fook and Chow Sang Sang. They all said that there has never been such a term as "craft gold". The term "craft" in the industry refers to carving, frosting and other technologies, which will not affect the value of gold itself. .
Why does the gold purchased in a regular gold store have such "stains" after being burned? What are these "stains"?
The reporter took the burned small gold nuggets to a physical store that recycles gold in the Baima Jewelry Market in Hangzhou. After checking, the shop owner said: "This looks like 999 pure gold, but your gold is stained with chemical substances, so it may not be able to detect 999."
The reporter then tested the spectrometer in the store and found that the gold content of the small gold nugget was 99.5%.
In order to detect the debris on the small gold nugget, the reporter sent it to the professional testing agency "Science Compass". The test report showed that the content of tin in the gold nugget was about 2.2%.
Yu Jiamin, a chemistry teacher at Hangzhou Senior High School, told reporters that gold and tin will diffuse between atoms during the heating process and form a new metal alloy. This may be the "true face" of the variegated stains.
So how did the other party get the reporter's little gold nugget to be stained with tin elements?
After watching the video taken during the unannounced visit frame by frame, the reporter found that there were no stains on the front of the small gold nugget when it was burned. However, when Chen turned the small gold nugget over with tweezers and touched the bottom of the bowl, variegated stains appeared. .
Jiang Tian, an industry insider who has been in the industry for 8 years, told reporters that the other party may have done something wrong when burning the gold. This is a common method used by some unscrupulous recyclers in the industry. "They mixed chemicals, such as mercury, in the bottom of the bowl. Or tin, or apply these substances on your hands in advance and get them on your gold. Through burning, these substances will react chemically with the gold and turn into 'stains'. The method is very subtle and cannot be seen by ordinary people."
Jiang Tian said that these people will use this to lower the price, and then sell the recovered gold to gold factories at a higher price to earn the price difference.
The reporter asked the upstream gold factory whether gold nuggets stained with tin can be recycled?
The staff of the gold factory said that all recycled gold needs to be tested by a spectrometer. As long as the spectrometer shows more than 99.5%, it will be recycled at the price of pure gold. If the gold content is lower, it can still be recycled with a 99% discount or 92% off. Based on the comparison of 480 yuan/gram quoted by Chen, the reporter’s 0.97 grams of gold has a total price difference of about 50 yuan. If the gram weight is larger, the net income will be greater.
Are there many similar door-to-door gold recycling routines?
The reporter searched for keywords such as "gold recycling lightning protection" on Xiaohongshu and other online platforms and found thousands of related "lightning protection" posts, most of which encountered similar routines, and there were also many advertising posts mixed in.
"The same team will register many accounts and use the same words." Jiang Tian revealed to reporters that these accounts will be named after door-to-door recycling in a certain city, making people mistakenly think they are local accounts, and they will buy advertising space arbitrarily and use the team's " Attract customers through "chatting hands" and then cooperate with the recyclers they "suggest". Once exposed, they will immediately return the gold or replace the "vest" to obtain long-term huge profits.
However, for individual sellers, it is very difficult to protect their rights.
The reporter called the 12315 hotline as a consumer and explained the ins and outs of the recycler deliberately lowering the price. The other party said that similar gold recycling does not fall under the supervision of the Market Supervision Bureau. Only when there are problems when buying gold will it be under the supervision of the Market Supervision Bureau. The reporter was advised File a lawsuit in court.
Lawyer Chen Songtao from Zhejiang Fengguo Law Firm told reporters that from a civil point of view, this is a revocable civil act. If the price is found to have been lowered, the gold can be requested to be returned. From a criminal perspective, because the victim had to lower the price due to fictitious impurities in the gold, it is suspected of fraud. The firm has received several similar inquiries, but in the end, due to the low amount of money defrauded, the difficulty of finding the person, and the difficulty of obtaining evidence, it had no choice but to let it go.
The reporter learned from the relevant departments that most of the current complaints related to gold transactions are disputes arising from the purchase of gold, and during the door-to-door recycling process, individual sellers are not consumers. Police from multiple police stations in Hangzhou also said they had received similar requests for help. However, due to the difficulty in forming a complete chain of evidence during the transaction process, it was difficult to safeguard rights.
