Even though the economy seems like it might be on the rebound lately, the price of gold is still as high as ever. At over $1000 an ounce at the time of the writing of this article, it is still a great time to sell your old gold scrap for cash. This is one of the main reasons that selling scrap gold is still on the rise. If you want to sell gold without getting ripped off there a few things you need to do first. First of all you need to understand what qualifies as scrap gold, where and who to sell it to, and how much you should get for your scrap gold. Once you finish reading this article you should have all the knowledge you need to go out and get cash for your gold.
What Is Scrap Gold?
Before you do anything, you need to know what exactly scrap gold is. Scrap is defined as “discarded waste material, especially metal suitable for reprocessing” which means basically any unwanted or leftover gold that can still be reused by smelting it down and reforging it. Some items that qualify as scrap gold:
- Bent or broken gold jewelry
- Bracelets or chains that are unable to be untangled
- Casting gold and grain
- Gold cluster rings
- Gold alloys
- Gold bullion
- Gold chains
- Gold coins
- Gold bars
- Gold dental crowns and bridgework
- Gold dust and sweeps
- Gold earrings
- Gold flake
- Gold ingots
- Gold nuggets
- Gold pins/brooches
- Gold screen and mesh
- Gold sheet
- Gold shot
- Gold sizing stock
- Gold solder
- Gold sponge
- Gold wedding bands or class rings
- Gold wire
- Any scrap metal that contains traces of gold
- Goldsmith’s bench filings and sweeps
- Any gold jewelery with missing stones
- Gold wrist watches (like a Rolex, although you might be better selling it off to a jeweler)
- Polishing and buffing dust that contains gold particles
- Gold catalyst from petroleum processors and the like
Figuring Out How Much Your Scrap Gold Is Worth
To find your scrap gold value you’ll need some simple math skills and a scale, preferable a jewelers scale but a standard kitchen scale will also work. Gold refiners and dealers conduct their gold transactions in pennyweights which means if you’re using a kitchen scale you will have to convert from ounces or grams. One ounce equals twenty pennyweights and one and a half grams equals one pennyweight. Once you figure out the weight of your gold scrap, you need to find the current spot price of gold. You can find the current price of gold on the chart on the right side of the page. The price is in ounces so divide that by 20 and you have your value in pennyweights. But this is for pure gold. Scrap gold is almost never 24 karats so you won’t get that price for it but it will give you a rough estimate to go by. Or if you want to be more accurate and you already know the karats of your scrap, use the chart here.
Selling Scrap Gold For Cash
So now that you’ve gathered up your scrap gold and have figured out how much it is worth, you’re ready to pick out who you are going to sell to. For scrap gold there are really only two places you can sell to: gold refiners and gold dealers. Gold dealers are the middlemen that will buy your gold and sell it to the refiners. Often times they are not the best choice as many refiners will let you sell to them directly. If you do this you don’t have to pay the middleman fee and can get a better price for your gold.
Scrap gold refiners are those companies that you see in the commercials offering to buy your unwanted gold jewelry and scrap for cash. You can find refineries all over the place if you know what to look for. Try you yellow pages first and see if there are any local gold refiners in your area. You can also check online as there are many many sites that will send you an envelope in which you send them your gold and they give you an offer. Usually this isn’t the best course of action as their offer will almost always be at least 30% lower than what you could get in a brick and mortar refinery. There are reports of even lower offers than that. If you must go with one of the refiners that want you to send in your gold first before you get an offer, always reject their first offer by calling them up. If you did the research earlier in to how much your scrap gold should be worth you can make a good argument and they should give you a better offer. If not you can just request that they send it all back and you can try another refiner.
The important thing to remember is to only deal with reputable and established companies. This becomes even more obvious with those companies that you must deal with by mail. Many reputable companies will have a gold calculator on their websites so you will know in advance the amount that you are likely to receive and, more importantly, the best gold buying companies will offer a price guarantee. Following this advice can help you avoid falling for scam websites and companies.
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