Was my gold offer fair? How to check any buyer’s offer

How do you check a gold offer in five steps?

1. Weigh the item in grams, on scales that read to at least 0.1 g and ideally 0.01 g.
2. Confirm the carat from the hallmark, or accept that you do not know it and treat the figure as provisional.
3. Look up the fine-gold price in pounds per gram for the day the offer was made. If your source quotes per troy ounce, divide by 31.1034768.
4. Multiply: weight in grams × the carat decimal (0.375, 0.585, 0.750, 0.916, 0.999) × the fine-gold rate per gram. That is the metal value.
5. Divide the offer by the metal value. The percentage tells you which band the buyer is operating in, and whether the gap has been explained.

Nothing in that sequence is proprietary. It is the same arithmetic every buyer in the trade runs, in the same order, and it is the reason a buyer who will not tell you the purity, the weight and the rate has effectively refused to let you check their work. The rest of this page is the detail behind each step, plus the two situations that trip people up most: a fair offer that looks low, and a low offer that looks fair.

Step 1: what weight are you actually being paid on?

Two different weights exist in every transaction and confusing them is the single most common reason a seller believes they were underpaid. Gross weight is what the whole item weighs on the scales. Payable weight is the weight of the precious metal inside it, after stones, springs, clasps, watch movements, enamel, setting cement and plated components have been taken out of the sum. On a plain chain the two are the same number. On a stone-set ring or a charm bracelet they can differ by half or more.

For a home check, kitchen scales that round to the nearest gram are enough to tell a fair offer from a poor one, but not enough to argue over. On 18.4 g of 9ct, a one-gram rounding error is about £38 of metal value. Jewellery scales reading to 0.01 g cost very little and remove the argument. Weigh in grams rather than troy ounces to start with, and convert only at the end. The relationship between the units is set out in how gold is weighed, and what a kitchen scale can and cannot tell you is worked through in can I weigh my gold on kitchen scales.

The buyer’s scales are not a matter of trust. Weighing equipment used for trade in the UK has to be legal for that use, which means it carries a CE or UKCA mark together with the metrology "M" mark, or on older equipment a Crown stamp, plus a data plate showing capacity and accuracy (Business Companion, Chartered Trading Standards Institute). Equipment carrying a six-pointed star has been rejected by an inspector and it is an offence to use it for legal purposes. You are entitled to see the scales and the reading. A buyer who weighs your gold out of sight has removed the one number you could otherwise verify yourself.

Step 2: how do you confirm the carat?

A full UK hallmark is three compulsory marks: a sponsor’s mark, a millesimal fineness number in a shaped shield, and an assay office mark. The fineness number is the one that drives the arithmetic: 375 is 9ct, 585 is 14ct, 750 is 18ct, 916 is 22ct and 999 is fine gold. Reading one takes under a minute with a loupe, and how to read a gold hallmark in 60 seconds walks through it.

Two things complicate this, and both cut in the seller’s favour as often as against. First, light articles are legally exempt from hallmarking altogether. Schedule 1 to the Hallmarking Act 1973 exempts gold articles below 1 gram, silver below 7.78 grams, platinum below 0.5 gram and palladium below 1 gram. An unmarked gold charm is therefore not evidence of anything: it may be perfectly good 18ct that never needed a mark. Second, a stamp is not proof. Foreign stamps, worn stamps, replaced clasps and imported pieces marked to a standard the UK does not recognise all exist, and so does outright faking.

This is why X-ray fluorescence matters. XRF reads the actual alloy in seconds without damaging the piece, which is how a buyer establishes that a ring stamped 750 really is 750, or that the "gold" bracelet is plated brass. If a buyer tested by acid touchstone or by eye, their carat figure is an opinion. If they did not test at all, there is no figure to check. Our own procedure is on how we value gold, and gold-plated versus solid gold covers the home checks that get you most of the way.

Step 3: where does the per-gram rate come from?

Gold is quoted in US dollars per troy ounce and converted to sterling. One troy ounce is 31.1034768 grams exactly (LBMA), so the fine-gold price per gram is the GBP-per-ounce figure divided by 31.1034768. Use a dated public source and write the date down, because the number is different tomorrow.

Take the fine-gold price per gram from that dated source. Applying the carat decimals below to it gives the metal content of one gram of each alloy on that day. The decimals are fixed; only the day’s price moves.

Step 4: the calculation, worked through

Take a hallmarked 9ct curb chain, solid, no stones, no plated links, weighing 18.4 g on jewellery scales. The seller was given a counter price on 6 August 2026.

1. Weight: 18.4 g gross, and because the chain is solid gold throughout, 18.4 g payable.
2. Carat: hallmarked 375, so the decimal is 0.375.
3. Fine gold inside it: 18.4 × 0.375 = 6.90 g.
4. Metal value: 6.90 g multiplied by the fine-gold price per gram on the day of the offer.
5. The offer as a share of metal value: divide the counter price by that metal value. In this case it worked out at about 78 per cent.

So the offer is not a scandal and it is not strong either. It sits in the convenience band, which is where high-street counter offers usually sit, and on this weight the difference between about 78 per cent and 90 per cent is worth a second written figure. Whether that is worth chasing is the seller’s call, not ours, but at least it is now a decision made with a number rather than a feeling.

Step 5: how should you read the percentage?

These are the working ranges seen across UK buyer formats rather than a promise, a quotation or a rule, and individual transactions sit outside them in both directions. The reasons the same metal fetches different figures at different firms are set out in why gold recycling prices differ between buyers, and the pawn-versus-sale comparison is worked through in sell gold versus pawnbroker.

When is a low offer genuinely fair?

Often. A low percentage against your own calculation is frequently the buyer being right and the calculation being wrong, because the calculation used gross weight for an item that is not gold all the way through. Here is that case, worked.

A charm bracelet, stamped 375 on the chain, weighs 31.0 g gross. The seller multiplies the whole 31.0 g as if it were solid 9ct, expects a large figure, and is offered far less: it looks like about a third of what they worked out, and they reasonably feel short-changed. What the assay and the separation actually found was: 12.1 g of solid 9ct chain and four solid charms; 11.3 g of gold-plated base-metal charms; 4.8 g of stones, enamel and setting cement; and 2.8 g of steel spring rings and a base-metal padlock clasp. Payable weight is 12.1 g, not 31.0 g. Priced on 12.1 g of 9ct rather than 31.0 g, that same offer works out at about 92 per cent of the metal value. The offer was strong. The paperwork, if it did not show that split, was not.

• Stones. Diamonds, sapphires and cubic zirconia all weigh something and none of it is gold. Most stones in scrap-grade jewellery have no resale value once removed, so they come out of the payable weight and are usually returned or held with the piece.
• Plating and rolled gold. Gold-plated and gold-filled items carry a fraction of a per cent to a few per cent of gold by weight. The yield is real but small, and the refining chemistry is harder than on solid alloy, so the figure is modest and honestly so.
• Solder. Repaired chains and re-sized rings frequently contain solder of a lower carat than the piece. XRF shows it, and an honest buyer pays for what is there rather than for what the stamp claims.
• Non-gold parts. Watch movements, steel spring bars, base-metal clasps, cufflink swivels, brooch pins and hollow-tube fillings all add gross weight and contribute nothing.
• Small parcels. Testing, handling, paperwork and payment cost roughly the same on 2 g as on 200 g. On a very small lot those fixed costs are a large share of a small figure, and the percentage falls for reasons that have nothing to do with the buyer’s honesty.
• Hollow and filled items. Hollow rope chains, filled bangles and some Middle Eastern 22ct designs can contain plaster, resin or cement. The stamp is accurate; the gross weight is misleading.

When is a low offer not fair?

The test is not the number. It is whether the buyer has given you the four facts that let you reproduce the number yourself. A written offer worth accepting shows all four.

• The figure changed after your items arrived, with no stated reason and no revised breakdown.
• You were told the items had already been melted or processed before you accepted. Once that has happened the evidence is gone, which is precisely why acceptance must come first.
• The offer came with a deadline, a countdown, or a "today only" rate. The market moves daily; manufactured urgency is not the market.
• You were asked to accept a verbal figure, or the paperwork arrived only after payment.
• The buyer declined to return the items free of charge, or wanted a fee to send them back.
• The purity or the weight was simply absent from the paperwork.

None of those is about the size of the offer. A firm can pay 88 per cent and still handle a parcel badly; a firm can pay 62 per cent and document every step. What you are judging in this section is process, and the questions worth asking before anything is posted are listed in questions to ask a gold buyer before you post.

What if you have already sold and think the figure was wrong?

Start with the paperwork rather than a complaint. Ask the buyer, in writing, for the purity found, the payable and gross weights, and the rate and date used. Reputable firms keep this and will send it. Put your own photographs of the items alongside it. Very often the gap explains itself at this point, usually as gross weight versus payable weight.

On the law, one point surprises people. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 governs goods a trader supplies to a consumer, so it is the wrong statute when you are the one selling. The rules that do apply are the unfair commercial practices provisions in Part 4, Chapter 1 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, which came into force on 6 April 2025. Section 225(1) prohibits unfair commercial practices, and section 225(3) defines a commercial practice to include an act or omission relating to the supply of "a consumer’s product to the trader or another person". A trader buying gold from you is therefore squarely covered, and section 227 treats the omission of material information the consumer needs to make an informed decision as a misleading omission in its own right.

The practical route is the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133, Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, which passes reports to Trading Standards; consumers cannot report to Trading Standards directly. If the parcel itself went missing or came back damaged rather than the price being disputed, that is a different process, covered in what to do if something goes wrong selling gold by post.

Does this check work on GoldPaid’s own offers?

Yes, and the method does not change for us. GoldPaid does not publish a public buying rate, but every written offer we send shows the confirmed purity, the payable weight, the figure and the arithmetic behind the total, so you can rebuild it and check it against a public price source yourself. For background on the gold price and selling by post, see the gold price and selling by post.

What we will not do is claim to be the best-paying buyer in the country. We cannot verify that, no one can, and any firm that claims it is asking you to take a number on faith rather than check it. Run the arithmetic on the offer we send, run it on the last offer you were given, and use whichever comes out ahead. The deduction-by-deduction method is on how we value gold, and our statutory dealer’s notice under the Hallmarking Act is on the hallmarking page.

If you accept a written valuation, we aim to pay by Faster Payments within one working hour of your acceptance. If you decline, the items come back free of charge. Royal Mail cover may be available up to £2,500 depending on the postal method and cover level used. GOLDPAID LTD is a UK postal buyer. ICO registration ZC214216 (data controller: Rocco Clayfield, trading as GoldPaid).

Sources

• LBMA, The Troy Ounce, one troy ounce = 31.1034768 grams exactly: lbma.org.uk
• Hallmarking Act 1973, Schedule 1, exemption weights of 1 g gold, 7.78 g silver, 0.5 g platinum and 1 g palladium: legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1973/43
• Business Companion (Chartered Trading Standards Institute), Weighing equipment for legal use, on CE/UKCA and "M" marks, Crown stamps and rejected equipment: businesscompanion.info
• Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Part 4 Chapter 1, sections 225 and 227, in force 6 April 2025: legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2024/13
• Citizens Advice consumer helpline, 0808 223 1133, Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm, which passes reports to Trading Standards: citizensadvice.org.uk
• UK gold price of £3,163.19 per troy ounce, £101.70 per gram of fine gold, BullionVault GBP spot, 6 August 2026.