Jeweller’s carpet rakes in £13,000 for charity

A jewellery store that sold its 15-year-old carpet for £13,000 has donated the proceedings to charity.

Aurum of Jersey, in St Helier, Jersey, decided to replace the carpet last year and said it could be valued at thousands of pounds after gathering specks of precious metals and shavings for the past 15 years.

The company launched a competition in November, in which it invited customers to guess the value of the metals in the carpet, with the total amount being paid to a local charity of the winner’s choice.

Cleaned by Hatton Garden-based bullion merchants Presman Mastermelt, the left over specks of gold, platinum and silver were extracted from the carpet by a special machine and weighed. They were valued at £13,000.

Katie McFarlane, who guessed that there would be £12,450 worth of dust embedded in the carpet, was the winner and chose to donate the proceedings to Jersey Hospice Care.

Georgie Mabbs, marketing executive at Aurum of Jersey, told Jewellery Focus: “I was amazed by the amount of money we received for our old workshop carpet. I was also absolutely delighted to hear that Richard and Julie Blampied, goldsmiths and directors of Aurum, were going to donate the money to charity and run a competition.

“The competition winner chose the charity Jersey Hospice Care a fantastic charity close to our hearts who were over the moon with the large donation.”