By Rocco Clayfield, Founder & Director, GoldPaid Ltd · Published 6 August 2026
What is actually different between an estimate and an offer?
An online calculator is an arithmetic tool, not a valuation. It takes two numbers from you, a weight and a carat, multiplies them by a published rate, and prints the result. It cannot see the item. It does not know whether the ring has stones in it, whether the bracelet is solid or plated, whether the chain has been repaired with lower-carat solder, or whether the scales you used round to the nearest gram. Every one of those questions is answered by the assay, and every one of them can move the figure.
That is not a flaw in calculators, ours included. It is the boundary of what any calculator can do, and it is why the estimate is labelled indicative on the gold and silver calculator rather than presented as a price. The useful way to read the gap is as four separate questions, each with its own arithmetic.
| What the calculator uses | Where that number comes from | What the assay replaces it with |
|---|---|---|
| Weight | A figure you typed, usually from kitchen scales | Each item weighed to 0.01 g on trade-approved scales |
| Purity | A carat you picked from a list, usually from the stamp | An XRF reading of the actual alloy, piece by piece |
| Payable weight | Whatever you typed, treated as gold throughout | Gross weight less stones, clasps, springs, fill and non-gold parts |
| Rate per gram | The published indicative rate, dated 4 August 2026 | The market rate on the day the parcel is examined |
Cause one: the weight you typed was not the payable weight
Two weights exist in every transaction, and mixing them up is the single most common reason an offer looks wrong. Gross weight is what the item weighs on the scales. Payable weight is the weight of the precious metal inside it once everything that is not that metal has been taken out of the sum. On a plain solid chain the two numbers are identical. On a stone-set cluster ring or a charm bracelet they can differ by half or more.
Before that distinction even applies, there is the scale itself. Most digital kitchen scales read in whole grams, so a display showing 12 g is telling you the true weight is somewhere between 11.5 g and 12.5 g, and the scale’s own accuracy is a separate error on top of that. On 9ct at the 6 August 2026 market rate, half a gram is about £19 of metal content; on 18ct it is about £38. That is close enough to decide whether a parcel is worth posting and nowhere near close enough to argue over a figure. What a kitchen scale can and cannot tell you, including how to check yours against coins of known weight, is worked through in can I weigh my gold on kitchen scales.
Rounding is not a one-way error. A scale reading in whole grams understates as often as it overstates, and parcels regularly weigh more on calibrated scales than the seller expected. The direction is random; the size of it is not, because gold is dense and small differences carry real money.
Cause two: the carat you chose was not the alloy that was there
A calculator asks you to select a carat. Most people select it from the stamp, which is reasonable and usually right. It is not always right, and the cases where it is wrong are not rare.
- No mark at all. Schedule 1 to the Hallmarking Act 1973 exempts gold articles under 1 gram from hallmarking altogether, so plenty of small unmarked pieces are perfectly good gold. An absent mark proves nothing in either direction, which is exactly why it has to be tested rather than assumed.
- A foreign stamp. A 585, 750 or 916 stamp applied abroad is the maker’s claim rather than a UK assay office certification. Usually accurate. Occasionally not.
- Plated or rolled gold. A gold-plated bracelet and a solid 9ct bracelet look identical across a table and weigh similarly. One is priced as carat gold and one is not, and no calculator can tell them apart. The home checks that get you most of the way are in gold-plated versus solid gold.
- Solder from repairs and re-sizing. Jewellers join and re-size with solder of a lower carat than the piece. XRF reads it, and an honest buyer pays for what is there rather than for what the stamp claims.
- A pleasant surprise. Unmarked pieces test above the assumed carat often enough to be worth mentioning. If you guessed 9ct and the alloy reads 585, the measured figure beats the typed one.
Solder is worth a number, because people imagine it is a bigger deduction than it is. Take an 18ct chain weighing 9.20 g that has been repaired twice, where the assay finds 0.40 g of the mass is 9ct solder rather than 18ct. The metal content lost is 0.40 g × (0.750 − 0.375) × £101.70, which is £15.26, against a full-18ct metal value of £701.73 for the chain. That is 2.2 per cent. Solder matters, it is stated, and on a normal chain it is not what turned a large estimate into a small offer. Heavily repaired or much-altered pieces move further.
X-ray fluorescence is what settles all of this. It reads the actual composition of the alloy in seconds without acid, scratching or damage, item by item rather than averaged across a parcel. The procedure is set out on how we value gold and in more depth on how XRF testing works.
Cause three: what comes out of the gross weight
This is usually the largest single cause, and it is entirely mechanical. Anything in the item that is not the precious metal adds gross weight and contributes nothing to the recoverable content, so it is separated out and the offer is priced on what is left.
| What comes out of the payable weight | Why | How much it usually matters |
|---|---|---|
| Stones: diamond, sapphire, cubic zirconia, paste | Not metal. A metric carat is one fifth of a gram exactly (Weights and Measures Act 1985, Schedule 1), so five carats of stone is a full gram of nothing | Small on a single solitaire, large on a cluster, an eternity band or a charm bracelet |
| Setting cement, enamel, resin and glue | Holds stones and decoration in place; no metal value | Fractions of a gram per piece, and it adds up across a parcel |
| Spring rings, lobster clasps, jump rings, brooch pins | Frequently steel or base metal even on a gold chain | A few tenths of a gram each; noticeable on a lot of many small chains |
| Watch movements, glass, steel casebacks and straps | None of it is gold | Can be most of the gross weight of a gold-cased watch |
| Hollow fill: plaster, lac, resin, cement | Used to hold the shape of bangles, kadas and hollow rope chains | Can be a large share of gross weight; the stamp is accurate and the gross weight is misleading |
| Plated, rolled gold and gold-filled components | A thin gold layer over base metal, usually well under 5 per cent of the weight | Priced at surface yield if at all, and often simply returned |
| Solder at a lower carat than the piece | Repairs and re-sizing | Typically around 2 per cent on a repaired chain; more on much-altered pieces |
None of this should be a silent subtraction. A written offer that shows only a single parcel-level total has hidden the one figure you could otherwise check. The deduction should be attached to the item it came from, so you can see that the ring lost 0.62 g to stones rather than wondering where a few hundred pounds went.
Not sure how any of this applies to your own items? Send a photo on WhatsApp and ask. We answer honestly, there is no obligation, and nothing is posted until you decide. Or call 07763 741067, 8am to 9pm, 7 days a week.
Cause four: the market moved between the estimate and the assay
A published per-gram rate is calibrated on a date. The market is not. Between running an estimate and a parcel being examined there is usually a gap of a few days, sometimes longer, and the metal price does not pause for it.
The size of that effect is easy to underestimate. GoldPaid’s indicative rates were last recalibrated on 4 August 2026 against a fine-gold price of £97.40 per gram. On 6 August 2026 the same metal was £101.70 per gram, a rise of £4.30 a gram, or 4.4 per cent, in two days. On a 30 g lot of 9ct that is £48 of metal value in forty-eight hours. Nobody did anything; the market did.
It runs the other way just as easily. Spot was about £3,360 per troy ounce on 2 June 2026 and about £3,163 on 6 August 2026, close to 6 per cent lower. A 30 g 9ct lot held about £71 more metal value at the start of June than it did on 6 August. Anyone who ran an estimate in early June and posted in August would find the offer lower for a reason that has nothing to do with their items or with the buyer.
A worked example: a £1,180 estimate and a £506 offer
Take a parcel of three items. The seller weighs the lot on kitchen scales, adds it up as 34 grams, selects 9ct because two of the three pieces are stamped 375, and the calculator returns 34 × £34.70 = £1,179.80. The written offer comes back at £505.93. That is 43 per cent of the estimate, and it feels like something has gone badly wrong. Here is what the assay found.
| Item | Seller’s figure | Measured | Payable weight | At £34.70/g |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9ct curb chain, hallmarked 375, solid | 12 g | 11.34 g gross, XRF confirms 375 | 11.34 g | £393.50 |
| 9ct cluster ring, hallmarked 375 | 4 g | 3.86 g gross, 0.62 g stones and setting cement | 3.24 g | £112.43 |
| “Gold” bracelet, worn stamp | 18 g | 17.62 g gross, XRF reads gold plate over brass | nil | £0.00 |
| Total | 34 g | 32.82 g gross | 14.58 g | £505.93 |
Now attribute the difference, which is £673.87, to its causes. Every pound of it has a name.
| Where the gap came from | Grams of the typed estimate | Value at £34.70/g | Share of the gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| The bracelet was plated base metal, not 9ct | 18.00 g | £624.60 | 92.7% |
| Stones and cement removed from the ring’s gross weight | 0.76 g | £26.37 | 3.9% |
| Kitchen-scale rounding on the chain | 0.66 g | £22.90 | 3.4% |
| Total difference | 19.42 g | £673.87 | 100% |
One item accounts for nearly 93 per cent of the shortfall, and it is the one nobody could have priced without testing it. The stones and the scale rounding together came to £49. Read the parcel that way and the argument changes completely: the question is no longer "why is the offer so low" but "was the bracelet really plated", which is a question with a testable answer rather than a feeling.
It is also worth running the fairness check on the part that was gold. The payable weight of 14.58 g at 375 contains 5.4675 g of fine gold, which at the £97.40 per gram calibration is £532.53 of metal. The £505.93 offer is 95.0 per cent of that. The method for running that test on any buyer’s offer, ours included, is set out step by step in was my gold offer fair.
What should an honest breakdown show?
The point of a breakdown is not reassurance. It is that you can rebuild the total yourself from public information. Five things make that possible.
| What the offer should show | What it lets you check |
|---|---|
| Each item listed separately, not a single parcel total | Which piece the money came from, and which piece it did not |
| Gross weight and payable weight for each item | The deduction as a stated number rather than a silent one |
| The purity found and how it was tested | Whether the carat is an assay result or a reading of the stamp |
| The rate per gram used, with the date it was taken | The rate against a public price source for that day |
| Items at nil value listed rather than omitted | That a plated or non-gold piece was identified, not quietly kept |
If a breakdown is missing the payable weight, you cannot tell a fair deduction from an invented one. If it is missing the date, you cannot check the rate. If it lists one total for a mixed parcel, you cannot tell whether the 22ct was paid at the 22ct rate. Ask for the missing line before you accept, not after, and treat a refusal as information in itself. The questions worth asking before anything is posted are collected in questions to ask a gold buyer before you post.
One more thing belongs on the list, and it is about sequence rather than content. Nothing should be melted, cut or processed before you have accepted. Once it has been, the evidence for every figure above has gone, and the breakdown can no longer be tested against the items. That principle is covered in do gold buyers melt your gold before you accept.
When does the offer come in above the estimate?
It happens, and a page that only explained the downside would be doing the same selective arithmetic it is warning about. Four situations account for most of it.
- The lot weighed more than the kitchen scale said. Whole-gram rounding cuts both ways, and a parcel of many small pieces weighed one at a time accumulates roundings in either direction.
- An unmarked piece tested higher than assumed. People routinely enter 9ct for anything without a stamp. Some of it is 14ct or 18ct, and the offer follows the assay rather than the guess.
- The market rose in between. As above: 4.4 per cent in the two days between 4 and 6 August 2026 alone.
- An item was worth more than its metal. Full sovereigns, sealed investment bars, signed designer pieces, good antique work and fine gemstones are not scrap. Where that applies we say so in the written valuation and send the item back rather than buying it as metal, because a bullion dealer, a specialist or an auction house will do better for you than a refining route can. Selling to an auction house covers when that is the right call.
That last one is the reverse of the plated bracelet and it costs more money than the plated bracelet ever will. If a metal-value calculation is the only test applied to a jewellery box, it is possible to talk yourself into selling a £4,000 piece for £900 of gold.
How do you make the estimate closer before you post?
- Weigh each carat group separately, on a scale reading to 0.1 g or finer. Do not add 9ct and 18ct into one number.
- Put stone-set, plated and hollow pieces in their own pile and leave them out of the gram total. Estimate them at nil and let any value be a bonus rather than a disappointment.
- Take off what you can see is not gold: steel watch straps, base-metal clasps you are confident about, brooch pins.
- Use the carat from a hallmark you can actually read. Where there is no mark, run the estimate twice, once at the carat you suspect and once a step lower, and treat the answer as a range.
- Write down the date you ran the estimate and the rate it used, so you can tell later whether the market moved or the items did.
- Send clear photographs before posting anything. A photograph settles the plated-or-solid question far more often than people expect, and it costs nothing.
Photographs are the highest-value step on that list, because they catch the plated bracelet before it becomes a disappointment rather than after. What to photograph, and how, is in how to photograph jewellery for a remote valuation.
What if you still disagree with the offer?
Decline it. That is what the option is for, and it should cost you nothing. A written valuation you can turn down is only meaningful if turning it down is free and easy, which means the items come back to you, tracked, at the buyer’s expense, with no fee and no argument. Nothing is deducted for testing, handling or the return itself, and no reputable buyer applies pressure at that point. If you are being pushed, that is a separate problem, and red flags when choosing a postal gold buyer lists the rest of them.
Before declining, though, it is usually worth one message. Ask for the per-item split: gross weight, payable weight, purity found, rate and date. In our experience most disagreements dissolve at that point, because the gap turns out to be a plated item or a stone weight rather than a pricing decision. If it does not dissolve, you have a documented figure to take to another buyer and compare properly, which is better than declining on a hunch.
If you believe you have been misled rather than simply outbid, the unfair commercial practices provisions in Part 4 of the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 apply to a trader buying goods from a consumer, and reports reach Trading Standards through the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 1133. That is general information about published law rather than legal advice, and we are a gold buyer rather than a law firm.
How this works at GoldPaid
The published rates on the gold and silver calculator carry the date they were calibrated, currently 4 August 2026, and they are labelled indicative because that is what they are. Your written valuation shows each item separately with the purity found, the gross and payable weights, the rate used and the date it was taken, and anything at nil value is listed rather than left out.
Offers depend on inspection, item weight, purity, hallmarks, stones, non-gold components, condition and the market rate on the day. Nothing is firm before inspection and nothing is processed before you accept. If you accept, payment is by Faster Payments within one working hour of acceptance, usually within 30 minutes during working hours. If you decline, every item comes back tracked at our cost. 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 with no shop, company number 17382540, ICO registration ZC214216, rated 4.7 from 24 reviews on Trustpilot. Photos and questions go to 07763 741067 on WhatsApp, and there is no obligation at any stage. What that phrase actually commits us to is set out in what a no-obligation valuation means.
Sources
- Hallmarking Act 1973, Schedule 1, exempting gold articles under 1 gram from hallmarking: legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1973/43
- Weights and Measures Act 1985, Schedule 1, Part V, defining the metric carat as one fifth of a gram: legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1985/72
- Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024, Part 4 Chapter 1, unfair commercial practices, 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 fine-gold price of £101.70 per gram (£3,163.19 per troy ounce), BullionVault GBP spot, 6 August 2026; and £97.40 per gram (£3,029.42 per troy ounce) on 4 August 2026, the date GoldPaid’s published indicative rates were last recalibrated.
- UK spot of about £3,360 per troy ounce on 2 June 2026, as recorded in our June 2026 price update.
Common questions
Why is my gold offer lower than the online calculator said?
Almost always one of four things, and usually the third. The weight you typed was rounded by a kitchen scale; the carat you selected was not the alloy that was actually there; stones, clasps, springs, hollow fill or plated parts came out of the payable weight; or the market moved between the day you ran the estimate and the day the parcel was assayed. A written offer should name which one applied to which item.
Is the calculator figure a quote?
No. It is an indicative estimate produced by multiplying a weight you typed by a published per-gram rate, and it is labelled as such. It cannot see your items, so it cannot know the tested purity or the payable weight. Only an XRF assay and a weighing on trade-approved scales produce a firm figure, and that figure arrives in writing before you commit to anything.
What is the difference between gross weight and payable weight?
Gross weight is what the whole item weighs on the scales. Payable weight is the precious metal inside it, after stones, setting cement, enamel, steel springs, base-metal clasps, watch movements, hollow fill and plated components have been taken out. On a plain solid chain the two are the same. On a charm bracelet or a cluster ring they can differ by half or more.
Do stones reduce what I get paid for a ring?
They reduce the payable weight, because a stone is not metal. A metric carat is one fifth of a gram exactly, so five carats of stone is a full gram of gross weight with no gold in it. Most stones in scrap-grade jewellery have no separate resale value once removed, so they are returned or kept with the piece. Fine gemstones are a different matter and should be flagged rather than weighed as filler.
How much does solder actually take off?
Less than people fear. On an 18ct chain of 9.20 g with 0.40 g of 9ct solder from two repairs, the metal content lost is about £15 at the 6 August 2026 rate, against £702 for the chain, which is 2.2 per cent. It is stated on the breakdown rather than absorbed. Heavily repaired or much-altered pieces move further than that.
Can the gold price change between my estimate and my offer?
Yes, and it routinely does. Fine gold moved from £97.40 to £101.70 per gram between 4 and 6 August 2026, a rise of 4.4 per cent in two days, and fell close to 6 per cent between early June and early August 2026. Your firm offer is set against the market rate on the day your parcel is examined, so a rise in between works in your favour and a fall does not.
What should a written gold offer contain?
Each item listed separately; the gross weight and the payable weight for each; the purity found and how it was tested; the rate per gram used and the date it was taken; and any nil-value items listed rather than omitted. With those you can rebuild the total yourself from a public price source. Without them you are being asked to trust the number rather than check it.
My bracelet turned out to be plated. Is that a way of paying me less?
It is a testable claim, which is the opposite of a trick. XRF reads the alloy without damaging the piece, and the result should appear on the breakdown alongside the item. Gold-plated and gold-filled pieces carry a fraction of a per cent to a few per cent of gold by weight, so the recoverable figure is genuinely small. If you are unconvinced, decline the offer and have it tested elsewhere; the item comes back to you free of charge.
Can the offer ever be higher than the estimate?
Yes. The lot can weigh more than a whole-gram scale suggested, an unmarked piece can test above the carat you assumed, the market can rise between the two dates, or an item can be worth more than its metal, in which case we say so and return it rather than buying it as scrap. Full sovereigns, sealed bullion bars, signed designer work and good antique pieces all fall into that last group.
What happens if I decline the offer?
Every item comes back to you, tracked, at our cost, with nothing deducted for testing, handling or the return. Declining is meant to be free and easy, because a valuation you cannot refuse is not a valuation. Before you decline, it is usually worth asking for the per-item split, since most disagreements turn out to be a plated item or a stone weight rather than a pricing decision.
How can I check whether the offer itself was reasonable?
Take the payable weight from the breakdown, multiply it by the carat decimal and by the fine-gold price per gram on the day of the offer, then divide the offer by that figure. On the worked example on this page, £505.93 against 14.58 g of 9ct came to 95.0 per cent of metal value at the rate used. The full method, with the percentage bands for high-street shops, pawnbrokers and postal buyers, is in our guide to checking any buyer’s offer.