Sell broken gold chains by post across the UK

A snapped clasp, a missing link, a tangled rope chain, none of these affect the fine-gold content of the piece. A 5-gram 18ct broken chain contains 3.75 grams of fine gold, exactly the same as a 5-gram 18ct intact chain. The difference between the two when sold to a jeweller would be that the intact chain can be resold whole and the broken chain has to be melted; both are valued at the gold content when sold to a refiner.

Because we are a precious-metal buyer rather than a second-hand jewellery shop, the route from your parcel is the same in both cases: the chain is XRF-tested for carat, weighed on a calibrated scale, and the per-gram rate is applied directly. The broken status appears as a description on the written offer, not as a deduction.

If you have a chain that is so tangled or knotted that you cannot lay it flat, leave it as it is. Do not spend an hour trying to untangle it before posting. Tangle does not affect weight, and the weighing process is done on the chain in whatever physical state it arrives in.

Pre-untangling a delicate chain often introduces new breaks (because fine chains are more fragile under torsion than under normal wear), and the new breaks do not change the offer figure but they do add to the time you have spent. Post the chain as it is and let the scale do its job.

Fragments are bought on exactly the same terms as whole chains: a 4-inch length of broken rope chain, two pieces of a Figaro chain that came apart at the join, a single curb-chain link that bent and snapped off. All of these are weighed and paid for at the per-gram rate for the relevant carat. There is no minimum length and no minimum weight to attract a payment.

If you have a drawer of fragments combined with intact pieces, the offer is split line by line: each carat is grouped separately (because 9ct, 18ct and 22ct fragments are valued at different per-gram rates) and the totals are shown. This way you see exactly which fragments produced which figures.

Place each broken chain in its own small zip-lock bag (sandwich bag) inside the parcel so fragments cannot intermingle. A single small jiffy bag is usually enough; the total weight of a typical broken-chain parcel is under 50 grams.

For most broken-chain parcels the £2,500 Royal Mail cover is enough, but it does not take a great deal of 18ct gold to pass it at recent rates. If you are sending a larger parcel that combines many heavy broken chains, message us first with a rough total weight and we will tell you whether it should be split across more than one label, each within its own cover.

People sending broken chains often get two or three quotes and find a real spread between them. The wholesale gold price is national and public, so the difference is not coming from the metal. It comes from what sits between your parcel and a refinery.

Three things account for most of it. First, the number of intermediaries: a shop that sells its scrap on to a consolidator has more mouths to feed per gram than a buyer shipping aggregated lots straight to a refiner. Second, whether carats are separated or blended: a bag holding both 9ct and 18ct fragments valued at one averaged rate pays materially less than the same bag priced line by line, and the difference is invisible unless the offer is itemised. Third, whether the fixed cost of handling a parcel is recovered by widening the per-gram rate on light lots.

None of those necessarily involve dishonesty, but all three are worth asking about before you post anything. The full breakdown is in why gold recycling prices differ between buyers.

Nothing is melted before you accept a written offer. Until then your fragments stay identifiable as yours, bagged as they arrived, and a decline sends them back tracked and signed for at our cost.

After acceptance the chain joins a carat-sorted batch. Individual pieces are never refined on their own, because refining runs at industrial scale with fixed costs per batch, so scrap is aggregated and melted into a homogeneous bar that can be sampled accurately. A refiner then separates the gold from the copper, silver and zinc it was alloyed with, usually by chlorination to around 99.5 per cent purity or by electrolysis to 99.99 per cent and above. The recovered metal goes back out as bars, as grain for jewellery manufacture, or as coin blanks.

The practical consequence is worth stating plainly: the melt is the point of no return. If a piece in the parcel might be worth more as an object than as metal, a signed designer chain or an antique Albert with clear marks, that has to be raised before acceptance, not after. We flag those on the offer rather than melting them quietly. The whole route is described in what happens to your gold after you sell it.

Three specifics come up constantly on broken-chain parcels. Fragments with stones still set: leave them in. Stones are removed on arrival, returned to you unless you say otherwise, and their weight is excluded from the gold weight rather than deducted from the figure. Prising a stone out at home risks damaging both the stone and the mount and changes nothing about the offer.

Tangled lots: send them tangled. Weight is unaffected by tangle, and untangling a fine chain under torsion is the single most common way people create new breaks. Mixed-carat tangles are separated at assay, which is exactly why the offer is split by carat.

Clasps and end fittings: many chains have been repaired over the years with solder of a different carat, or fitted with a base-metal spring ring or a steel jump ring. Each is read separately on the XRF and either priced at its own rate or excluded from the precious-metal weight. That is why the written offer shows a gross weight, the components taken off, and the net gold weight, rather than one number you cannot check.