How to sell gold without being underpaid
Most people sell gold once or twice in a lifetime, against a buyer who does it fifty times a day. That asymmetry, not the gold price, is what decides how much you get. Everything below is aimed at closing it.
Know your number before you leave the house
Weigh everything in grams on a digital scale, sorted into piles by karat - the stamp is inside a ring band, on the clasp of a chain, or on the post of an earring. 585 means 14K, 750 means 18K, 375 means 9K. Anything unstamped goes in a separate pile to be tested.
Multiply each pile by the per-gram rate for its karat and add it up. That total is your melt value, and it is the single most useful thing you can carry into a shop. Not because you will be offered it - you will not - but because every offer can now be expressed as a percentage of a number you already know.
A buyer who quotes you a lump sum for a mixed bag is asking you to accept an offer you cannot evaluate. Sorted piles with known melt values make that impossible.
What a fair offer actually looks like
Nobody pays melt. Refining costs money, testing costs money, the shop has rent and the buyer needs a margin, and all of that comes out of the metal value. The question is never whether you are being paid under melt - you always are - but by how much.
Published mystery-shopping work has put local independent buyers around 80% of melt, pawn shops close behind, mail-in services near 67%, and retail jewellery stores lowest at around 64%. Treat those as orders of magnitude rather than promises: they vary by city, by quantity and by how the day is going.
The practical rule that follows is simple. Anything under about two thirds of melt deserves a second opinion. Anything under half is not a serious offer.
Four things to refuse
Refuse to let your gold out of sight. Testing and weighing happen in front of you or they do not happen. A back room is not a laboratory.
Refuse a single price for a mixed lot. Each karat is weighed and quoted separately, or the arithmetic is hidden from you on purpose.
Refuse pressure. "This price is only good today" is about the buyer, not the market - and the market price is on this page, updating either way.
Refuse to hand over ID before you have an offer in writing. You will need it to complete a sale, because state law requires the record, but not to hear a number.
Get more than one offer, always
The single highest-return hour you can spend is the second and third quote. Spreads of twenty to thirty percentage points between buyers in the same city are ordinary, which on a meaningful lot is real money for very little work.
Say plainly that you are getting other quotes. A buyer who reacts badly to that has told you something useful.
Questions people ask
- How much will I actually get for my gold?
- Somewhere between about 60% and 80% of the melt value, depending on who buys it. 14K melt is $82.85 a gram right now, so ten grams of 14K is $828.47 of metal - and a realistic range of offers on that is roughly $497.08 to $662.77.
- Who pays the most for gold jewellery?
- Independent local buyers and pawn shops tend to pay closest to melt; mail-in services sit well below them; retail jewellery stores are usually lowest, because buying scrap is a sideline rather than their business. But the spread between two shops on the same street is often larger than the spread between categories, which is why the second quote matters more than the choice of category.
- Do I need ID to sell gold?
- Yes, to complete a sale. Most states require dealers to record the seller's identity and a description of each item, report purchases to law enforcement, and hold the goods for a set period before melting. You do not need to show ID to be given a quote.
- Is this site buying my gold?
- No. We do not buy or sell gold, take commission, or have any relationship with any dealer. The site publishes the price and the arithmetic; where you sell is entirely your decision.