How to Sell Gold Jewellery — Getting the Best Price in 2026

Three Categories of Gold Jewellery

Before choosing a channel, classify what you are selling. Scrap-value pieces — unsigned, damaged, or low-karat — should expect 70–90% of the metal's spot value. Secondary-market pieces — Cartier, Tiffany, Georg Jensen, David Yurman — sell significantly above scrap. Collectable pieces — significant watches, antique signed jewellery — need specialist auction houses to realise full value.

Getting a Valuation

Obtain at least two independent valuations before selling anything of significance. For watches, platforms like WatchCharts aggregate realised prices and give a reliable market reference. Always calculate the metal value yourself as a floor: weight × fineness × current spot price.

Where to Sell

For significant pieces: Bonhams, Christie's, or Sotheby's — they take a seller's commission but reach the right buyers. For quality online sales: 1stDibs, Worthy, or specialist dealers. For reputable outright or consignment sales: established jewellery dealers in major cities. For scrap only: high-street gold buyers.

What to Avoid

Gold-by-post services are for scrap only and typically offer below-market rates. Pawnbrokers will price a Cartier bracelet as scrap. Unsolicited "gold party" buyers pay the least of anyone in the market. If the piece has any signed or collectable element, it deserves a specialist channel.

Liquidity Planning

If you want gold exposure that is faster and cleaner to liquidate than jewellery, bullion from a dealer like SilverGoldBull sells back easily at tight spreads. Jewellery is a wearable store of value; bullion is the liquid version.

How a Scrap Price Is Actually Calculated

Understanding the arithmetic is what stops you accepting a bad offer, because the calculation is simple and every buyer uses the same one.

The buyer establishes the weight in grams and the purity. Those two give the fine gold content: an 18k piece is 750 parts per thousand gold, so 10 grams of 18k contains 7.5 grams of pure gold.

That fine weight is multiplied by the spot price per gram to give the metal value.

Then the buyer applies a percentage of that value as their offer. The gap between their offer and the full metal value covers refining cost, their margin, and the time and capital tied up until the metal is refined and sold.

What this means for you: you can calculate the metal value yourself before you walk in. Weigh the pieces on a kitchen scale accurate to 0.1g, group by karat mark, and work it out. You then know exactly what percentage of metal value each buyer is offering, which converts a vague negotiation into a comparison of one number.

The percentage varies substantially between buyer types, and that variation — not the spot price, which everyone shares — is where your money is.

Preparing Before You Get Quotes

An afternoon of preparation reliably improves the outcome.

Sort by karat. Mixed lots get valued at the lowest common denominator by buyers who are in a hurry. Separate 9k from 14k from 18k from 22k, using the marks, and keep unmarked pieces separate again.

Weigh each group and write it down.

Separate out anything that is not scrap. Signed pieces, period jewellery, anything with significant stones, and anything with a recognisable design are worth more as objects than as metal, and a scrap buyer will pay you metal for them. Our estate jewellery guide covers what tends to be worth more intact.

Remove stones you want to keep, or make sure the buyer knows they are excluded from the weight. Stones are usually worth nothing to a scrap buyer and everything to you.

Photograph everything before it leaves your possession.

Check for hidden non-gold components. Clasps with steel springs, hollow chains filled with cement or wax, and pieces with base-metal cores all reduce the fine weight, and a buyer will deduct for them. Knowing about it in advance stops it looking like a surprise negotiating tactic.

Getting Competing Quotes Without Wasting a Week

The single most effective thing you can do is get three quotes, and the reason is that the spread between offers on the same lot is routinely large.

Go to a minimum of three buyers of different types — for example a high-street gold buyer, an independent jeweller, and a bullion dealer or refiner. They have different cost structures and different margins.

Show the same, prepared lot to each so the comparison is real.

Ask for the offer as a percentage of metal value, not just a total. A buyer who cannot or will not express it that way is a buyer to be careful with.

Do not accept an on-the-spot deadline. Any offer that expires the moment you leave the shop is a pressure tactic, not a market condition. Spot moves slowly enough that a reputable buyer will honour a quote for at least a short period.

Never let pieces out of your sight during testing, and never agree to have anything melted, cut or acid-tested destructively before a price is agreed.

Be careful with postal buyers. Some are perfectly reputable, and the model has a structural problem: your gold is in their hands before you see an offer, and returning it is at their discretion and pace. If you use one, use one with a clear return policy, insure the parcel for the full value, and photograph everything before sealing it.

Selling as an Object Rather Than as Metal

Anything with design value, a signature, or period interest should be tested against the object market before being sold as scrap, because the difference can be several multiples.

Auction suits period jewellery, unbranded quality and larger stones, and reaches a national or international pool of buyers. It is slower — consignment, catalogue, sale, settlement can take months — and the seller's commission applies. Our auction guide explains the fee structure from both sides.

A specialist dealer pays less than auction realises but pays immediately and without fees, which is often the better net outcome once you account for time.

Private sale achieves the highest price and carries the most work and risk. Meeting strangers to exchange valuables for cash requires sensible precautions, and payment fraud in this market is common.

Consignment with a jeweller puts the piece in front of retail buyers at a retail price, with the jeweller taking a percentage on sale. It can work well for wearable, current pieces and it ties your item up indefinitely.

The judgement is whether the piece has a buyer who wants *that piece*. If yes, sell it as an object. If it is a broken chain, an odd earring or a dated setting, scrap is the honest answer and the fastest one.

Paperwork, Tax and Timing

Identification. Reputable buyers are required to identify sellers under anti-money-laundering rules, and record-keeping obligations apply to dealers in high-value goods. A buyer who does not ask for identification on a substantial transaction is not operating properly, and that should concern you rather than reassure you.

Get a receipt itemising weight, purity, price per gram and total for each lot.

Tax. Disposals of personal possessions can be within the scope of capital gains tax depending on your jurisdiction, the value, and whether the item is treated as a chattel. Certain bullion coins carry specific exemptions in some jurisdictions — for UK holders our capital gains piece covers the sovereign and Britannia position. Jewellery is treated differently from bullion in most systems. This is general information rather than tax advice, and a professional is the right answer for anything substantial.

Timing. The temptation is to wait for a better spot price. That is a market call, and nobody selling you advice on it knows either. What you can control is the percentage of metal value you accept, and improving that by getting more quotes is a larger and more certain gain than most plausible short-term price moves.

If what you are doing is converting jewellery into metal you intend to hold, consider that the round trip — selling jewellery at a discount to metal value, then buying bullion at a premium over it — has a real cost. Silver Gold Bull prices that second leg transparently, so at least the buying side of the round trip is a known number.

Frequently Asked Questions