Title 6
Commercial Law — General Regulatory Provisions

Chapter 13.2
Comparison Price Advertising for Precious Metal and Stones

§ 6-13.2-2. Definitions.

The following words as used in this chapter, unless a different meaning is required by the context or is specifically prescribed, shall have the following meanings:

(1) “Advertisement” means any oral, written, or graphic statement or representation made in connection with the solicitation of business in any manner for the purpose of soliciting a consumer in this state by a seller and includes, without limitation because of enumeration, statements and representations, but does not include price tags or in-store signs, or printed in any sales literature or brochure excepting catalogs. The terms “producer”, “manufacturer”, “wholesaler”, “importer”, or words of similar meaning, mean sellers engaged in resales, not sellers of products or services for consumer, personal, family, or household use or consumption. No price comparison may be made by a seller for precious metal and stones at wholesale, wholesale prices, factory prices, or the like. If the prices for the sale being offered are the net-cost prices retailers usually and customarily pay when they buy that merchandise for resale, sales may be termed net-cost sales and in that event sellers may advertise cost prices providing the substantiation of net-cost prices that are maintained for six (6) months. In no event may retailers, in their departments that sell precious metals or stones, hold themselves or their sale out as wholesalers or as wholesale prices or otherwise;

(2) “Consumer property” means precious metals and stones sold primarily for personal, family, gift, or household use and not for resale or for use or consumption in a trade or business. For purposes of this chapter, “consumer property” includes “merchandise”;

(3) “Date”, as applied to “date on which a price comparison is stated in the advertisement” in newspapers or other printed publications, means either the date of publication or distribution or the date on which the completed advertising copy is submitted to the printer for final printing and publication, provided the submission date does not exceed thirty (30) days from the date of actual publication or distribution;

(4) “Precious metal” means metals that are prized because of chemical and physical properties (notably resistant to corrosion, hardness, strength, and beauty) desirable in jewelry, coinage, and objects of art, and that are at the same time relatively rare or inexpensive. Gold, silver, and the six (6) metals of the platinum group are usually considered precious metals;

(5) “Precious stones” means one of the three (3) traditional categories of natural gemstones, the most valuable, as distinguished from semi-precious and decorative. Diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire and pearl have long been considered “precious,” but, in accordance with their spiraling prices, alexandrite, black opal, cat’s eye, demantoid, and jadeite are included in this category;

(6) “Price comparison” means the comparison, whether or not expressed wholly or in part in dollars, cents, fractions or percentages, in an advertisement of a seller’s current price for consumer property or services with any other price or statement of value for consumer property, whether or not these prices are actually stated in the advertisement; or, the making of price reductions claims or savings claims with respect to the seller’s current price. The term includes, but shall not be limited to, such comparisons as “fifty percent off ”; “up to seventy percent off ”; “save one-third”; “half-price” sale; “thirty percent to seventy percent off ”; “was twenty dollars, now half price”; “ten-dollar value, now eight dollars”; “was seven dollars now six dollars”; “list price fifty dollars our price twenty-nine dollars”; “clearance price”; or “liquidation price”;

(7) “Sale” means a reduction from the seller’s price at which consumer property is offered to the public for a fixed period of time; and

(8) “Seller” means a person engaged in the sale of consumer property and includes individuals, corporations, partnerships, associations, and any other form of business organization or entity. The term shall not include banks, savings and loan associations, insurance companies, and public utilities.