Selling Advice

Advice from experts about selling scrap gold jewellery in the UK and elsewhere. Don’t get ripped off.

Here is some of our advice, we will try to keep this simple:

• Know What You Have Got – Do Some Homework
  • Either weigh your gold items (in grams) or get somebody with a suitable weighing scale to do it for you. It could be worth asking a friendly local jeweller to do this for you (offer to pay).
  • Know the gold content (purity in carats (cts.) or as a percentage. Pure gold is 24 carat, therefore 9 ct is 9/24 = 37.5% pure.
  • Look Up the Spot Gold Price in pounds (if you are in the UK).
  • Work out the intrinsic (theoretical) value. (Aren’t you glad you paid attention during maths lessons in school?). Some other websites will do this for you, we have not got around to adding this facility to ours yet.
• Shop Around
  The proportion of the intrinsic value you are offered will vary from less than 10% upwards.
  Most buyers will tell you a price, possibly approximate. Avoid any who cannot or will not.
• You will probably get a better price if you have everything sorted, weighed and clearly labelled.
• If posting gold scrap, send a list and keep a copy. Making a photocopy or taking a photograph of the lot is also sensible.
• Be Careful – some Pitfalls & Traps
  • Beware! Some dealers advertise to pay 10% to 30% more than the actual value or similar misleading and dishonest claims.
  • Some of the biggest advertisers are the worst payers.
  • Many of the newly sprung up buyers are “Cowboys”.
  • Some of the “post your gold to us” operators are very new, and use sharp practices.
  • Some scrap by post companies will take 28 days to return your gold if you decide not to sell.
  • Some postal gold companies will charge for things like removing a watch movement (we heard £10 from one source), and they are often not capable of putting it back if you decide not to sell.
  • If you only know the weight in ounces, don’t forget that gold is weighed in troy ounces, not normal avoirdupois ounces. See our “Weights” page.
  • If posting gold, make sure you know who you have sent it to. Some buyers do not enclose their address details when sending your cheque (to make it harder for you to request its return in time).
  • Beware of doorstep buyers (knocker boys). If you have any suspicions, contact your neighbourhood watch coordinator or your local police.
  • Jewellery Parties. You will probably only get 75% of the intrinsic value at the most, as the party host, buyer, and others get commission and bonuses out of the proceeds. You may feel under an obligation to sell there and then, and may not be able to shop around. You may also have drunk too much wine!

Transparency

Try to deal with somebody straightforward who will tell you important information such as how much per gram they pay.
We try to make our buying policies as transparent as possible, including general advice pages like this one.