Cash For Gold? Tread Carefully
By Lesley Gregory October 29, 2020
With the gold price hitting record highs, it may be tempting to take part in a new gold rush by turning your old or unwanted jewelry into cash. A swag of dealers is out there panning for gold: “We buy gold jewelry!”, “Cash for gold!”, “Sell your scrap gold!”, the internet ads shout.
We’ve seen this before. A decade ago, as gold approached a high just under $US2000, gold buyers were even spruiking for business from “pop-up” stalls in shopping malls and hosting Tupperware-style “gold parties”.
The gold price has now topped that record, but before you hand over Aunty Ruby’s gold bracelet or that “bit too bling” birthday gift to be melted down and recycled, there are a few things you should consider.
Know The Value Of Your Gold
Weigh the gold jewelry you want to sell. While gold is measured in troy ounces, you’ll do this in grams – and you should ask the buyer to put their offer to you as a price per gram. Working in grams simplifies things as there’s a difference between the troy ounces in which gold is measured and the avoirdupois ounces you’re used to working with elsewhere (a troy ounce is 31.1 grams, while a standard ounce is 28.4 grams).
Next, consider the purity of the gold in your jewelry. Pure gold is 24 carats, so 18carat gold is 75 per cent pure and 9carat gold is 37.5 per cent pure. (If you have more than one piece, separate your items into piles of the same purity before weighing each pile separately.) Now you can multiply the weight by the purity to come up with how much gold you actually have. For example, 100 grams of 18carat gold jewelry would melt down to 75 grams of gold.
Last, you need to multiply the amount of pure gold by the prevailing gold price. You can find the price per gram on a site like this. At the time of writing gold was about $US61 per gram or about £47. Bear in mind that these are “spot” market numbers, and the currency and gold traders will necessarily build in a profit margin for themselves, lowering these numbers. A rule of thumb is that you should expect about 80 per cent of the spot price.
Know Who You’re Dealing With
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