Are banks a good place to buy gold bars/coins? Advantage ETF?

Today one can buy gold from various places like a family jeweller, branded jeweller, banks even postoffice. Therefore knowing where to buy gold becomes crucial. As these key findings by rediff.com is a real eye opener.

What and where to buy more of the yellow metal?

1) Gold bars/coins should be purchased with reputed jewellers and not banks. A lot of banks like ICICI bank, HDFC bank have started selling gold bars. But hold on! Is it really worth buying from the banks? A survey by rediff.com shows that buying gold from banks can be really expensive as compared to a traditional jeweller. They have also taken a branded retailer into consideration to rest all doubts. Even though this survey is old to quote in blog post so do double check your prices before you commit that purchase.

Expensive, for sure

	Bank (Private)	Branded Retailer	Jeweller
Purity	0.999	0.999	0.999
Price per kilo* (Rs)	1,071,520	1,025,000	940,000
% Discount to Pvt Bank Rate	NM	4.5%	14.0%

* Prices as on 8th of November 2006; Including VAT
NM - Not MeaningfulFrom the table its evident that there is a substantial loss of value( close to 14%) when buying gold from banks as compared to traditional jewellers.

Another bummer with banks is that RBI does not allow banks to purchase gold back from customers. Gold brought from banks can be sold to jewellery shops though.

Banks lose out

Gold Bar	Bank (Private)	Branded Retailer	Jeweller
Buy back facility	No	Yes	Yes
Discount on buy back	NA	NIL	NIL

2)Gold funds are preferred over jewellery because no value is lost as making/design charges.
Another reason to go for gold funds is the storage problem with physical gold. With paper gold you can still make the gain without having to worry about finding a safe haven for your physical gold.

(This article has been republished from a previous article as the title of the previous article didnt do justice to the content. Hence the need to republish it)

Get 22k Hallmark goldprice as RSS feeds

If you have been looking on the internet for 22k gold hallmarked price currently prevailing, You can check this blog anytime. But if checking this site again and again was becoming a hassle, you can now get them on your news aggregators or RSS readers like Netvibes, igoogle or apple and live platforms too.

The news aggregators accept feeds in various formats including XML.

Now simply add this URL - http://feed43.com/7277723467746284.xml
to your aggregators and get the daily price at the same place where you get your other news.

Pic Credit: www.thorlabs.com

Let the magic weave itself...

Watch it to get mesmerized(Turn on audio).

Kathana Jewellers is on twitter.....tweet, tweet

Social Media is firming its grip on Kathana. First we took to blogging almost 3 years ago. Then we started the free sms channel on google where you receive daily gold price updates. Now its the turn of microblogging platform twitter.

Twitter for the uninitiated is a platform where one can send short messages upto 140 characters from anywhere/anytime. This youtube video has done a better job than me in explaining it So check it out.


For us it has been a great place to share news snippets which might not warrant a full blown blogpost. Infact sometimes all you need is a small message to say it all. Take a look at the messages we have posted in the last few days and you will know what we mean.

Another great feature is you can follow us on twitter and stay updated to what we are upto.

We inturn are following industry leaders whom we covet or would like to hear from, cutting across industry lines like jewellery designers, fashion designers we work with, footwear(zappos) and automobiles( mahindra).

See you there!!!

Save our tigers for our sake

I have seen one caged but never in the wild. I hope to someday see one in the wild too. My kids could be lucky to see , but my grandkids......naah. I think they will only see it in picture books/cartoons or documentaries on discovery channel or Natgeo.

Why? Afterall there are only 1411 of them left. Tigers are in a real danger of being extinct and we may soon lose our national animal, the planet a majestic creature and the jungles a ferocious hunter.

Tigers are being killed for their body parts. Our neighbours (read China) pay handomely for a dead tiger and makes enough of a case for hunters in India to poach them. Infact some claim that, in China, all their body parts are used for either medicinal purpose and the skin is much coveted as a wall decoration.

At the turn of the last century they were 40,000 of them, now just 1411. Going by this rate we will only have another 2-3 years with the tigers. So what can we do? Many things, for instance, blog about it. For more ideas logon to saveourtigers.com and start a conversation.

Gold hits 2010 season's lowest

Good news but a little late. Finally gold is hitting new lows and touched Rs.15,800/22ct. It helped bring in much needed activity int he jewellery retail front. Just in time for the last phase of wedding this winter season before it picks up in the middle of the year.

And to make this seem like a deal, fresh new designs in Bangles, Rings, chains have just arrived. We will post the pics soon.

Tip: Identifying a 'real' Hallmark Jeweller without stepping into the store

This happened today so we thought we will write a post. A customer(who visited after reading our blog) asked us a rather pointed question. He was wondering: Why cant a jeweller fake all the 5 symbols of hallmarking. I think he was actually questioning the weak regulation in our country:) And he had a point.

Fortunately you can identify a 'real' hallmark jeweller even without walking into the jeweller's store. If you look at that Hallmarking process: In order to sport the Hallmarking Store (accompanied with the blue triangle) A jeweller has to get the Hallmarking license through BIS. Once approved you can start advertising yourself as a Hallmark jeweller( of course you need to keep hallmarked jewellery too). This way the governing body BIS maintains a database of all the approved jewellers throughout india.

That database is available in the public domain at www.bis.org.in. On the homepage look for 'Locate Hallmark Jewelers in your city' link and the rest is fairly easy. Once you select your appropriate state it will spew a PDF of all the active licensees. This way you can verify that the jeweller is a True hallmark jeweller or not.

The tough part is the link may not always work. I have written to the IT dept of BIS but to no avail. I have a copy of all the indian hallmark jewellers. We go by Kathana Jewels Pvt. Ltd. and the address is the same.

You can view/download the file here (thank you Google docs!!!).

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2010 from Kathana Jewellers

WISHING YOU A VERY HAPPY

AND

A PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR

KATHANA JEWELLERS wishes everyone a

HAPPY NEW YEAR

2010

Mangalsutra Diamond Pendant

While we gear up to revamp our website www.kathana.in we can definitely use some feedbacks.

I am posting a few pics of a mangalsutra diamond pendant and would appreciate if you could leave a word on which one you like the best- the one with the black, white or grey background?

Thanks a ton for your time :)

Diamond Jewellery for Reception

If you are wondering what jewellery to wear for your reception party, here is a little advice. While traditional jewellery like kundan and polki are popular for the wedding ceremonies, the reception look is generally to keep it chic and glamorous by opting for diamonds. Atleast thats what our bollywood stylists and celebrities are swearing by these days.



Shilpa Shetty recently wore a heavy diamond and ruby necklace for her reception and looked every bit the million bucks she is in it.

Isha Koppikar (now Narang) kept it simple and went with a floral diamond set in dual tones of gold to keep it from looking too white. The look was gorgeous specially and completely complemented her reception lehenga.



Take a close look at these pics and if anything catches your fancy and you would like to get it done for you, please get in touch with us. We would be more than happy to assist you in deciding a look for your reception, and can have our designer sketch out something to meet your needs- look wise and budget wise.


Happy shopping!