A short guide to jewellery identification, weighing and valuation of scrap gold jewellery.
Introduction
This document is intended for the jeweller / pawnbroker / scrap gold buyer, however the general public can and should read this if they are thinking of selling their scrap gold jewellery. It talks about the market value of gold, and how to translate that into the value of scrap gold. We then discuss how to identify and value scrap gold jewellery.
The Current Gold Market Value
There are four prices which you could use to value scrap gold jewellery. Three are a good idea, and one is a bad idea.
Fix Price
There are two fixes for gold every working day. The AM Fix and the PM Fix. Both of these prices are useful and it is up to you which one you choose. The Fix Prices provide a snapshot of the current trading price of gold at a particular point in time and whilst the prices are set in London, they set the standard for the gold price globally. The table below shows the current fix prices for Gold, Silver, Platinum & Palladium.
The Fixes are presented in Troy Ounces, but you can quite easily use the table below to get the Fix prices in grams should you prefer.
| LatestFix | Updated | |
|---|---|---|
| Gold | 1944.200 | 19 Apr 2024 |
| Silver | 23.120 | 19 Apr 2024 |
| Platinum | 762.250 | 19 Apr 2024 |
| Palladium | 831.500 | 19 Apr 2024 |
If you wish to set the prices you pay for the day, the AM fix is usually the best price to go by because the fix is released at approximately 11:00AM UK time every day.
Spot Price, Bid, Ask & Spread Explained
There are two spot prices, Bid and Ask. In order to quickly explain what these mean, I will provide a comparison with a car dealership.
If you sell a car to a dealership, they will buy the car from you at the Bid Price. If you wanted to buy that car back from the dealership, they would charge you the ASK price for the car. article on USA Today. The spread is the difference between the two (dealer margins).
As a scrap gold buyer, you are not selling the gold back to the customer. You are selling the gold on to a refiner. And the refiner will pay you based on the BID price.
As such, a gold buyer should base their prices on the BID price if you wish to calculate the current market value of gold when valuing your jewellery.
The ask price can be obtained from many sources, however some are more accurate than others. At Goldealers, we like to use NetDania for the most accurate and up-to-date prices. Other sources for Gold Spot Prices include BullionVault.com or Kitco.
Troy ounces to Grams
As you are purchasing your gold by the gram, you will need to convert the Fix / Spot price to grams. For the purposes of this example, let’s assume that the Fix Price is £1000.00 per troy ounce. You will now have to do a bit of maths to convert or just use the fix table above…
1 ozt = 31.10347g This means that if 1ozt gold is worth £1000.00, then 31.10347g of gold is also worth £1000.00 Therefore... 1g of pure gold is worth £1000.00 / 31.10347 = £32.15
Allow for impurities
As a rule of thumb, we always allow for 1% of impurities such as stones, bolt springs, dust, dirt, soap etc.
Assuming that you are looking to buy or sell 50g of 9ct gold. You are actually purchasing approximately 49.5g of 9ct gold.
50 * 99 / 100 = 49.5g
Work out How much Pure Gold you have
If you can determine the carat of the jewellery, then you can work out how much pure gold that you have.
Continuing the example of the 50g 9ct bracelet and allowing for the 1% of impurities…
49.5 * 9 / 24 = 18.56g
As such, a 50g 9ct bracelet contains approximately 18.56g of gold.
Calculate the market value
You have worked out the gold price per gram of £32.15, and you know that you have 18.56g of pure gold. So the market value of your scrap gold is
18.56 * 32.15 = £596.70
How much should I pay, How much can I sell?
Firstly, Gold is extremely liquid – It is just like money. Gold has a high intrinsic value, and is very easily converted to cash at very near it’s market value.
Imagine people selling a £50 note for £20 – This just doesn’t happen.
Goldealers Ltd pay the general public over 94% of the market value for Scrap Gold, and pay the trade over 97.5% of the market value.
After we have refined your gold, we sell it on at around 98.5% of the market value, meaning a spread of 1% from the Trade, or 4.5% from the general public.
Goldealers Ltd need to purchase £1,000,000 worth of gold to make a £45,000 gross profit. Naturally this profit is eaten into when you take into account marketing and general business costs. We can do this because we keep costs low, rely on recommendation and are in the fortunate position where we quite simply purchase kilos of gold on a daily basis.
