The donation sorting checklist for gold, silver, watches and coins.

The checklist below is designed to be printed on one side of A4, pinned up in the back room and used by volunteers in real time. It covers the four item categories that most often hide value in a charity donation: jewellery, silver flatware, watches and coins. If you take nothing else from this guide, print the checklist, put it on the wall next to the sorting table, and ask volunteers to flag anything that matches any of the points listed. Anything flagged goes in the "ask first" tray and gets photographed before pricing. Send the photos to WhatsApp 07375071158.

A good sorting checklist has three jobs. It tells you what to flag, where to put flagged items, and what happens next. Most charity shops have one of the three. The job of this guide is to combine all three on a single sheet that fits the rhythm of a real back room.

The checklist is intentionally short. A long checklist will not be used. Volunteers are sorting bags under time pressure, and any process that takes more than a few seconds per item gets abandoned within a week. The version below has been tested on the kind of busy Saturday morning where everything goes wrong and the bin liner splits on the floor.

Charity shop donation sorting checklist (printable). Pin this in the back room.

Step 1. Jewellery

Flag for the "ask first" tray if any of the following:

• Stamp visible (anywhere on the item): 9ct, 14ct, 18ct, 22ct, 375, 585, 750, 916, 925, sterling, lion image.
• Heavy for its size when picked up.
• Solid build with proper soldered or set parts (not glued).
• Yellow or pale-yellow chain that doesn't look obviously fashion.
• Worn band or chain that looks old, even if no mark is visible.
• Broken or snapped chain or ring (do not bin).
• Single earrings, single cufflinks (do not bag with costume yet).
• Anything you're not sure about.

Do not flag (price as costume):

• Light, glittery costume items with painted finishes.
• Clearly plated items with worn spots showing base metal.
• Magnetic items (real gold and silver are not magnetic).

Step 2. Silver flatware and tea sets

Flag for the "ask first" tray if any of the following:

• 925 or "sterling" on the back.
• Lion image (lion passant) on the back.
• Items marked 800, 835 or 958.
• Set marked with a maker name (Mappin and Webb, Walker and Hall, James Dixon, Christopher Dresser, Hester Bateman, similar).
• Tarnished items (tarnish does not mean ruined, it means real).
• Heavy items with proper soldered handles or feet.

Do not flag (price normally or as antique decor):

• EPNS, A1, "silver plate", "silver-plated" stamped clearly.
• Lightweight modern cutlery with no marks.

Step 3. Watches

Flag for the "ask first" tray if any of the following:

• Branded vintage watch (Rolex, Omega, Cartier, Longines, Tudor, Tag Heuer, Breitling, IWC, Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet, Jaeger-LeCoultre).
• Pocket watch where the case is yellow or has marks inside.
• Gold-coloured case with a marked back (375, 9ct, 18ct, 750 inside).
• Any mechanical watch in surprisingly good condition.
• Watch in original box with paperwork.

Do not flag (price normally):

• Modern fashion watches with plastic backs.
• Quartz watches with no recognised brand.
• Watches with obviously fake gold plating worn through.

Step 4. Coins and small items

Flag for the "ask first" tray if any of the following:

• Anything described as "sovereign" by the donor.
• Coins with Latin around the rim and a portrait.
• Pre-1947 British silver coins (Edward VII, George V early).
• Foreign coins that look gold-coloured and have weight.
• War medals (especially silver-coloured ones with ribbons).
• Small silver thimbles, vesta cases, cigarette cases.
• Religious medals on chains.
• Krugerrands, sovereigns, half-sovereigns or any coin in a small plastic case.

Do not flag (price normally):

• Modern decimal coinage.
• Foreign coinage labelled as low-value modern currency.
• Plastic toy coins.

A single physical location matters. Pick one tray. Label it. Use it.

The label should read: Ask first. Do not price. Do not put on the shop floor.

The tray sits in the back room. Ideally in a lockable drawer. If a lockable drawer is not available, it sits in the manager's desk drawer. At the end of each shift (or daily, depending on shop volume), the manager photographs the tray top-down, sends the photo to WhatsApp 07375071158, and gets a reply on what to do next.

The discipline that matters most is that flagged items do not get bagged with costume, do not get put on the shop floor, and do not get "left for later". The tray is the holding zone. The next step is the photo.

For full clarity to volunteers and managers, here's the workflow once a photo lands with us.

1. We look at the photo, usually within an hour during working hours.
2. We reply with a list: which items look worth posting, which look like costume, and which need a clearer photo to be sure.
3. If anything is worth posting, we send a prepaid Royal Mail postal label to the shop's email address. The shop doesn't pay postage.
4. The shop posts the parcel. Royal Mail postal cover may be available up to £2,500 depending on the postal method (see Sending safely).
5. We receive, log, photograph, weigh and test each item.
6. We provide a no-obligation valuation per item.
7. If the charity accepts, payment is by bank transfer to the charity's nominated account.
8. If the charity declines, items are returned by tracked post. See What happens if I decline?.

The entire process is photo-first and there is no obligation until a valuation is formally accepted.

Two things kill checklists in charity shops.

The first is volunteer turnover. A new volunteer hasn't been trained on the checklist and reverts to "just bag it". The fix: include the checklist in induction. Five minutes at the start of a volunteer's first shift, with one example of each category laid out on the table.

The second is the "we tried that for a month" pattern. The checklist gets used for three weeks and then quietly stops. The fix: a weekly photo of the "ask first" tray is the operating discipline. If the photo gets sent, the checklist is alive. If it stops, the checklist is dead.

The simplest version of this discipline: every Friday at closing, the duty manager takes the photo. We reply by Monday. The checklist stays alive because the photo loop stays alive.

Some shops, particularly in dense urban areas or near hospices, receive donation volumes that don't allow individual inspection. The checklist still applies, but with one modification.

Instead of inspecting each item, take a top-down photo of the entire jewellery donation as it arrives. Most precious metal items will be visible in the photo, especially if the donation has been roughly emptied onto a tray. We can identify likely candidates from the photo and the shop can focus inspection on those items.

This batch-photo approach is slower than full inspection but faster than ignoring the question entirely. It works well for charity superstores, hospice shops handling estate clearances, and donation centres.

If a member of the public asks "what happens to the jewellery you receive", the honest answer is something like: "Most of it goes on the shop floor. Items that look like they might be more valuable get checked by a specialist precious-metal valuer before pricing, so we can be sure the donation raises as much as it can for the charity."

That's true, defensible, and doesn't promise anything that can't be delivered. The "specialist precious-metal valuer" is us, and we're happy to be named.

Rocco Clayfield, Director, GoldPaid.