LAS VEGAS - Jewelry buyer Klancie Britton loves getting a reaction from her friends in Morecroft, Wyoming when she brings home a new piece of jewelry from Las Vegas.
"This is 800 dollars, but look at the diamonds in that. Oh my goodness," she said.
She's a self-proclaimed jewelry junkie. She's perused the cases of the National Jewelry Liquidation Center before. Almost everything at the center comes from one of Super Pawn's 23 valley stores and is handpicked to be resold there.
It doesn't bother Britton that a necklace she's interested in used to belong to someone else.
"That is the Indian wedding. It is so beautiful," she said.
It's 50 to 70 percent off retail prices. Gold has been trading at near record-high prices for more then a year.
"As the gold prices increase, the demand to sell your gold increases with it, wanting to get more for your gold," said Super Pawn Director of Community Relations Caroline Ciocca.
What goes around comes around. The rings, necklaces, earrings and watches that don't sell get shipped to Texas to be turned into scrap. The scrap is then sold to the Canadian government, which melts it down and turns it into the country's coin currency.
Soon-to-be husband and Las Vegan Derek Cotton let his wife pick out her wedding ring at the liquidation center last fall. They put it on layaway to pick up this weekend before their Valentine's Day wedding.
"I've been paying on it since the second week of November," he said. "It did make it a little easier."
"Buying gold is always an investment, so if you can get it as inexpensively as possible and then watch it to mature, it's always a good investment," said Ciocca.
That investment can also be negotiated. Just like a pawn shop, the center's staff encourages buyers to negotiate the item's price.
