Sell antique gold and jewellery by post: pre-1920 pieces, honest valuation

The honest position on antique gold is that scrap is often the wrong answer. A Georgian gold mourning ring with a clear maker mark, a Victorian hair-work locket, an Edwardian platinum-and-diamond brooch with a documented London assay office hallmark, all of these can be worth substantially more on the specialist antique market than at metal weight.

The scrap calculation is mechanical and indifferent to history: weight times measured purity times the rate on the day. The antique-market calculation is the opposite: condition, maker, provenance, design, demand. The two figures rarely match and on antique gold the scrap figure is almost always the lower of the two.

Every piece received is examined for hallmarks before any other step. The four UK assay offices (London, Birmingham, Sheffield, Edinburgh) plus the two closed offices (Chester until 1962, Glasgow until 1964) all struck pieces that are still in circulation in inherited jewellery. The date letter, the office mark, the maker's mark and the standard mark together identify the year, the maker and the carat.

Foreign marks (French eagle, Italian assay marks, Russian zolotnik, Indian BIS) are noted separately. Pre-1700 silver and pre-1800 gold pieces are flagged on arrival for individual review because they are most likely to have museum or specialist-market value above scrap.

Every antique piece on the written offer gets two figures: the metal-only scrap valuation (transparent, mechanical), and a flag for any piece we believe is worth more on the antique market with an estimate of that figure if we can give one. The decision between selling at scrap or pursuing the antique market is yours.

For pieces we believe are clearly in the antique-market category, we are honest and suggest specific routes: reputable antique dealers, named auction houses, specialist online marketplaces. We do not benefit from scrap-selling a piece that should go to auction, and we say so on the written offer rather than burying it.

Compulsory UK hallmarking dates only from 1300 (London leopard's head) and was extended in stages to other offices over the following centuries. Some genuine pre-1300 pieces exist (rare, mostly in museum collections); many later pieces produced below the legal hallmarking weight or for personal commission carry no marks at all.

Unmarked gold is not the same as fake gold. The XRF reading measures the metal regardless of stamp. The deciding test for an unmarked piece is the metal content, the style cues for dating, and any documented provenance the seller can supply.

A large share of genuine antique jewellery carries no British hallmark. Pieces made below the exemption weight, work made to private commission, imports predating the foreign-marks rules of 1904, and pieces whose marked part (a clasp, a ring shank, a locket rim) was replaced in an old repair are all legitimately unmarked. Unmarked is not the same as not gold, and nothing is priced down because a stamp is missing.

XRF gives a non-destructive reading of the alloy at several points, which matters on antique work because one Victorian locket can be 15ct at the front, 9ct at the back and rolled gold on the chain it came with. The reading is a surface and near-surface measurement, so gilt metal, rolled gold (sometimes marked RG or gold filled) and pinchbeck, the copper-zinc alloy used from the 1720s to imitate gold on Georgian chains and fobs, are separated by taking readings on worn edges and at joints where a base core shows through. Where a reading is ambiguous we say so on the offer rather than defaulting to the lower figure, and nothing more invasive is done without asking you first.

Victorian mourning jewellery is the category most often written off before anyone looks at it properly. The gold in a mourning brooch is usually thin, so the scrap figure is modest, while the specialist market for the same brooch can be several times that. Knowing what the black material is helps: Whitby jet is light, warm to the touch and matte-black with a slightly resinous lustre; vulcanite, the cheaper hardened-rubber substitute, feels denser and browns in sunlight; French jet is black glass, cold and heavy; bog oak is brown-black with visible grain.

Hair work sits behind glass in a locket back or brooch compartment, often beside an enamelled inscription with a name and a date. Black enamel follows the usual mourning convention; white enamel commonly marks the death of a child or someone unmarried. Those inscriptions are much of what a specialist buyer pays for, so please do not prise the glass out before posting; a forced compartment is worth materially less. We do not open, dismantle or clean glazed compartments unless you ask, and pieces in this category are flagged separately with the metal-only figure alongside.

A whole jewellery box can be posted as one parcel rather than one chosen piece at a time: three generations mixed together, a Victorian locket beside a 1970s 9ct chain and a handful of costume brooches. Nothing needs sorting or separating first, and the itemised line-by-line offer is more useful to a family than a single total when several people have an interest in the outcome.

Two practical points on estate items. Our figure is a commercial buying offer for the metal, with an antique-market flag where one applies; it is not a formal probate valuation, so if a date-of-death valuation is needed for HMRC, obtain one from a qualified valuer before anything is sold. And there is no reason to hurry: photograph the box before it travels, agree among the beneficiaries who is selling what, then post. Anything declined comes back tracked and signed for at our cost.