Best Place to Sell Gold Rings and Jewelry: What Each Pays

Everyone else writing this article wants to buy your gold.

Search for where to sell gold jewellery and the results are a local map pack, a Reddit thread, two general finance sites, and then page after page of gold buyers explaining why the best place to sell gold is, as it happens, them. That is not dishonest exactly, but it does mean almost nobody is comparing the options neutrally with real numbers attached.

This site does not buy gold. It prices it. So here is the comparison.

The six options, and what each pays

The figures below are shares of melt value — the raw metal value of your piece, which you can work out exactly on our weight calculator or read off the scrap page.

Two things to take from that table.

Nobody pays 100% of melt. Melt value is what the gold is worth after refining, and refining costs money. A buyer also takes a margin and carries the risk that a lot assays lower than the hallmarks suggest. If someone advertises “we pay 100% of spot”, read the terms.

The spread between the best and worst option is roughly double. On a 50-gram lot that is a difference worth an afternoon of effort.

Which of two piles are you actually holding?

This is the decision that matters most and it comes before choosing a buyer.

Pile one: metal. Broken chains, odd earrings, worn bands, unmarked modern pieces, anything bent or snapped. This is scrap. Its value is weight × purity × spot, and your job is simply to find whoever pays the highest percentage of that.

Pile two: objects. Signed work from a recognised house, period jewellery with good craftsmanship, anything with a certificated stone above roughly a carat. These routinely sell second hand for several times their melt value, and a scrap buyer will weigh them and quote melt without mentioning it. They are not cheating you — buying metal is their business — but you would be throwing away the difference.

Check inside every band and on the back of every clasp with a loupe before you commit anything to pile one. A maker’s mark with a serial number beside it means get it appraised. Our page on jewellery retail value against melt goes into which pieces beat melt and why.

Selling a ring, a chain or earrings

Most people searching for where to sell gold are holding one particular thing. Here is what changes by item.

A gold ring. Look inside the band first: the karat stamp tells you the purity, and a maker’s mark beside it may move the ring into pile two. A plain band with no mark is scrap, and the best place to sell it is a dedicated gold buyer or a mail-in buyer. A plain wedding band runs 3 to 7 grams depending on width and size, so work out its value by weight before you get a quote. A stone-set ring is weighed for its metal and the stone weight comes off. If the stone is worth having appraised, have a jeweller take it out and sell the two separately: the metal to a gold buyer, the stone to someone who values stones.

A chain or necklace. Almost always scrap unless it is signed, and weight is everything: a light chain is 2 to 5 grams, a heavy curb chain 20 to 50. Clasps and jump rings are usually gold and count towards the weight. Hollow chains look heavier than they are, so weigh rather than guess. Check the clasp tag for GF or 1/20, because gold filled chains are common and have almost no scrap value.

Earrings and small pieces. A pair of studs is often under a gram, so on their own they are rarely worth a trip. Check the backs separately, because replacement backs are often silver or plated, then sell them alongside anything else of the same karat.

Walking through the options

Refiners

Closest to the metal and therefore the best rate, but most will not deal with an individual carrying one ring. They work in kilo quantities, pay on assay rather than on your hallmark count, and settle in days rather than cash on the spot. If you are liquidating an estate or clearing a collection, this is your tier — see the bulk pricing page for how assay and settlement actually work at that scale.

Mail-in buyers

Often the best rate available to an ordinary seller, because they are a step closer to refining than a high street counter. The trade-off is that you post your gold and wait.

Do it properly: photograph every piece with its weight before it goes, use a tracked and insured service, and confirm the return policy before posting. Any reputable operator sends an offer you are free to decline with your gold returned at their cost. One that does not say so in writing is not one to use.

Dedicated gold buyers

The best balance for most people with ordinary scrap. Better rates than a pawn shop, cash the same day, and they will test in front of you. Get two quotes — rates genuinely differ, and a written quote from one is the most effective lever you have at the next.

Pawn shops

The lowest rate of the mainstream options, for a structural reason rather than a predatory one: metal is a sideline to a lending business, and the shop has to hold, insure and eventually consolidate what it buys. Our post on what a pawn shop actually pays breaks the economics down.

Worth knowing: pawning is a loan, not a sale. If you have no intention of redeeming the piece, say so and ask for a purchase price instead. The purchase figure is usually higher.

Jewellers

Unpredictable for scrap — some buy it keenly, some decline, some quote poorly because it is not their business. But for pile two they are often the right answer, especially for a piece carrying their own mark. Many offer better terms on exchange against a new purchase than on a cash sale.

Auction and consignment

Slow, and the fees are real, but it is the only route that captures what a piece is worth as an object rather than as metal. Reserve it for genuinely collectable items. For a broken chain it is a waste of everyone’s time.

Before you go anywhere

A short list that is worth more than choosing the right buyer:

1. Sort by karat. 10k, 14k and 18k in one bag gets priced near the 10k rate. The stamps are 417, 585 and 750, and the karat guide covers the rest.
2. Weigh it yourself on a scale reading to 0.01 g and write the figure down.
3. Work out the melt value so you are comparing offers against a number rather than against a feeling.
4. Pull out anything stamped GF, GP, HGE or 1/20. That is filled or plated, not solid, and it has essentially no scrap value.
5. Do not clean anything. It is going to be melted.
6. Get two quotes. Always.

How to tell a fair offer from a bad one

Compare the offer against the right tier, not against melt value. A pawn shop offering 60% of melt is making a normal offer for a pawn shop. A dedicated buyer offering 60% is not.

Real warning signs are procedural rather than numerical: a quote given before your gold has been weighed in front of you, a refusal to let you watch the test, a single blended price for a mixed-karat bag, or pressure to decide immediately. Any of those, walk.

For a second opinion from sources with no stake in the transaction, AARP and NerdWallet both have sensible general guides. The underlying spot price they and everyone else works from is benchmarked twice daily in London by the LBMA.

Does timing matter?

Less than people think. Over a few weeks the swing in the gold price is usually smaller than the difference between two buyers’ offers, so a second quote is a more reliable way to get more money than waiting is. Our price history page plots the daily closes we record ourselves if you want to see the recent movement.

The exception is if you are holding enough that a few percent matters in absolute terms. At that point you are in refiner territory anyway, and the price-fixing date in the contract matters more than the week you walk in.