A charity shop manager's guide to spotting possible gold.

You don't need to be a jeweller to spot likely gold in a charity donation. Five things give it away most of the time: a tiny stamp, the weight, the colour and tone, the build quality of the clasp and the way the item has worn. A piece that fails all five is almost certainly costume. A piece that passes any two of them is worth a 60-second photo to WhatsApp 07375071158 before it gets priced. The rest of this guide explains what each of those five signals looks like in practice and what to do at the till once you've spotted one.

The reason this guide is aimed at shop managers (rather than the full volunteer team) is straightforward. Volunteers should be looking for the warning signs and putting items in the "ask first" tray. The manager is the one who decides what happens next. A manager who can read the five signals quickly will dramatically reduce the number of items that get sold cheaply and the number of items that get unnecessarily escalated.

This is also a matter of time. A volunteer with thirty bags to sort can't run a five-point checklist on every chain. A manager doing a daily sweep of the "ask first" tray can. The job is to filter, not to certify. Final certification happens at our end with calibrated scales and testing.

Hallmarks are the single most reliable indicator. The UK has had a formal hallmarking system for around 700 years, which means most marked items will tell you what they are if you can read the mark.

What you're looking for is a small set of tiny stamps, usually clustered together. On gold jewellery, the marks you'll see most often are:

• 375 (= 9ct gold, the most common UK gold standard for jewellery)
• 585 (= 14ct, less common in the UK, more common in items from Continental Europe and the US)
• 750 (= 18ct, common in wedding bands, signet rings and higher-end pieces)
• 916 (= 22ct, common in items from South Asia, also some older British wedding bands)
• 9ct, 14ct, 18ct, 22ct (written-out equivalents, used on older or imported items)

Where you'll find them:

• Rings: inside the band, usually visible if you squint into the inner curve.
• Chains: on the small ring next to the clasp, or on the clasp itself. Often very small.
• Pendants: on the back, near the bail.
• Earrings: on the post (for studs) or near the hook (for drops).
• Bracelets: on the clasp or on a small "soldered tag" attached near the clasp.

If you see a three-shield mark cluster (a number stamp like 750 in an oval, a small lion or similar symbol, and a letter in a shield), you're looking at a full UK hallmark. That's the strongest possible indicator.

If a stamp is partially worn down, take a photo with the phone flash and zoom in. Phone cameras pick up worn stamps surprisingly well.

If a piece has no visible stamp but feels heavy, it's still worth checking. Some older or imported items have no marks at all. The lack of a stamp doesn't prove the item isn't gold. It just means signal 1 is unavailable and you need signals 2 to 5.

This is where experienced eyes earn their keep. Pick up the item.

Gold is heavy. A solid gold ring will feel noticeably weightier than a plated brass ring of the same size. A 9ct chain will feel heavier than the same length of plated chain. Sterling silver weighs more than nickel silver or EPNS.

Some practical tests:

• Chains. Hold a fashion chain in one hand and the suspect chain in the other. If the suspect chain feels weightier by a noticeable margin, that's a flag.
• Rings. A solid gold ring of any meaningful size will weigh at least 2 to 4g. Pop it on a kitchen scale. Any reading below about 1.5g for an adult-sized ring is suspicious for gold (it might be a very thin gold plate, or hollow). Above 3g and the maths starts to favour solid metal.
• Pendants. Solid gold pendants are heavier than they look. Plated pendants are usually distinctly light.

This isn't conclusive. A solid silver-plated brass ring will feel almost as heavy as silver. A hollow gold pendant will feel lighter than a solid silver one. But combined with signal 1 (the stamp) and signal 3 (the colour), the weight check is a strong second test.

Real gold is a specific colour. Once you've seen a hundred pieces of real gold next to fashion gold, the difference becomes obvious. Before you've seen that many, here are the cues.

Real 9ct gold is slightly pale, often described as "buttery" or "warm". It doesn't have the orange-red hue of cheap plate, and it doesn't have the bright lemon hue of certain costume golds. It looks slightly understated.

Real 18ct gold is richer in colour. It's distinctly yellow, but not garish. It has a depth to it that thin plate doesn't.

Real 22ct gold is properly yellow, the colour you see in South Asian wedding jewellery. It's almost orange-yellow.

Rose gold can throw people. Real rose gold is 9ct, 14ct or 18ct with a copper alloy that gives a soft pink hue. Plated rose gold tends to be more orange and brighter.

White gold looks similar to silver but slightly warmer. It often has rhodium plating that has worn off, so the underlying colour might show through in a slightly yellow patch behind a stone.

Plated gold that has worn will reveal a different metal underneath. Look at the high-wear areas: the inside of a ring, the back of a clasp, the post of an earring. If you see silver or copper showing through, the item is plated.

A useful exercise: get one known-real gold ring (a wedding band, ideally) and one known-costume ring. Put them next to each other on a sheet of white paper. Take a photo with phone flash on. The difference jumps out.

How an item is made tells you a lot.

Clasps. Real gold and silver chains use proper soldered clasps. The clasp will be the same metal as the chain, marked accordingly, and feels firm. Costume chains often have plated steel clasps that are clearly a different metal, sometimes magnetic (gold and silver are not magnetic).

Solder joints. On real metal, soldered joints are clean, often invisible. On costume, you'll often see a slightly different metal at the joint, sometimes a small blob of solder that doesn't match.

Pin posts on earrings. Real silver and gold earring posts feel solid and the metal of the post is the same as the rest of the earring. Costume posts often look glued in or are clearly a different colour from the front of the earring.

Settings. A real gold ring with a stone has the stone properly set in claws or a bezel. The claws are the same metal as the band. The setting feels firm. Costume settings often have glue, snap-in stones, or stones that wobble slightly.

Hinges and bails. Real lockets, charm bracelets and pendants have proper hinges and bails machined or soldered into the piece. Costume ones often have a stamped piece glued on.

A piece that has been built properly is a piece worth investigating, regardless of whether you can immediately read the stamp.

Old gold and silver wear in characteristic ways. This is the most subtle signal but it's surprisingly useful.

Real gold wears smooth. A 9ct wedding band that has been worn for 30 years has lost its edges, the inside is polished by the finger, and the surface is slightly burnished. The metal is the same colour through and through, because there's no plating to wear off.

Plated gold wears patchy. Plated brass that has been worn for years has bald spots where the base metal shows through. You'll see silvery or coppery patches at the wear points. The piece looks tatty in a specific way.

Real silver tarnishes. Sterling tarnishes to a darker grey-black, especially in crevices. This is a good sign. EPNS and base-metal plate also tarnish, but they often look more aluminium-grey when worn rather than the warm dark of real silver.

Real gold doesn't tarnish. If something looks tarnished and you're being told it's gold, it's probably plated or low-purity gold-filled.

The way an item has aged is essentially a 30-year stress test of its construction. Plate fails the test visibly. Solid metal passes it. A 70-year-old worn item that still looks "right" almost always is.

Combining the five signals, here's the practical workflow:

The single behaviour change that protects the most value is making this a one-minute step at the back of the shop rather than a "deal with it later" task.

This is the bit that gets overlooked, and it matters.

Once a piece has been flagged as "ask first", it should not go on the shop floor. The reason is simple. Customers spot value too. If a marked 9ct chain is sitting in a £3 dish on the counter, someone in the trade will buy it before lunch, and that's a charity buyer who knows what they're doing taking the value the charity should have realised.

The flagged tray goes in the back room, in a lockable drawer if available, in a manager's desk drawer if not. It is not refilled to the shop floor until the manager has reviewed it. This is one of the points in the safe handling guide that managers often need to override habit on.

If a piece comes back from GoldPaid as "not worth posting" (it's plated, or the metal value is too low to bother), price it normally and put it out. If a piece comes back as "worth posting", we'll arrange the prepaid Royal Mail label and the shop sends it on.

The honest answer is, you won't always know. Some items are odd. Some marks are unfamiliar (continental marks, US imports, Asian wedding jewellery with stamps unfamiliar to UK eyes). Some pieces look great in the hand and have no marks at all.

The rule I'd give any manager is: if in doubt, photograph it. We'd much rather see a hundred photos of items that turn out to be costume than miss one that wasn't. The cost of a "false positive" enquiry is a 60-second WhatsApp message. The cost of a "false negative" (selling a real piece as costume) is the money the charity didn't keep.

Three patterns to keep in mind as the easiest "obvious" wins for a manager.

The unmarked yellow chain that is unusually heavy. Often older British or imported gold with the mark worn down. The weight test is the giveaway.

The "vintage cutlery" with a tiny mark on the back of every handle. Often sterling. The tell is that the marks are on every piece of the set in the same place, because each piece was hallmarked individually.

The "old foreign coin" the donor put in a jar. Half-sovereigns, full sovereigns, Krugerrands and old British silver coinage all enter charity shops via house clearance and get priced as decoration.

If any of these are in your back room right now, photograph them and send the photos to WhatsApp 07375071158.

Rocco Clayfield, Director, GoldPaid.