How Much Do Pawn Shops Pay for Gold? The Percentages, Measured

A pawn shop will typically offer somewhere between 40% and 80% of your gold’s melt value — the value of the pure gold in your item at the live spot price. That range is enormous, and which end of it you land on has less to do with the shop than with what you know when you walk in. In the only public mystery-shop test we cite on this site, six identical 10K bracelets were offered around town: the pawn counter came in at 79.5% of melt — nearly the best offer in the test, a whisker behind a dedicated local gold buyer at 80%.

So the reputation pawn shops carry — lowball artists, last resort — is not quite fair, and not quite wrong either. It depends entirely on the shop, the day, and whether you arrive knowing your number.

Start with the only number that matters

Before any counter, work out your item’s melt value. Weigh it, note the karat stamp, and run it through our scrap gold calculator — it uses the live spot price and shows the payout band a US buyer is likely to offer, not just the theoretical maximum. A 20-gram chain stamped 585 is 11.66 grams of pure gold; at the prices gold has been trading at in August 2026, that is a four-figure melt value. Knowing that number changes the conversation before it starts.

What the percentages actually look like

Offer as % of melt	What it usually means
75-85%	A shop that resells or refines in volume and competes for gold. Take it seriously.
60-75%	The ordinary middle. Negotiable, especially with a competing quote in hand.
45-60%	A shop that treats gold as a sideline. Walk unless speed matters more than money.
Under 45%	You are subsidising someone’s margin. Leave.

Why pawn shops can pay well — and why they sometimes don’t

A pawn shop’s core business is collateral lending, and gold is the collateral they like best: it never spoils, never goes out of fashion, and has a printed price every minute of the day. Shops that move real volume have standing relationships with refiners and know their margin to the dollar, which is exactly why they can pay close to 80% when pressed.

The low offers come from a different place: shops where gold is an occasional walk-in rather than a business line, or counters betting the seller has not done the arithmetic. The offer is a test. Sellers who quote their own melt value pass it; sellers who ask “what can you give me?” fail it before the scale settles.

Three details that quietly move your payout

The unit on the scale. Many counters weigh in pennyweight (dwt), not grams — 1 dwt is 1.555 grams, and the unfamiliar unit is where sellers lose track of the arithmetic. Our pennyweight price page exists for exactly this moment.

Karat blending. A mixed lot quoted as one number is almost always priced at the lowest karat in the pile. Insist each karat is weighed and priced separately.

The loan alternative. A pawn loan against gold, rather than a sale, gets you cash while keeping the metal — worth considering if you are selling under time pressure but suspect you would rather not.

The honest bottom line

A good pawn shop with a competing quote on the table is a genuinely competitive place to sell gold. A random pawn shop approached with no preparation is a coin flip weighted against you. The difference is one calculator run and one extra quote — perhaps twenty minutes of work for what is routinely a three-figure swing. Our full guide to what gold buyers pay and what to refuse walks the whole route.

Questions people ask

Do pawn shops pay more for jewelry or for coins?

Recognisable bullion coins usually earn a higher percentage of melt than jewellery, because the shop can resell them as coins rather than refining them. Check a coin’s value on our coin and bar pages before letting anyone price it as scrap.

Can I get a pawn shop’s offer in writing?

Reputable shops will write the weight, karat and offer on a card. If a counter refuses to put numbers on paper, that tells you what the numbers would look like elsewhere.

Is it better to pawn or sell my gold?

Selling pays more cash today. Pawning costs interest but keeps ownership — sensible when the need is short-term and the attachment is long-term.