A North Staffordshire jewellery expert can now offer accurate valuations in seconds after investing in a £20K ‘golden gun’.
Marcus Dobson, of the Trentham Jewellery Centre, says the XRF precious metals tester allows him to provide a transparent valuation so that customers can sell their old gold jewellery ‘with confidence’.
He said: “Gold is a highly prized commodity and is among the shrewdest of investments, beating inflation in each of the past 20 years and rising 20 per cent in the past year.
“It’s also a fact that geopolitical turbulence, such as the war in Ukraine and conflicts involving Israeli and Palestinian forces in Gaza and Lebanon, plus elections in the US, lead to investors turning to gold as the safest of investments.
“Equally that means that more people are looking to sell, especially when statistics show an increase of consumer prices by 20.8 per cent between May 2021 and May 2024.
“We have seen far more people looking to sell gold in 2024. This ranges from people with old broken jewellery to people who have bought gold for investment purposes.
“The XRF gun allows me to provide gold purity analysis almost instantaneously. It means customers can gain a fair valuation while they wait, allowing them to sell with confidence.”
Marcus, who has launched a new website, www.goldbuyerstoke.co.uk designed to help people who want to value and sell their gold jewellery, said he believes he is the only jeweller in the area to have invested in the XRF gun.
He added: “No items need to be sent off for testing and people can sell with complete confidence. In one example, a woman recently came to us with what she believed to be a 9-carat gold chain. Testing showed it was an Italian 18-carat chain and instead of the 9-carat price of £1,215, we were able to pay her £2,430.”
Marcus was just 23 years old when he opened the Trentham Jewellery Centre. He had been collecting since the age of 10 – starting out by building a collection of fountain pens with gold nibs and selling them on his dad’s antiques stall at Leek market.
After establishing an online business, Marcus invested in developing a store in a former electrical sub-station besides the A34, opposite Trentham Gardens. It was opened in December 2023 with champion boxer Nathan Heaney joining the Dobson family for a ribbon cutting ceremony.
