Selling unwanted gold is a great way to make extra money, but if you’re not educated on the gold-buying process, you may not get the best price that you deserve. There are a few things you should know before you go to sell your old jewelry and other gold items.
Know the price of gold on the day you intend to sell it. Gold prices fluctuate. Knowing the current selling price will give you a better idea of what a fair price should be. The price of gold isn’t an industry secret. You can easily find the current trading value of gold online at sites like money.cnn.com or reuters.com.
You need to understand that you won’t receive the full value of your gold. The buyer has to resell it to be melted down and therefore will give you a percentage of the full value, usually anywhere from 50 to 70 percent.
You need to know the karat weight of the gold you are selling. You also need to understand that your gold jewelry is not pure gold, but rather has other metals blended in that must be removed in the melting process so the karat weight will determine the gold value. For example, 10k gold contains 42 percent gold, 14k is 58 percent gold, and 18k is 75 percent gold. Along these same lines, it is important to know the actual weight of the item you are selling. To determine this you must remove any gems or non-gold items before weighing it.
Be sure to select a reputable gold-buying business. There are a lot of places buying gold but they may not all be trustworthy. A good starting place is to call the Better Business Bureau to check out any places you are considering. Then take your items to two or three places for bids.
A final thing to know is that some pieces of jewelry may actually be worth more in their current condition rather than melted down. This is where using a jewelry store like The Diamond World can be beneficial. Our professional appraiser can look at your items and advise you if the piece would fetch more being sold as-is than sold as scrap.
If you’re well informed on these various aspects of the gold buying process, you’ll be much better prepared to determine if an offer is fair or if you’re being offered less than you deserve for your gold jewelry.
