Sell inherited jewellery in the UK: a practical guide

The emotional reality first

Most articles about selling inherited jewellery skip past the part that everyone going through it actually finds hard. So let us be honest about it. Clearing a parent's, grandparent's or partner's jewellery box is rarely about the metal. It is the texture of decades, a wedding band still warm from a sock drawer, a brooch worn at a christening you remember in a photograph, a Christmas-gift chain. Each piece has a story you only half-knew and now will not get to ask about. The decision to sell anything from that box is real grief work, not housekeeping, and it is worth giving it the time that involves.

The most regretful sales are almost always the ones made too soon, by people doing everything else too soon. There is no calendar in the world that says inherited jewellery has to be dealt with by a particular week. If the easier answer this month is to put the box back in the wardrobe and look at it again in six months, that is a completely legitimate answer. Nothing about a postal-gold service runs on anyone else's clock.

Sort into three piles, sentiment first

When the time is right, the first pass through the box should be by feeling rather than by carat. The cleanest method is three piles: keep, undecided, sell. Walk through the items one at a time and put each one where it actually wants to live, not where a value calculation says it should. The undecided pile exists precisely so you do not have to make every decision in one sitting.

The most useful rule on the keep pile is that there is no need to justify anything to anyone, including yourself. A piece you have never worn, that does not match anything you own, that is not "your style", but that catches the breath when you pick it up, is exactly the kind of thing that should stay in the keep pile. Sentiment is a fact, not an indulgence; selling things that turn out to have mattered more than they seemed to is the single most common regret families report.

On the sell pile, the next pass is by metal. You do not need to identify anything precisely yet, just three groups: yellow gold (probably 9ct, 18ct or 22ct), silver (anything stamped 925 or unmarked but heavy and tarnished darker than steel) and "I am not sure" (anything else, including plated items, costume jewellery and things with no marks at all). If you have kitchen scales, weigh each group; the totals will be useful in the next step but are not essential.

When to keep rather than sell

A short, blunt list of items where the default answer should usually be "keep, at least for now": pieces actually worn by the person who died, wedding and engagement rings, gifted items where you can remember the giving, pieces from a culture or family tradition that values the metal as a multi-generational store, anything currently insured separately (which suggests it carried value the deceased considered worth scheduling), and anything you do not yet understand. Better to delay a sale by six months and decide deliberately than to make a quick call that costs you sentiment you cannot buy back.

On the other side, items where selling often makes sense even early on: broken pieces beyond reasonable repair, single earrings whose partners are long lost, plated items mistaken for solid in the box, dental gold (which never has to be sentimental), items the deceased themselves had earmarked for sale or for the next generation in cash form, and anything that frankly was not worn or loved by the person who died either.

A useful question to sit with for ambiguous pieces: if a close friend gave this to me today as a gift, would I wear it? If yes, keep it, you have a new piece of jewellery. If no, the sentimental value is in the memory, which lives in you regardless of whether the metal lives in your jewellery box.

The photo and WhatsApp shortcut for an indicative figure

Before anything leaves the house, the shortcut to a rough idea of value is a WhatsApp conversation. The number is 07375 071158 (the same number is on the website). Send four or five clear photos: one shot of the whole sell pile laid out flat, then close-ups of any hallmarks you can read, clasps and any unusual pieces. Mention the rough weight if you have it. Mention any carat marks you can see (9ct, 18ct, 925, 916). Ask whatever else you would like to know.

You will get an honest indicative figure with no obligation. It will be a range rather than a precise number, because a photograph cannot replace XRF assay and the live precious-metal rate moves intra-day. Treat it as a sanity check, useful if it makes the decision to proceed easy, useful in a different way if it makes you decide to pause. If anything in the photos looks like it might carry collector or designer value beyond its metal (a signed piece, a recognisable watch, an unusual coin), we will say so and point you at a specialist rather than buy it as scrap.

Practical steps once you have decided to proceed

• Photograph the sell pile one final time, laid flat on a plain surface. Your own record of what was sent.
• Wrap each piece individually in tissue or bubble wrap so nothing moves in transit.
• Use a small rigid box or a padded envelope. Strong, plain packaging. Never write "gold" or "jewellery" on the outside.
• Request a free Royal Mail Special Delivery label from GoldPaid (sent same-day by email or QR to your phone). The label is upgraded to the £2,500 cover tier by default.
• Take the parcel to a staffed Post Office counter, never a postbox. Keep the receipt safe; it carries the tracking number and is essential for any compensation claim.
• Receive a written, itemised XRF valuation by email or WhatsApp once the parcel arrives. The valuation shows the purity, weight, live rate and figure for each piece.
• Accept for Faster Payments transfer to your bank, or decline for a free tracked return. Either is fine, neither has any cost.

The decline-and-return path, said clearly

A genuinely no-pressure postal service means the decline path is exactly as friction-free as the accept path, and at GoldPaid that is the explicit design. If the written valuation arrives and you decide not to sell, for any reason or no reason at all, you reply to say so and the items are returned to you by tracked, insured Royal Mail at no charge. There is no restocking fee, no return-postage charge, no follow-up sales call, no "could we change the offer to keep your business" pressure. The return is the same kind of parcel as the inbound one, on the same kind of service, with the same kind of tracking, with no cost attached.

This matters particularly in an inheritance context, because the most common reason families decline is not the figure. It is that the conversation about selling, which seemed clear when the lot was packed, becomes less clear when the written valuation arrives and lands as concrete numbers next to specific pieces. A few people sleep on it; a few discuss it with siblings; a few decide to keep one piece and sell the others. All three responses are easy to accommodate, and any postal buyer who makes them hard is not the postal buyer you want.

Tax basics in one minute

For inherited jewellery in the UK, the CGT base cost is generally the probate value at the date of death rather than the original purchase price. Most household sales sit comfortably under either the £6,000 chattel exemption per item (so individual items disposed of for £6,000 or less are usually exempt) or the annual CGT allowance (which the government sets and which has been reducing in recent years). For matching sets (a necklace and earrings; a flatware canteen) anti-avoidance rules treat the set as a single chattel for the £6,000 threshold.

For probate paperwork itself, our companion guide on probate jewellery valuation covers when you need a SoFA-qualified valuer and when a documented XRF assay is sufficient. For the CGT detail, see our jewellery CGT explainer. None of this is tax advice; for material amounts, speak to a tax professional.

Common questions

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