<prompt> Human: I know that buying jewelry or precious stones and metals isnt the greatest idea from a personal finance perspective, but we dont really have a choice. So Im trying to figure out the smartest way to do something thats not very smart. Heres the background. Im getting married and my fiances family has gifted us a significant sum of cash with specific instructions to purchase jewelry or precious metals with it. This is because of my fiances cultural background; theres a strong cultural expectation that the brides family gift her jewelry when she gets married. I can understand how this is a cultural tradition that makes a lot of practical sense back when jewelryprecious metals are a reasonable store of value as a way of giving the bride some personal assets and financial security, but obviously not so much in a world where retail jewelry has such insane markups and its impossible to recover any value from such purchases.The only reason they gave us cash rather than jewelry itself is because her parents werent sure what kind of jewelry their daughter likes. The reason they dont know what kind of jewelry my fiance likes is because she, knowing about the markup here, has no interest in buying jewelry at all.Weve made indirect inquiries about potentially using this money on something else in the same spirit in more sensible ways financial instruments, etc. or even just returning it with gratitude, but we get the impression this would be a massive faux pas. So, it looks like we have no choice but to find some jewelry or precious metals to buy, and wed like to do so in a way that minimizes the financial downside.My first thought was just to straight up purchase gold bars or krugerrands to minimize the vendor markup but then wed need to worry about the cost of storing them. So theres an advantage to buying something less bulky like diamonds or precious stones, but everything I know about this industry is that theres huge markup and we can expect to immediately lose half or more of the investment when we buy such items.Are there any appealing options here? Any way for an average consumer to get something closer to wholesale pricing on precious stones?  <response>: Its a gift, why not just spend it on what its intended for. Dont consider it an investment except for their investment in your marriage. It may not be worth the relationship trouble to spend this on other things. If all else fails just buy gold or another precious metals and it will generally track inflation over time. 