How to Get the Most for Your Gold — Nine Things That Change Your Offer

Two numbers decide most of the offer. The first is weight, taken on calibrated scales to a hundredth of a gram. The second is carat, which is simply how much of the alloy is gold: 9ct is 37.5 per cent, 14ct is 58.5 per cent, 18ct is 75 per cent, 22ct is 91.6 per cent. Multiply the two and you have the fine-gold content, which is what an offer is built from.

Sellers often assume carat matters more than it does. Per gram it does. But totals are what reach your account, and weight usually wins: a heavy 9ct curb chain beats a fine 22ct pendant most days of the week. To see roughly where a parcel sits before posting anything, the gold calculator gives an indicative figure by carat, and how we value gold sets out the full method with a worked example.

What does not affect the figure at all is condition. A snapped chain, a bent ring, a tarnished bangle and a wedding band worn thin are worth exactly what intact pieces of the same weight and purity are worth. Nothing survives refining except the metal.

This is the most common way sellers reduce what they are paid, and it is always done with good intentions. On plain scrap gold, cleaning changes nothing either way. A wipe with a dry cloth to shift loose dust is fine; beyond that it is wasted effort, because the assay reads the metal regardless of how the piece looks.

On anything older it is worse than wasted. Antique silver carries a fine dark tone in its recesses that dealers and collectors expect to see, and polishes and silver dips strip it out along with some of the engraved detail. A cleaned Georgian salver is worth less than the same salver left alone, and the tone takes decades to come back. Coins are harsher still: one pass with a cloth can remove most of a coin's collector premium, and the damage stays visible under a loupe for the rest of its life. If a piece might be antique, do nothing at all and ask first. Our guide to cleaning silver before selling covers where the line sits.

The same logic covers home testing. Filing a notch, scratching a piece on a stone or dropping acid on it damages the item permanently and tells you less than a machine reading does. XRF testing is non-destructive and costs you nothing, so there is no reason to mark a piece to find out what it is.

Most people pre-sort a drawer into a "worth sending" pile and a "probably rubbish" pile, and the second pile is where the losses happen. Single earrings, snapped clasps, jump rings, the tangled ball of fine chain at the bottom, a signet ring with the initials worn away: all of it is weighed and assayed, and all of it adds to the same total. Sorting by carat is equally unnecessary, because mixed parcels are separated by carat at assay and each carat is itemised on the offer at its own rate.

Repairs are the other quiet cost. Having a chain soldered or a clasp replaced before selling adds a bill you will not recover, and can lower the figure slightly if the repair uses a lower-carat solder. Send it broken. Sell scrap gold sets out what counts as scrap, and how to identify real gold at home is useful if you want a sense of the pile before it goes anywhere.

Being clear about this in advance is part of getting the most for a parcel, because it stops a fair offer being mistaken for a low one. Gemstones are not gold and their weight is not paid as gold; where stones are present they are removed and returned with the offer unless you ask otherwise. Base-metal clasps, spring rings and safety chains are excluded. Watch movements, glass and leather are excluded. Hollow bangles and rope chains sometimes hold a filler for rigidity, and that filler is not metal you own.

Plated, rolled-gold and gold-filled items are a separate matter again. They carry a surface layer measured in microns and hold almost no recoverable gold, so we say so plainly rather than take the parcel and wait to be asked. The difference between the three is explained in gold-filled, gold-plated and vermeil compared, and a magnet, a loupe and a look at wear points on the edges will usually tell you which you are holding before you post.

Some things are worth more as objects than as metal, and the honest thing is to say so rather than melt them quietly. Signed designer jewellery, good Georgian and Victorian pieces with maker marks intact, rare-date sovereigns and proof sets, and named medals with a documented recipient all sit in specialist markets that can pay above gold content. If a parcel contains one of these it is flagged on the written offer with the reason, and the offer stands while you look into the alternative route. Nothing is melted before you have accepted.

Medals, memorial and mourning jewellery, and church or chapel silver deserve particular care. A medal group is usually worth more kept together and named than broken up, and mourning pieces often carry hair, inscriptions or dates that matter to someone in the family who has not been asked yet. Where provenance could be in question, church silver especially, GoldPaid asks about ownership as a matter of course and cannot buy items without clear ownership. If items have come out of an estate there is no hurry at all; probate and inheritance covers the sensible order of doing things.

Splitting a lot between two buyers to see who pays more sounds prudent and usually is not. You halve the weight in each parcel, you spend a second trip to the Post Office, and you end up comparing two figures struck on different days at different market rates, which is not a comparison at all. Comparing written offers on the same parcel costs nothing; splitting the parcel does.

Before you pack anything, photograph it. A minute with a phone gives you your own record of what went into the box, which is useful for any compensation claim and more useful for your own peace of mind. Keep the Post Office receipt until the money has arrived. Then read the offer properly: measured weight, confirmed purity, the rate used, and the figure, itemised line by line. An offer without that working shown cannot be compared with anything, which is generally the point of not showing it.