How to Sell Gold Jewelry Without Getting Underpaid
The five places you can sell gold, what each typically pays, and the preparation that moves an offer by 20-40%.
更新日 July 29, 2026
Before you go anywhere: establish your number
The single biggest determinant of what you get paid is whether you walked in knowing what your gold is worth. Buyers price partly on material and partly on how informed the seller appears, and there is no faster way to signal informed than a written list of karats and weights. Work out melt value first: for each piece, grams ÷ 31.1035 × karat decimal × current spot price per troy ounce. Sum it for a lot total. That number is the ceiling. Your job in the rest of the process is to capture as much of it as possible. Write down the spot price you used and the time. Gold moves intraday, and a buyer quoting from a morning fix while you are looking at an afternoon price is a source of honest confusion that is easy to eliminate.
Step 1: separate the scrap from the jewelry
Some pieces are worth far more intact than melted, and melting is irreversible. Before anything goes in a scrap pile, check every item for a maker mark, a signature, a date, or a design you recognise. Worth valuing as jewelry rather than metal: signed pieces from recognised houses, anything with an intact set of antique hallmarks, period jewelry in good condition, matching pairs and suites, pieces with significant or certified gemstones, and watches - especially where the case and movement are original to each other. Worth valuing as metal: broken chains, single earrings, bent or crushed rings, mismatched fragments, dental gold, class rings, and unbranded modern chain. This is where the melt formula applies cleanly. If you are unsure, an hour of research or a paid appraisal is cheap insurance. Scrap buyers have no obligation to tell you that the brooch you handed over is a period piece worth five times its gold.
Step 2: sort by karat and weigh
Build physical piles by hallmark: 999, 916, 875, 750, 585, 417, 375. Ring stamps are inside the shank; chain stamps are on the clasp or a tag beside it; pendant and earring stamps are on the back or the post. Weigh each pile separately on a 0.01 gram jewelry scale, calibrated, on a hard flat surface. Record pile, karat and weight. If you have a lot of items, use the multi-item mode of the calculator so you end up with an exportable list rather than a scribbled note. Put unmarked pieces and anything marked GP, GEP, HGE, RGP, GF or vermeil in a separate pile. Plated goods have effectively no melt value. Gold filled is technically refinable at around 5% gold by weight, but most buyers decline it, and mixing it into a marked pile invites a discount on the whole group. Remove what you can that is not gold: earring backs made of base metal, steel spring bars, watch movements, obvious glass. Do not force stones out of settings - just note that they are there so you are not surprised by the deduction.
Step 3: pick the right kind of buyer
Refiners and specialist mail-in buyers. Highest typical payouts, commonly around 80-95% of melt for clean sorted material, because they cut out every intermediary. The trade-off is that you post your gold and wait, and you need to check that the buyer is insured, has a published turnaround, and offers a no-obligation return of your material if you decline their offer. Best for larger lots. Independent jewelers and coin dealers. Typically around 70-90%. The upside is that a jeweler who can resell a piece intact may beat a refiner, because they are pricing against retail. Local, immediate, and you can watch the testing. Best for mixed lots and anything that might have jewelry value. Cash-for-gold storefronts and mall kiosks. Usually lower. High transaction costs, and a customer base that mostly does not compare offers. Convenient, rarely competitive. Pawn shops. Commonly 40-60% when buying outright. They are pricing for a retail case or a defaulted loan, not a refinery run. Reasonable if you want cash in ten minutes; the wrong venue if you want melt value. A pawn loan against gold is a different product - understand the interest rate before treating it as a sale. Private sale. Marketplaces and local buyers can beat all of the above on jewelry with design value, but carry fraud and safety risk, payment risk, and platform fees. Meet in a public place, prefer irreversible payment methods, and never ship first.
Step 4: get three quotes on the same sorted lot
The spread between the best and worst offer on an identical lot is routinely 30-40% of melt value. Two extra phone calls are almost always worth more per minute than anything else in this process. Keep the lot sorted the same way for every quote. If each buyer re-sorts it their own way you are no longer comparing like with like. Ask each one for the offer in currency for the specific weights on your list, the spot price they used, and the purity they assigned to each group. Ask about deductions explicitly: how are stones handled, is the quote on gross or fine weight, are there testing or handling fees, and is the offer conditional on anything. Get it in writing or as a screenshot if it is online. It is entirely normal to say "thank you, I have two more quotes to get". A buyer who reacts badly to that has told you where they sit in the range.
Tactics that push offers down, and how to answer them
Weighing everything as one pile. This lets the buyer price the whole lot near the lowest purity present. Answer: your pre-sorted piles and your own weights. Testing out of sight. Ask for testing at the counter. XRF analysis takes seconds, is non-destructive, and any serious buyer has one. If gold goes into a back room, ask for it back. Quoting in an unfamiliar unit. A per-pennyweight price is 55.5% larger than the equivalent per-gram price, which makes a mediocre offer look generous. Convert everything to grams before comparing: divide any dwt price by 1.5552. Percentage claims without a base. "We pay 90%" means nothing until you know 90% of what. Ask for the spot price used, then check the arithmetic yourself. Time pressure and split offers. "This price is only good today" and "I can do better if you sell the whole lot right now" are negotiation, not market conditions. Gold does not move enough in an afternoon to justify either. Anchoring low then improving. A first offer well below melt followed by a "manager approval" bump is a common script. Your melt number makes it visible, because you can see that the improved offer is still below the band.
Paperwork, tax and safety
Expect to show government photo ID. Most jurisdictions require precious metal buyers to record seller identity and hold purchased material for a waiting period, which is a consumer protection against stolen goods rather than an imposition. Keep the receipt, your item list, and the photos of your piles on the scale. If you sell at a gain relative to what you paid, that gain may be taxable - in the US, physical gold is generally treated as a collectible for capital gains purposes. Rules vary by country, and the buyer is not your tax adviser. For mail-in sales, photograph everything before packing, use the buyer's insured label if they provide one, confirm the declared value matches your estimate, and confirm in writing that your material will be returned free of charge if you decline the offer.
要点
Know your melt value before you talk to anyone - it is the only benchmark that matters. Sort by karat and weigh at home; unsorted lots get priced at the lowest purity present. Get three quotes. The spread on identical lots is routinely 30-40% of melt. Check for designer, antique or numismatic value before selling anything as scrap.