Sell gold rings by post across the UK

Rings feel heavier in the hand than they are on the scales. A slim ladies' wedding band is typically 1.5 g to 2.5 g. A gents' band runs 3 g to 6 g. A heavy signet ring can reach 8 g to 15 g, and a thin stacking ring or a child's ring can come in under a gram. Almost nothing in an average jewellery box weighs what its owner expects.

That cuts both ways. People are often disappointed by a single slim band, and they are often surprised by a chunky signet that has been sitting in a drawer since a grandfather died. Weight and purity multiply together, so a 12 g 9ct signet holds 4.5 g of fine gold while a 2 g 18ct band holds 1.5 g — the signet is worth roughly three times the band despite the lower carat.

There is no minimum here. A single ring is weighed, tested and offered in writing exactly like a full parcel, and there is no fee at any stage. Whether it is worth the trouble is a fair question, and the fastest way to answer it is a photograph.

Most rings that arrive have something set in them, and most of those stones are cubic zirconia, paste or synthetic rather than diamond. Metal is bought on assayed weight, so stones are removed from the calculation rather than weighed in with the gold — quoting you a per-gram figure that includes the weight of a piece of glass would inflate the headline and shrink the offer.

Where a stone has genuine value it is assessed on its own and appears as a separate line, and where it does not, it is returned to you with the setting or with the parcel. Nothing is quietly kept. Our page on diamonds and gemstones sets out exactly how that works, including what happens to stones we cannot value.

Ring hallmarks live on the inside of the shank, which is precisely where decades of wear rubs them away. A ring with no readable mark is not a problem: the XRF reading establishes purity directly from the metal without relying on a stamp at all, which is the main practical reason we test rather than eyeball.

UK law only requires a hallmark above a threshold weight — 1 gram for gold — so plenty of genuine light rings were never marked in the first place. The opposite case also turns up: rings stamped 18K that read as plated base metal under XRF. We tell you either way, and if a ring is plated we return it rather than buying it, because there is not enough recoverable gold in plating to be worth anyone's time. Our what we don't buy page is explicit about this.

A fair proportion of the rings we are sent come from the end of a marriage, and it is worth saying that we do not need to know that and will not ask. The process is the same, and it is deliberately unhurried: there is no follow-up sequence, no chaser, and no phone call trying to close you. If you send a parcel and then decide you want it back before accepting, you get it back.

Where a ring may be worth more as jewellery than as metal — a period piece, a signed designer ring, a significant stone — we say so rather than buying it as scrap. That happens rarely, but it happens, and telling you is cheaper for us than the reputation of not telling you. There is a fuller discussion on selling gold after divorce and on wedding rings specifically.