A Golden Opportunity

Have you ever attended a Gold Party? I had never heard of them until a friend invited me, and explained what they were all about. Rather than going to a jewelry or Tupperware Party where you spend money, when you attend a Gold Party you receive money. I liked the sound of that. My husband and son were going away for the weekend, so I figured I had nothing to lose. At the very least I'd catch up with a few old friends.

I'd been instructed to collect any broken gold jewelry, or any pieces I no longer wore, to bring to the Gold Party. I gathered quite a few pieces. Most were broken. Some were earrings that I no longer wear because they're too big for my taste or too heavy for my ear lobes. Everything I gathered in my little ziploc bag came from two jewelry boxes I hadn't even rummaged through in years.

At the party we were served refreshments and introduced to one another. One by one we sat with the party facilitator and presented the contents of our baggies we'd brought from home.

As she weighed and checked the pieces with magnifiers she sorted the pieces into containers marked 10 carat, 14 carat, 18 carat, etc. Each piece was placed in the appropriate container. Once she had picked through everything she weighed the pieces and asked me to guess the worth of what I'd brought with me.

I'm not a jewelry person. I have a few lovely pieces my husband has purchased over the years but I don't wear much besides my rings and my earrings, which are simple diamond studs. I know very little about jewelry, and thus know even less about its worth.

"Forty dollars?" I guessed.

I'd have been thrilled with forty dollars. After all, this was a baggie full of broken pieces of jewelry I hadn't even thought about for at least a decade. And forty bucks is a tank and a half of gas!

As the lady jotted numbers and tapped on her calculator a smile was forming on her lips.

"You're way off," she said.

I was excited, thinking maybe I'd get closer to $100. How cool would that be?

I was completely floored, however, when I learned that my baggie of useless stuff garnered more than $400! My first inclination was to rush home and turn every old jewelry box or dresser drawer in the house upside down and see what else I might possibly come up with.....but I didn't. Instead I booked a party of my own, which I'll host in May, a few weeks after I get home from Florida.

Hosting a party has incredible rewards as well. My friend who hosted this evening's Gold Party get's 10% of what everyone makes. She also gets $50 for every party booking. When I left the tally was up to about $1000, so she'd already made $100 simply for hosting the party. If I wound up being the only person to book a future party, she would have totaled out at $150. The 10% the hostess gets comes out of the facilitator's total, and not the guest's individual checks.

Needless to say I was very excited about the evening's haul. I wasn't coerced into buying plastic plates or scratchy lingerie. I didn't have to participate in any stupid party games. And I was $400+ richer when I left!

I do realize that all that glitters certainly isn't gold, but that little collection of treasures I accumulated definitely turned out to be. If you're ever invited to a Gold Party, clean your jewelry boxes, your dresser drawers and your long lost boxes of junk.....throw the golden contents into a baggie and RSVP with an unequivocal YES!