An Insider’s View: Tips on Selling Gold & Silver for Cash
Do you have a small fortune sitting unused in your jewelry
box? Gold and silver prices are still high enough to warrant unloading those
broken serpentine chains and single earrings now. What follows are a few
guidelines and some personal experience on selling gold and silver.
Do Your Homework
When you walk in to see a buyer, you need to be armed with
as much information as possible. That way you will know when to take a good
offer, and when to walk away.
Determining Iron
Content:
Begin by checking your jewelry with a magnet to see if it
has iron content. If the magnet
sticks, it won’t have scrap value, though it may have value as an antique. Show
it to someone who knows antiques, if you suspect it is a valuable piece. Some
antique jewelry has a value greater than that of the metal it contains.
Maker’s Marks
Look for a
maker’s mark that could add to the value of the piece, especially if it is a
famous maker name like William Spratling. I have a copper and brass Art Smith
bracelet that is worth nothing as scrap, but around $5,000 on the antique
market. Trolling on eBay might
help you find an approximate value.
A maker’s mark is like a logo:
it could be a name, initials or special image. I have two maker’s mark stamps, one for flat metal that says
WORDEN and my registered hallmark, a tiny safety pin image for the curved
inside of rings.
Quality Marks
Next, check for
quality marks on the jewelry. You may need magnification for this. Quality
marks are stamps on the jewelry or flatware to indicate how much gold or silver
content is in the metal. For silver, look for Sterling or 925, which indicates
a sterling alloy, 925 parts silver to 75 parts alloy, usually copper. Coin silver contains less silver, but
is still worth something. Nickel
silver, German silver, and pewter have no silver content at all. If you see the word Plate or Silver
Plate, the piece is silver plated over a cheaper metal like brass, and no one
will buy it for scrap. English
silver is easiest to evaluate because there are at least four marks: quality
(sterling is sometimes shown as a lion), a maker’s mark identifying the shop
where it was made, a mark identifying the assay office where it was evaluated,
and a mark for the reigning monarch when the piece was assayed. Unfortunately,
many countries do not have the documentation traditions the English do. Also,
the weight of silverware knives can be deceiving; they are usually die formed
from thin silver sheet and then filled with resin to add weight.
The quality mark for gold is a number followed by a K for
karat, which means the percentage of gold in the alloy. 18K (75% gold), 14K
(58%), and 10K (42%) are common in jewelry. Pure gold is 24K and too soft to be used for jewelry, but
can be found in coins. Asian
cultures prefer 22K gold (very yellow, but very soft) and dental gold is
18K. If the mark has a number
followed by GF, that means it is gold fill, or primarily a base metal like
brass with a thin sheet of gold fused to the surface and therefore junk. Also, please keep in mind that buyers
never offer 100% of the market price.
You are selling scrap that will have to be refined before it is sold
again.
Weight Measurement
After quality,
gold and silver scrap prices are determined by weight. The jewelry world uses two measuring
systems, grams (metric) and troy ounces (unique to the jewelry trade). If you
have a gram scale, weigh what you have, stones and all. If you don’t have a gram scale, you
could weigh the gold on a letter scale. HOWEVER, do not confuse the avoirdupois
ounce (used by the US Postal Service) for troy ounces; they are different
systems. (To convert avoirdupois
to troy ounces, multiply the weight of gold or silver by .91146.) If you don’t have a small scale to
weigh your jewelry, I would avoid selling it online. It’s better to sell to someone who weighs and evaluates the
quality in front of you.
Valuing Stones
If the jewelry contains stones, especially bigger diamonds,
check them out with a reputable jeweler. Used diamonds are a whole other market
and their value is determined by cut, clarity and carat weight. (Carat is
another specialty weight system unique to gemstones.) If the stones are quite
large, a certified appraisal might be worth the money just to know what you
have. A written appraisal by a certified appraiser costs around $100.
Finding a Buyer
I sell scrap metal on a regular basis directly to
refineries, but most only buy and sell to established businesses that have
accounts with them. I always weigh
the scrap on my scales before sending it in. Recently several people have asked
me where an ordinary person should go to sell gold jewelry. I decided to do
some sleuthing and checked out some places in the Seattle area.
The first place
I went to was Bellevue Rare Coins on
NE 4th Street in downtown Bellevue; my husband found them by Googling
Where to Sell Gold Coins/Seattle.
The family-owned and -operated company opened its first store, West Seattle Coins, in 1979. They are
experts on coins, precious metals, and estate jewelry. Their website offers helpful advice and
they give free verbal appraisals.
I brought two early 20th century American silver
dollars and some old Chinese coins.
They offered me a fair price on the silver dollars but were not
interested in buying the Chinese coins. Although the coins are very old, they
aren’t rare because many were minted.
They gave me a receipt for the silver coins and paid me in cash. Thumbs up to Bellevue Rare Coins! It
was a very pleasant experience.
My second
choice was American Gold in the
South Center Mall area, a company that employs people to stand on street
corners and wave signs at cars driving by. I found the store in the back of an empty strip mall, hidden
from the street and up a stairwell.
I got as far as the stairs and hesitated. I realized that no one from
the street could see me enter with gold or leave with cash. It was a perfect hold-up situation and
gave me the creeps. Many years of
working in the jewelry biz have taught me to be paranoid. They might be legit,
but the location felt wrong, even in broad daylight. American Gold????? I kept moving.
Warning: don’t enter
any establishment that is hidden from public view or gives you the creeps.
Trust your instincts and take a friend.
My third stop
was Renton Cash for Gold, located in
a room about the size of a closet on the side of a gas station on Rainier
Avenue, a very busy street. The
entrance was visible from the street and there were lots of folks at the gas
station mini-mart, so I felt safe.
I dressed down for this session, yoga clothes and no jewelry. I presented a pleasant gentleman
sitting at a desk behind a security door with a baggie of stuff: three silver
costume jewelry pieces; a small, old gold ring with rubies and an emerald; and
a ring I made for my mom in the 1980s of 14K gold set with a large piece of
bright green jade and five high quality small diamonds on the side. Since I made it, I knew what it was
worth.
The gentleman went through the usual tests. First, he
touched all the pieces with a magnet to see if they had any iron content. When
nothing stuck to the magnet, he examined each piece with a jeweler’s loupe,
searching for quality marks. Then he sorted the silver pieces into a pile and
rubbed each one on a black touchstone until they left a mark. He then applied drops of nitric acid to
each mark and none of them fizzed. (Fizzing indicates the strong presence of
more lowly metals like copper or brass.) Then he rubbed the two gold rings on
another black touchstone and applied a drop from a different bottle of acid (a
mixture of nitric and hydrochloric) to those marks. No fizzing again, a good
sign.
Last he weighed
the silver pieces all together on a digital scale and punched some numbers into
a calculator. Then he did the same
with the two gold rings, stones and all, and offered me 6 bucks for the silver
junk and $200 for the two gold rings.
I laughed and said I’d keep them for that. When he asked me why I laughed, I explained that I had
made the jade ring and knew the value of the stones and karat and weight of the
gold. He raised his offer to $500
even after I told him I didn’t want to sell. We had a candid chat after that and he admitted he knew
nothing about stones.
Because he used
orthodox methods for testing gold and silver content, I told him I would
recommend him to a friend who has some gold to sell and I will, if all she has
to sell is gold jewelry without stones or antique value. However, he never told me the price he
was paying for scrap, so there is no way to compare his prices with online sites. His prices also seemed to be
negotiable. What’s my verdict on Renton Cash for Gold? The owner is honest, but
ignorant about jewelry. If you are
going to go that route, be a comparative shopper and get other quotes.
A Word for Posterity
Finally, I want
to put in a word for posterity.
The history of gold and silver jewelry has been compromised because
every time there is a war, recession or depression, people tend to yank the
stones from the settings and melt down the metal for money. That is probably why we have no
surviving hat ornaments made by the famous Italian Renaissance jeweler Benvenuto
Cellini although he claimed in his autobiography he made hundreds of them. King
Henry VIII was notorious for having the royal gems pulled from jewelry every
time he remarried, reusing the same stones in gifts for his new queen. It was good business for the Tudor
period jewelers, but bad for the history of jewelry.
Please be careful you aren’t destroying something that has
value as art. Do your homework,
and let the jewelry and its history live on.
