You can certainly sell it and make some fast cash if you have some scrap gold with you. As we know, however, gold is a valuable metal and is priced in terms of grams. You must find out your gold’s weight and value to avoid getting scammed before you approach a gold dealer to sell your scrap gold.
What REALLY worth your gold?
To make a profit, postal gold firms and high street gold buyers are in the business fair enough. Sadly, some firms have taken this to the full and are ripping-off their clients overtly.
Many unsuspecting public members get paid as little as 20% of their gold’s actual worth.
To help you make an educated decision about whether you get a good deal, this page is here.
The calculator in this page’s right-hand column will help you figure out your gold’s real value. Pricing is focused on the current spot price’ which, during normal trading hours, fluctuates.
To figure out the worth of your gold, you’ll need to know two pieces of information:
The purity/carat of your gold (also spelled karat)
-
Its weight
The Hallmarking Act 1973 stipulates that any gold object weighing more than 1g must be hallmarked if you reside in the UK. This is your guarantee that (at least) the amount of gold specified is contained in the object. Check our Gold Hallmark Guide if you need help finding a hallmark.
Gold purchased in the USA is, sadly, subject to poorer quality control. For an object to be called ‘gold’ in the States, the minimum accepted purity is 10k. Under-karating, however, happens and is difficult to detect for the average user.
Weigh your gold, if possible, on a range of digital scales for jewelers. The weight you need to know is in grams, preferably up to a tenth of a gram. As several units only weigh in increments of 5 grams, be careful of mechanical kitchen scales.
In our calculator, type the weight and purity of your gold and choose your favorite currency. If a price for your gold has already been offered, enter it in the ‘Bid Price’ box.
Gold dealers will differ in exactly how they value your gold, but the general guidelines that will help you make the correct appraisal of your gold are below.
Step 1: Separate the karat gold.
The price you will get for gold depends on its purity, determined in terms of Karats—24 karats of pure gold. There will be various karats, such as 10k, 14k, 20k, and 24k, for the various gold pieces you have. So, sorting all the gold and arranging it into different piles of different karats is the first thing you need to do.
Identifying the amount of karat gold is not always easy. One way to do it is to use a magnifying glass to see if it mentions the karat on it. Somewhere on the inner side of your jeweler, you can notice this. When deciding the karats, the gold age also matters. For instance, if the gold was bought before the 1980s, and it says 20 karats, it will be 19k or so. If the number is not legible or removed, then a reputed dealer will inspect the gold. To determine the gold content, the dealer will normally conduct a chemical examination. You can also administer your acid test by buying an acid test kit if you don’t want to go to a dealer.
If you already have old gold coins, along with jewelry and other gold, then you can keep them in a separate pile. These coins may be of historical significance and should be separately priced.
Step 2: Weight each of the gold piles
The next move is to calculate each pile’s weight in terms of grams once you have your gold divided by karats. It would help if you used a jeweler’s scale for this because of the precision needed. You can either buy one or go to a jewelry store to weigh it. If your weight scale supplies the weight in ounces, you need to translate it into grams. Note that 28.3495 grams are equivalent to 1 ounce.
Step 3: Measure the gold value
Now you have karat-separated gold, and you weigh each pile. Finding the current price of gold is the next step. On a website or by testing the price in the newspaper, you can find this. In general, gold prices are issued in troy ounces, where one troy ounce equals 31.1 grams. Say that USD 1,655 is the current price. The price here is 31.1 grams of gold. The price of gold per gramme will be 1,655/31.1 = USD 53.21 = USD 53.21
It would help if you valued each of your piles of gold now. The price is 24k gold, which we have measured above. Depending on its purity, you will need to change the price for each pile of gold. Let’s presume you’ve got 20 grams of gold for 20 karats. 20*53.21*20/24 = $ 886.83 would be the total value of this gold. Likewise, it would help if you respected every pile of gold.
You have the best idea now of what your gold is worth, and you can easily approach a gold dealer. Mind, though, that the gold dealers are not going to pay you the full price of the gold. At a 10-40 percent discount to its actual price, most dealers can buy the gold.
Selling Gold Scrap
There are several distributors of scrap gold that will purchase your gold jewelry.
Bear in mind, though, that none of them will pay you as much as your jewelry at the store is worth. Buyers of scrap gold for sale UK care about the metal’s value in your pieces, not about the value of the design.
If you want to estimate the value of your scrap gold based on current market values, note that when dealers seek to make a profit on the resale of your gold, a buyer will most likely pay you less than your estimate.
Bear in mind that, depending on what they will do with it and to whom they will resell it, various scrap gold purchasers can bid different prices for your jewelry. This is why you can explore different choices and check a range of deals.
But as a rule of thumb, most buyers of scrap gold would buy your gold at 60% to 80% of the market price, typically offering the high end of the spectrum to individuals who have a lot of gold to sell.
Like, if you have a 14K gold ring weighing 10 g (excluding stones and non-gold clasps), you have 5.83 g of pure gold (remember that 14K divided by 24K is 58.3 percent ).
Suppose the market price per troy ounce is $1,200, it indicates that each gram of pure gold sells at $38.58 per gram (remember that one troy ounce = 31.1 g), so you have around $225 (5.83 g x $38.58) worth of gold on the market.
However, you will get between $23.15 and $30.86 per gram, which translates to $134.96 to $179.91 in total for your piece, as most scrap gold buyers will pay 60 percent to 80 percent of the market price means a price closer to the high end will only be offered if you have hundreds of grams to sell at once.
So imagine a gold buyer says, “For 14K gold, we offer $23 per dwt.” How can you find out whether you get a decent deal?
First, this implies that $14.79 ($23/1.555 g because one dwt = 1.555 g) is the price per gram.
However, because one gram of 14K gold contains just 0.583 grams of pure gold, the price is $25.37 ($14.79/0.583 g) per gram of pure gold. Compare this with the gold price per gram on the market.
Let’s assume again that $1,200 per troy ounce (31.1 g), or $38.58 per gram, is still the current selling price. So, the gold buyer offers you about 65 percent of the market price at a selling price of $25.37 per gram of scrap gold (pure).
Is this a nice deal? It suits 60 percent to 80 percent of the selling price in the normal offer range, so let’s assume this is an okay price.
If you sell at least a couple of hundred grams of gold, you are unlikely to get more than 70 percent of the selling price. But if you only sell a few small rings or a light necklace, most of the offers from buyers would be in the range of 60 percent -70 percent.
You can always try to bargain, and some buyers are actually open to deals, but realistically set your upper limit. Most of the gold dealers won’t pay more than 80%. Those that pay more are small and are typically big operations that own metal refineries as well.
The exception is a buyer who does not purchase the gold jewelry as scrap but as jewelry for its beauty. These buyers typically base their valuations on the jewelry’s style, brand, and age, so if you have designer products and antique pieces, you might be able to get a better price for them than if you sold them as scrap.
If you have scrap gold at home and plan to sell it, you will want to make your estimates first. Don’t go to pawnbrokers or stalls immediately that say “we buy gold” without doing your weighing first.
If you know how much your scrap gold is worth would help you get a fair price, most retailers like to under-perform their calculations. Note that scrap gold, which experienced bullion dealers use, has a somewhat different price than good-delivery gold, decreasing the possibility of fraud.