Sort your gold by its karat stamp, set aside signed or antique pieces and anything with stones, and note the weight of each group in grams. A fair scrap offer starts from pure gold weight, which is the weight times the karat percentage, priced against the live spot price. Ask for that offer in writing, broken out by karat, so you can compare buyers on the same numbers.
Set up a sorting table at home
A kitchen table, a bright lamp, a magnifier and some small zip bags or envelopes are enough. Spread a dark towel first so small earrings and charms do not roll off, and work through one jewelry box at a time.
Make four piles: pieces with a gold karat stamp, pieces with a gold-filled or plated mark, pieces with no mark, and pieces you may want to keep or sell as jewelry. Treat the unmarked pile as unknown, since stamps wear away on old rings and clasps and some handmade gold never had one.
Split each stamped pile again by karat. Label the bags 10K, 14K, 18K and so on. If a scale in the house reads grams, write each bag's weight on the outside. Those numbers tell you more about your gold than any ad or phone quote can.
Keep earring backs, posts and charms in the same bag as the pieces they came from. Small parts can be a different karat or a different metal, and we test them on their own so nothing light gets lost or mispriced.
What the marks tell you
Karat stamps hide in small places: inside a ring band, on the tongue of a clasp, on the small tag by a chain's clasp or on the loop of a pendant. American pieces usually use a K. European and older pieces often use a three-digit number that stands for parts of gold per thousand.
Read every character in the mark. A stamp that starts with a karat number and ends in GF or RGP describes a thin gold layer over base metal, and those pieces hold very little gold.
Color does not change the math. A white, rose or yellow 14K ring is 58.3% gold whichever shade it is, because the other metals in the alloy set the color. A stamp of 925 or STERLING means silver, even when the surface has a gold wash on it.
| Mark | What it means | How it sells |
|---|---|---|
| 10K or 417 | 41.7% gold | Scrap gold, by weight |
| 14K or 585 | 58.3% gold | Scrap gold, by weight |
| 18K or 750 | 75% gold | Scrap gold, by weight |
| 22K | 91.6% gold | Scrap gold, by weight |
| 24K | 99.9% gold | Scrap gold, by weight |
| GF, GP, HGE or RGP | Gold-filled or gold-plated | Very little gold, so little or no scrap price |
| No mark | Unknown until tested | Tested in front of you, then grouped with its karat |
Working out the gold inside your pieces
Scrap gold is priced on the pure gold it contains. To find that, multiply the weight of each karat group by its gold percentage. The answer is pure gold weight, and dividing grams by 31.1035 turns it into troy ounces. A troy ounce is 31.1035 grams, heavier than the ounce on a kitchen scale, so set a home scale to grams before you write anything on the bags.
Many gold buyers quote in pennyweights, written dwt. Say your 14K chains weigh 10 dwt together. At 1.555 grams per pennyweight, that is 15.55 grams. Multiply by 58.3% and you get about 9.07 grams of pure gold, or roughly 0.29 troy ounces.
Pure gold weight times the live spot price per troy ounce gives the melt value. Buyers pay a share of melt, since refining and resale cost money, but a fair offer should trace back to those numbers without any mystery. If a buyer will not show you the karat, weight and spot price behind a figure, you have nothing to check it against.
Here is a second example. A men's 18K ring weighing 12 grams holds 9 grams of pure gold, since 18K is 75% gold. A 10K ring of the same weight holds about 5 grams, which is why karat sorting changes an offer so much.
Weight on the scale that is not gold
A piece of jewelry rarely weighs the same as the gold in it. Diamonds, colored stones, pearls and glass add weight. So do steel springs inside some clasps, pin stems on brooches, and the movement and crystal of a watch. A good buyer accounts for those parts and tells you how.
Stones make the biggest difference. A buyer can weigh the gold alone after the stones come out, or estimate the stone weight and subtract it. Ask which method was used and look for it on the written list. If a stone might be a diamond, have a jeweler look at it before you sell the ring for its gold.
Gold watches need a careful look. The case and band may be solid gold while the inner works are not, and some watches have gold-filled cases that look the same at a glance. We test the case, weigh the gold parts, and set aside signed or antique watches that may be worth more as watches, and we say so.
Hollow pieces fool people the other way. A wide bangle or a puffy hoop earring can look heavy and weigh very little, because the gold is a thin shell around air. The scale, and not the size of the piece, sets the gold price.
How to compare gold offers fairly
Two buyers can quote very different numbers for the same box of gold, and both can sound reasonable on the phone. To compare them, put both offers on the same footing: the same karat groups, the same weights and the same spot price.
A lowball offer usually hides in one of a few places. The karat gets called lower than it is, the weight gets rounded down or measured where you cannot see, or the whole box gets one lump price so nothing can be checked. Put these questions to anyone who wants your gold.
Spot gold moves through the trading day, so two quotes taken hours apart can differ for that reason alone. Write down the spot figure each buyer names next to their offer, and the comparison will be fair.
- Which spot price is the offer based on, and from what time today?
- Is the price per gram, per pennyweight or per troy ounce?
- Will each karat group be tested and weighed where I can watch?
- How are stones and non-gold parts handled?
- Can I have the offer in writing, by karat group, and take it home?
Pieces we set aside and scrap that surprises people
Our offers on jewelry cover the gold in it. Signed pieces and antique jewelry can be worth more as jewelry, so we set those aside and tell you, and you decide whether to sell them to us for their gold or take them to a jeweler or an auction house first.
A gold coin in a pendant or ring mount is two things at once. We price the coin on its own, by its type and gold content and any collector demand, and we price the mount by karat and weight.
Crowns and bridges are usually a gold alloy, and they sell by weight once tested. Class rings, single earrings, broken chains and bent bands all count as scrap by the gram. A snapped clasp or a kinked chain brings the same gold price as a whole piece of equal weight and karat.
At our appointments each karat group goes through non-destructive testing (no acid, no scratching) and is then weighed on a calibrated scale in front of you. Pricing tracks the live spot price, and each group gets its own line. Accept it and you are paid that same visit, or decline and take everything home with the written list.
Gold jewelry and Denver's gold history
Denver started as a gold town. Prospectors found gold near where Cherry Creek meets the South Platte River in 1858, the Pikes Peak gold rush of 1858 and 1859 followed, and the camps along those banks grew into the city. Clark, Gruber and Co. struck its own gold coins here in 1860 and 1861, and the State Capitol dome is covered in Colorado gold leaf, first applied in 1908.
The gold in metro jewelry boxes today runs from 10K class rings to 18K chains stamped 750. A Cherry Creek or Bonnie Brae estate might add a signed bracelet or an old pocket watch on a chain. A ranch house in Wheat Ridge or Thornton might hold a drawer of single earrings, outgrown rings and a small jar of dental gold. Each of those piles gets sorted by stamp and tested before a number goes on paper, so a 10K ring and an 18K chain are never weighed together. Highlands Ranch and Parker estates often bring 14K wedding sets and charm bracelets from several generations in one box.
We buy gold jewelry by private appointment across the Denver metro and Boulder, with no counter and no one waiting behind you. Bring your sorted bags and a photo ID issued by the government, and we will test and weigh each group with you at the table. Call 303-401-0104 and we will call back the same business day. If an estate has drawers full of jewelry, ask about a home visit and the pieces can stay put.