FAQ about selling scrap gold and silver jewellery

Sending by mail : How does it work ?

You first need to choose a reputable professional to send your jewellery to.

Here is what I would do to do such a choice :

• Use our comparison tool to select a professional
• Read carefully Trustpilot and FreeIndex reviews, especially the 1/5 star ones
• Type scam + the name of the firm on Google. Normally nothing should show up

Apply this process to avoid the few scammers that could still exist online while getting a great price for your jewellery.

Then got to their website, fill in your information and print the form.

Go to your post office, pay for the delivery of the package with your pieces. Don't forget insurance so that even if the package is lost or damaged you get your money.

When received, the professional will evaluate the jewellery sent and make you an offer.

If you accept the offer, you get a bank wire 24h later.

If you refuse, they send your coins-jewellery back without cost.

Most of the time, jewellery is recycled (smelted) to be used in new pieces of jewellery.

Why not selling at a shop ? I am afraid to send by mail valuables.

I understand that many of us are not confident in sending valuables by mail. Any package can be lost and we have less control once our jewellery is away as opposed to when we have it with us.

The first thing to note is that when you send gold by mail, it is not an ordinary package but a special service that comes with insurance. Any "lost" package will be paid to you and at a very decent price !

Please also note that scammers and crooks can not operate for long nowadays on the internet. If it is easy to get a couple of fake reviews, it is next to impossible to get thousands of reviews that are fake without getting caught.

This is why selecting a firm that have a lot of user feedback is so important. One review can make a profitable business go bankrupt, especially in this line of trade where trust is everything !

Rest assured that the firms with the best ratings are safe and can be trusted.

Now that the fears that we have all are taken care of, let us analyze if it is best to go to a shop or go online ?

The main idea is that prices found online are usually 20% higher that what you can get at a local shop. Obviously if you live in London our Birmingham, you can compare shops and get great prices after a few visits to different shops.

But for those who live elsewhere, the local shops are NOT the best way to get money from scrap gold !

Note that this website performs a country wide comparison, so you get the top prices from the whole United Kingdom.

Another argument to choose to send gold by mail is that crooks have been seen "hanging around" some pawn shops and mug people for their belongings. This is something not pleasant and sending jewellery by mail avoids this problem.

Why sell gold or silver jewellery ?

Gold prices are very high these days and it is a good time to sell unused/unwanted jewellery for cash.

For example, a troy ounce of gold was worth £220 in May 2005, £500 in 2009, and up to £1571 at the peak in 2020 !

At the time I am writing this article, (January 2023), the current price of gold is £1553 for every troy ounce.

Therefore, the price of gold could still go up towards the peak that happened in 2020 but it might also go back to where it came at £200 at the beginning of the 21th century.

In my opinion the current valuation of gold is still very interesting and it is really worth to sell jewellery back to cash.

The current valuation of gold (> £1500) is still very interesting and it is really worth to sell jewellery back to cash.

Besides, the production of gold creates a lot of pollution. More than 2500 liters of water are used to extract a single gram of gold. Worse, some industrials use mercury in the process and pollute the land for the next 20-50 years to come, leaving local population with severe health issues.

Recycling unused jewellery, is not only good for your bank account, it is also good for the environment !

Another argument in favor of selling unwanted jewellery is the risk of home burglary. Burglars are extremely active and will find anything in gold in the house. Even if they only have 10 minutes to search your items, some of them are equipped with metal detector that make it easy to find hidden jewellery.

In september 2018 , the police has recorded 427 435 burglaries in a single year in England and Walles only (source : Crime in England and Wales: year ending September 2018 )

427 435 burgalries in a year = 428 every day ! Do you still think it is a good idea to stack up gold at home ?

I know that there are uncertainties to what would happen to deposits should a bank go bankrupt but I personnaly evaluate the risk of burglary as much higher than losing money in the bank.

The police has recorded 427 435 burglaries in a single year in England and Walles only

What type of items can be sold as scrap jewellery ?

Anything that contains gold, silver, palladium or platinum can be sold.

Most scrap gold professional will melt jewellery to filter precious metals. Therefore it doesn't matter if it is an acient watch, a coin, any kind of jewellery, as long as there are precious metals it can be melted.

The only exception is related to surface treatments : Gold plated is not eligible for scrap and is close to worthless. Indeed gold plated jewellery is made of very common metals such as copper on top of which is added a micro layer of gold of about 1µm.

Needless to say that it is not profitable to extract this very tiny layer of precious metal.

You should also pay attention to jewellery with precious stones : In such cases, I strongly advise you to visit an authentic jeweller who is a craftsman (not only a reseller). He might be able to resell the piece as such or might propose you a good price for the stone to be used in some other of his creations.

I am not sure what metal my piece of jewellery is made of. What now ?

One of the easiest thing to do is to bring a magnet near the piece of jewellery. Gold and silver are not magnetic and they shouldn't be attracted by the magnet.

Sadly, other metals such as copper are also not magnetic and it is not enough to find out the metal of a piece of jewellery.

Therefore, we need a more reliable approach :

Every piece of jewellery in gold or silver has tiny markings named hallmarks. You might need a magnifying glass to see them !

Reading these hallmarks will give you not only the metal but also the purity in gold and silver.

For example a ring with 750 means that the ring is made of gold 18 carats (75% gold, 25% other metals).

I strongly encourage you to read our article about jewellery hallmarks to learn more about them.

Even though reading the hallmarks will provide you information, some dishonest jewelers apply 18 carat hallmarks to 9 carats jewellery to make more money. Hallmarks are not enough for professionals, they prefer to test with acid jewellery.

The idea is they apply a tiny bit of different bottles of acid on the piece of jewellery and depending if there is or not a reaction, they can infer the purity and the metal of the piece.

There area few more methods to find out what metal jewellery is made of, I talk about them in this article : How to find out what metal my piece of jewellery is made of ?

The estimate I have calculated online is different with the offer the professional is making me. Why ?

There are 3 main reasons that explain a differences between what is expected and what is proposed : - The weight you have estimated at home is inaccurate. It is rather rae to have at home a accurate scale. Even kitchen scales are not accurate enough. Besides they have to be well calibrated. Another option is to put all your jewellery and go to your nearest post office and scale the package there. Their scales are ok. - The package takes a few days to be received and processed by the professional. During this time, the price of gold might change slightly. You can check the price of gold at different dates with our graphs : Precious metals graphs in pounds . Usually the variations of gold are very moderate. It shouldn't move more than 1-2% in a few days. - Some of your items are not in precious metals : Gold plated items look good but are worthless. If you send several items and some of them are not in gold, you will get a lower amount than expected. You can ask the professional to send you back the gold plated item.

Does the colour of gold matter ?

No. the color of gold doesn't matter. The reason is because every gold piece of jewellery is an alloy.

There is gold indeed but not only. Gold is too soft to be worn everyday. These other metals change the metal color but the amount of gold is the same whether it is red gold, yellow gold or white gold.

I have written an article on gold alloys, please feel free to read it : Yellow, grey, green gold..: What are gold alloys ?

How is calculated the amount we can get from gold coins and silver coins ?

Coins have 2 types of value : Numismatic and from the amount of gold or silver they contain.

If your coin is wel preserved and is rather ancient ,it is worth looking at its numismatic value.

If it is in a sorry state or very common, the numismatic value will be the same as the amount of gold it contains. The facial value doesn't matter.

What is the current or historical price of gold in British pounds ?

London LBMA is the institution that sets the market price of gold. It is a group of private banks that provide daily their own idea about how much gold is worth. All of them are aggregated and the resulting price is the spot price. You can check out our gold price graph : Historical price of gold in pounds

Check out our articles about Scrap gold and selling jewellery :

Red gold, green gold, white gold... : All about colored gold

UK Gold, Silver and platinum hallmarks

Frequently asked questions

Should I sell online or at a shop ?

How to identify the metal and purity of a piece of jewellery ?