Sell gold earrings, including single odd ones, by post

The high-street retail market discounts single earrings sharply because no one wants to buy half a pair. The scrap market does not. A single 18ct gold earring is worth its measured weight of 18ct gold and its share of any stones, exactly the same per-gram rate as the surviving half of a matched pair. If you have a drawer of single earrings where the partners are long gone, that drawer is worth more than most people assume.

The most common reason a UK household has accumulated single earrings is the simple physics of stud-earring loss: butterfly backs fail more often than studs themselves, and the stud disappears down a sofa or onto a bedroom carpet. After a decade, the surviving partners pile up. The metal in those survivors is still gold.

The weight of UK gold earrings varies hugely by style. A pair of small 9ct stud earrings might weigh half a gram between them. A pair of 18ct gold sleepers can weigh six grams. A pair of substantial drop earrings with stones can weigh over twenty. The XRF reading and the calibrated scales handle every range identically; there is no minimum weight below which we will not value an earring.

Earring backs (butterflies, screw fittings, lever backs) are usually the same gold as the earring itself, but occasionally are plated base metal where they have been replaced. The XRF reading sees that; replaced base-metal backs do not contribute to the precious-metal weight and the affected earring is valued for the gold that is gold.

Most gold earrings carry stones; many of those stones are decorative cubic zirconia or paste rather than diamond. The XRF assay tests the metal and a separate stone assessment looks at the stones on a per-pair basis. Where a stone is meaningfully valuable (a real diamond above about 0.25ct, a fine sapphire, a fine emerald), it is flagged as a separate line on the written offer.

Pearl earrings deserve a specific note: cultured pearls degrade over decades if kept in dry conditions, and many older pearl earrings are worth more for the gold setting alone than as a complete piece. We tell you that on the offer rather than burying it.

Clearing an estate or a parent's jewellery often produces a mixed handful of earrings: matched pairs, half-pairs whose partners were lost decades ago, and old-fashioned designs the family has no intention of wearing. The honest practical answer for almost all of those is to post the lot for scrap valuation. Sentimental retention is fine; the metal in everything else is more useful as cleared value than as drawer-clutter.

For probate purposes the written, itemised offer doubles as a per-item valuation for any estate-administration paperwork. Each earring is on its own line on the offer; the total is shown separately.