Trying to choose the best place to sell gold jewelry can be difficult. It can be like trying to find an attorney- you open up the phone book and there are 10 pages of law firms; some specializing in one thing or another, and many not saying at all what they do. You can get a recommendation for an attorney from just about anyone you know- but there only experience was “that one incident,” and they likely used a lawyer who was a family friend. Yes, gold buyers are not all created equal, either, and like attorneys, the general reputations of both lots are the reason we have jokes like, “What do you call 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean…?” Yes, so ‘a good start‘ to this article would be explaining what makes Augustus different from all the other hundreds of cash for gold businesses on the internet.
There are 3 differences that we feel differentiate us from our competitors- We Publish Prices! We Pay up to 3X More than THE GUYS ON TV! and, Receive Our Offer Within 24hrs! …but there is one other difference that is critically important, and that is the proof! We teach our clients how to sell gold jewelry, showing them the way the values of items are calculated and exactly how we arrive at the price we offer. You can use this How-To to estimate the value of your items before submitting your package. The equipment we use to melt and x-ray metal for purity is obviously a little more sophisticated than this, but if you follow the steps closely, this article will give you a good idea of how much value your items have.
Things you will need:
Well-lighted, flat working surface, such as a kitchen table.
Pen and paper.
A calculator.
A magnifying glass or jeweler’s loupe.
Strongest household magnet you can find.
A kitchen scale- preferably one that measures in grams.
Gold and/or Silver Jewelry you want to evaluate.
Look at each piece of jewelry individually for its “Hallmark,” which denotes the karat value of that piece. As you identify the items by the hallmark, place them in separate piles- 10k, 14k, 18k, sterling, and make a pile for the stuff you can’t find any marks on. It is good to generate your estimate based on the things we know, and you can still throw in the other pieces at the end because they could be genuine and just not marked for whatever reason.
For gold jewelry, they will typically say 10k or 417, 14k or 585, and 18k or 750. Almost all gold jewelry that is real has one of these more common markings on them. There are some exceptions, though. In the US, any gold jewelry must contain at least 41.7% gold (10k) to be eligible to receive a hallmark, but in handling some foreign jewelry, you may run across some that is marked 9k- usually very old. More commonly you may come across jewelry from the Middle East where higher karat gold and hand-made jewelry is much more common, and a large portion of these pieces have no markings on them at all. Typically sterling silver items will be marked “Sterling” or “Ster” or 925 or sometimes 950. Flatware that is marked “Silverplate” or “Deep Silver” or anything else, is most likely not real sterling silver. And for sterling silver butter knives, only the handles are sterling- the blades are typically made of stainless. And the handles are filled with cement, the silver portion usually being about the thickness of an aluminum drink can. These knives have to be destroyed to obtain their actual silver content, but it is usually about 15g per knife (about half of a troy ounce).
During this step, you will also want to test each piece by holding it up to your magnet to see if there is any attraction. The clasps on chains will almost always stick to the magnet because they have a steel spring inside, but otherwise, there should be no attraction to the magnet. Gold and Silver are non-ferrous metals, and do not have any attraction to magnets. If an item sticks to the magnet (besides the clasps), throw it in a separate discard pile. Important Note: If an item sticks to the magnet, it is not genuine gold or silver- but if it DOES NOT stick to the magnet, that does not mean that it IS GENUINE GOLD OR SILVER. More commonly, counterfeit gold items are gold-plated copper, which is also a non-ferrous metal, and is the primary alloy in karat gold. Rarely does one come across any actual counterfeit sterling silver, but we have seen some that is hallmarked coming from China in the last couple of years.
Once the items are all in piles for their respective karat values, weigh each pile individually on the scale and write down the number of grams in each pile. Then obtain the most recent ‘spot price’ of gold and/or silver from the “What We Pay” page of our website. At the time of this writing, the prices for gold and silver are $1,086.60 and $16.60, respectively. This page on our site actually shows the prices for each different karat of scrap gold and silver, in addition to many of the most popular gold and silver coins, bars and bullion rounds. The prices listed are the net payable prices, which means that they already have the payout percentage of the scrap factored into the prices, and they are listed in grams, pennyweights, and troy ounces (one troy ounce = 31.1g).
Here is how the math works: First you take the spot price per troy ounce and divide by 31.1 to get the Gram Price. $1086.60 / 31.1 = $34.93
Next you must determine how much “net gold” you have. This is done by multiplying the weight of each pile by its respective gold percentage, or karat value. Ex. 134g @ 10k = 134 x .417 = 55.87g Net Gold. Figure the amount of Net Gold for each pile, then add all the amounts of Net Gold together.
Then you multiply the total amount of Net Gold by the Gram Price: 55.87 x 34.93 = 1,951.53 Gross Price
Finally, you multiply the total Gross Price by the percentage your chosen gold buyer pays. Augustus Gold and Silver pays at least 55% for gold and 65% for silver. 1,951.93 x .55 = $1,073.34 Net Payout. If your math is correct up until this point, you may try to reconcile it with the amounts listed in the tables on our website.