In a Shanghai shopping mall, dozens of people crowd around a machine to recycle goldwhose price is breaking records, in the hope of turning their jewelry into money.
China is the world’s largest consumer of goldwhich families traditionally buy for special occasionssuch as births or weddings.
But with the prices reaching up to $5,600 per ounce, a recordcustomers flock to the machine company yellow Kinghood Group to sell your jewelry.
“I never thought that prices would rise so drastically,” he tells AFP Wua women 54 years old, who wants to sell some coins gold with prints of pandas that he bought when his daughter was born in 2002.
Wu already sold in the same machine a inherited ring of his father for 10,000 yuan ($1,400), much more than the thousand yuan his mother decades ago.
The machine It has a screen that broadcasts a live video of a robotic arm moving gold onto a scale, under a device that uses light waves to measure its purity.
Some people carry more than an hour waiting his turn.
A assistant keeps track of each vendor’s place in line and helps them deposit in the machine earrings, rings and commemorative coins.
Wu explains how his old lady mother is excited about the highs prices of the gold and saw in the machine an opportunity to supplement his modest pension.
“Suddenly everyone is talking [del oro] and awakened this emotion in it,” he comments Wu.
Gold old
zhaoa women who wears a medallion gold finely carved into a necklace of jade beads and glittering bracelets on his wrist, he places a ring from his late grandfather in the machine recycling.
The surface of the ring has the Chinese character for “luck” and tiny images of the traditional ingots of gold.
zhao He believes his grandfather purchased the ring sometime between the 1950s and 1980s. His mother He gave it to her this year.
“If he gold price It’s good, I’ll sell it,” he tells AFP while waiting for his shift.
Shortly after zhao has deposited the ring in the machinea message on the screen tells you that kinghood will pay you 12,000 yuan.
Satisfied, zhao clicks “accept” and enter your name, your ID number and your bank details in the machinewhile the screen shows him how his grandfather’s ring melts.
He assistant tells you that you will receive full payment by bank transfer.
zhao claims to trust more in the estimate of the machine than that of a traditional human buyer.
The machine also draws the attention of passersbyspeechless at the sums of money she pays, hidden in a corner of the shopping center.
- “Wow!” exclaims one women seeing that a person sold his old jewelry for more than 75,000 yuan.
Several passersby crowd around an elderly couple after the machine value a small ingot of gold at more than 122,000 yuan.
