Why most postal buyers reject costume jewellery
Most postal precious-metals buyers will not look at bulk costume jewellery. The reason is labour. A drawer of mixed costume might contain a hundred pieces. Each piece needs to be looked at under a loupe, the back checked for a maker mark, the metal tested if it looks like it might be plate over silver, the stones identified if any look real, and the rest discarded or repackaged. The hourly cost of triage is greater than the recoverable value of the majority of pieces, so it is commercially uneconomic.
The result is that the drawer sits on the shop manager's desk for months. A few pieces eventually go on the shop-floor jewellery board at £1 each. The rest is donated to a different cause, given to a volunteer, or quietly binned during a stock-take. The value the donor wanted to give to the charity, however modest, is largely lost.
GoldPaid's per-kilo approach
GoldPaid takes bulk costume jewellery from charity shops as a single weighed parcel, with no piece-by-piece sorting required at the shop end. The parcel is opened on arrival, weighed, photographed, and triaged at the GoldPaid workbench. Any piece in the parcel that turns out to be hallmarked precious metal (this happens, more often than the shop expects) is valued by XRF on its own merits and added to the offer. Everything else is valued as bulk costume against the wholesale market.
The advantage to the shop is that the drawer is gone in one parcel, the shop manager has spent five minutes on it rather than five hours, and any sleeper precious-metal piece in the bag still gets caught and paid for separately. The disadvantage, to be honest about it, is that the per-kilo costume rate is modest: bulk costume is not gold. The offer reflects this. Most charity shops accept the offer because the alternative is the drawer staying on the desk.
Indicative figures move with the market; the firm offer is set only after the parcel arrives, is weighed, and is triaged at the bench. Send a photo of the drawer or bag contents on WhatsApp to 07375 071158 first for an indicative figure before posting.
Why sorting is a waste of shop manager time
A common instinct is to "sort it first" before posting. The instinct comes from the assumption that the buyer will only pay for the precious-metal pieces, so why pay postage on the rest. This is the wrong instinct for bulk costume.
A shop manager paid out of restricted retail margin is, in pure cost-per-hour terms, more expensive than the difference between a sorted parcel and an unsorted parcel. A volunteer doing the sort costs nothing in cash terms but is spending volunteer hours on triage rather than on the shop floor, where their time creates more revenue. The bench at GoldPaid is set up for triage: loupe, magnet, XRF, scales, lighting. The shop's back room is not.
Send the drawer as one parcel. Royal Mail Special Delivery cover is up to £2,500, higher available on request before posting, which more than covers the typical costume parcel even with a sleeper sterling piece included.
Designer costume that is genuinely valuable
A small number of costume jewellery designers produced work that is now collected in its own right, sometimes at four-figure values per piece. The pieces are costume in the technical sense. They are not solid precious metal, but they sit on a separate market entirely from the £1 paste shop-floor offer. The designer names worth flagging on the outside of the bag, or in the WhatsApp photo, are:
- Trifari: American mid-century costume, crown-marked, particularly the 1940s "jelly belly" animal brooches and the early Alfred Philippe-designed pieces.
- Chanel: chunky 1980s and 1990s Chanel costume, often signed on the back of the clasp, particularly long pearl chains and CC-monogram pieces.
- Dior: vintage Dior costume from the 1950s through 1970s, often signed with the year of issue.
- Schiaparelli: surreal mid-century pieces, brightly coloured, signed in cursive script on the back.
- Miriam Haskell: hand-wired pearl and rhinestone pieces, signed on the back of a small horseshoe-shaped plaque from the 1940s onwards.
- Eisenberg: 1940s American costume, "Eisenberg Original" mark, heavy rhinestone-set pieces.
These are examples for reference only. The presence of one of these names in a donation bag does not guarantee value, because copies and reproductions exist. The absence of these names does not mean the bag is worthless either; many unsigned mid-century pieces still carry collector interest. The right action is to photograph any signed piece separately when you spot one and mention it in the WhatsApp message.
How to weigh and post a bag of mixed costume
The process is short.
- Tip the drawer or bag onto a tray. Pick out anything that is obviously a separate category: a watch, a pocket watch, a coin, a single hallmarked ring you recognise. These get posted separately or photographed separately.
- Photograph the remaining mass of costume on the tray, top-down, in good light. One photo is enough. Mention the rough weight if you have scales (kitchen scales are fine).
- Send the photo on WhatsApp to 07375 071158 with a one-line note: "Bulk costume, approx weight, from [charity shop name]."
- The team responds with an indicative figure and a parcel-size recommendation.
- If posting, bag the costume in a sealed plastic bag inside a padded envelope or small box. Use a Royal Mail Special Delivery label provided by GoldPaid (sent to you on request).
- Post. The parcel is opened, weighed, photographed, and triaged on arrival. A written itemised offer follows within a working day or two.
Parcel size economics
The economics of a costume parcel are determined by two things: the parcel weight (which drives the cost of Special Delivery) and the precious-metal sleepers in it. A parcel under a kilo of costume, without sleepers, sits at the lower end of the offer range. A parcel of two to three kilos, with one or two sleeper sterling or gold pieces caught at triage, sits substantially higher.
There is a soft upper bound. A parcel above about five kilos is awkward for the postal route. If a shop has a much larger volume of costume (a house-clearance estate that has produced several drawers), the better route is to split it into two or three parcels over two or three weeks rather than send one outsized box.
Royal Mail Special Delivery cover is up to £2,500, higher available on request before posting. For most costume parcels the £2,500 cover is more than sufficient. If the photo step has flagged a high-value sleeper (a signed Chanel piece, an unhallmarked old gold-coloured chain that the donor said came from grandmother), the team will recommend higher cover for that parcel before it is posted.
What happens at the GoldPaid bench
On arrival, the parcel is opened on camera and photographed in the as-received state. The contents are tipped into a sorting tray. The first pass is a magnet sweep: anything strongly magnetic is set aside as definitely not precious. The second pass is a loupe check on every piece, looking for hallmarks, designer signatures, and any maker stamps. Anything flagged in the loupe step goes onto the XRF for a metal reading.
The triage normally identifies a handful of sleepers in any bag larger than a kilo: a sterling chain mixed in with plate, a hallmarked ring with a paste stone, a small gold-filled fob, a designer-signed brooch that the donor did not realise was signed. Each sleeper is valued separately on its own merits. The rest of the parcel is valued as bulk costume at the wholesale rate.
A written itemised offer is sent, breaking down: parcel total weight, sleeper pieces with XRF readings and individual offers, bulk costume weight and rate, and a single total figure. The charity sees what was caught at triage and what the costume rate is, and can decide on that basis.
The decline path
If the offer does not suit, the parcel is returned to the shop tracked and insured at GoldPaid's cost. Free insured return of any item the charity chooses not to sell. The parcel comes back in the same state it arrived, with the triage photos as a written record of what was in it. No fee for a returned parcel and no restocking charge.
If the offer is accepted, payment is by Faster Payment direct to the charity's registered bank account, where the offer is accepted before 3pm UK time on a working day. The drawer is gone from the shop manager's desk and the charity has a written line of money against it.
Common questions
We have not sorted it. Is that a problem?
No. Bulk costume is taken as it comes. The whole point of the per-kilo approach is that the shop does not spend time sorting. The triage happens at the GoldPaid bench, where the kit and lighting for it are set up.
Do we need to remove the watches and rings before posting?
If you recognise a watch as one of the brands worth flagging (Rolex, Omega, Cartier and the others), photograph it separately and consider sending it in its own parcel. If you spot a clearly hallmarked precious-metal ring, the same applies. Everything else can stay in the bulk bag and will be picked up at triage.
What if we send the bag and only one piece in it is real?
The one piece is valued on its own with an XRF reading and a separate offer line. The rest is valued as bulk costume. The total offer is the sum. The charity sees both lines on the written valuation.
How do we know which Trifari or Chanel pieces are originals versus copies?
A charity shop cannot reasonably make that call on the donation table. Photograph any signed piece separately, mention the signature in the WhatsApp message, and the team will give an indicative answer. The XRF cannot distinguish original from copy on costume; the call is made on signature style, mounting construction, and clasp type at the bench.
How much does a typical costume parcel offer?
Indicative figures move with the market and depend heavily on whether sleepers are caught at triage. A clean two-kilo costume parcel with one or two sterling sleepers typically sits in the low three figures. A clean costume parcel with no sleepers sits in the low two figures. The firm offer is set only after the parcel arrives and is triaged.
We have a different cause we donate broken jewellery to. Should we use that instead?
If the alternative route works for the charity, use it. GoldPaid is one route among several. The decision is for the charity's retail team and trustees to make. The advantage of the GoldPaid route is the written audit line per parcel and the Faster Payment direct to the registered charitable account, which some charity finance teams find easier to reconcile than a bulk donation route.