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Many jewellers & dealers advertising to buy scrap gold jewellery in the UK are ripping people off with low prices & misleading claims.
The £1 Billion Scrap Gold Buying Rip Off
 The world supply of scrap gold for recycling was 586 tonnes of fine gold in the first quarter of 2009. This equates to about £44 billion at current prices.
It is difficult to know what proportion of this came from the UK, but even if was as little as 2% to 3%, this would work out at over £2 billion in the UK.
From our brief research, many small traders are paying about half the true value for scrap gold, meaning that UK owners of gold scrap are being ripped-off by £1 billion per annum.
We buy gold coins at higher prices than our competitors
Our Advice
Our advice to owners of scrap gold and second-hand jewellery is to shop around, but more importantly find out the weight (most people use grams), of your gold, know what carat it is, and make sure you get a sensible price for it.
When we have more time, we may provide a gold carat calculator, but until then, you can always work out the value of any gold you own.
Remember there are 31.1035 grams per troy ounce.
Live gold price showing the spot price of troy ounces in various currencies.
Divide the troy ounce price by 31.1035 to convert to a price per gram.
For carat golds, multiply by the caratage and divide by 24, so for example £ x 9 /24 = intrinsic value of 9 carat gold.
If the fineness is expressed as a percentage or millesimally (9ct =37.5% or .375) the calculation is even easier (£ x .375).
Recycling Costs
Nobody in their right mind is going to pay you the full intrinsic value of scrap gold, because there are refining costs, and other losses and expenses to deduct. For example hallmarks are often faked on gold-plated base metal jewellery, so scrap needs to be checked, and often acid-tested. There are also other losses. Dirt and contamination often account for about 1% loss. American jewellery manufacturers are legally allowed a half carat tolerance, which they usually take advantage of, so that 10 karat gold is often only 9.5 carats (that is a 5% loss on its own).
The scrap buyer expects to make a profit, so if you have scrap gold to sell, you should hope to get about 90% of its intrinsic value. For smaller amounts you should expect about 80% to 85%, while for large and regular quantities, of clean well-sorted scrap, a trade seller might achieve around 95%.
Our research shows that many jewellers and market traders are only paying between 15% and 60% of the true value.
Typical Scrap Gold Categories
- Nine Carat (9ct) Hallmarked Gold
- Nine Carat (9ct) Unhallmarked Gold
- Fourteen Carat (14ct) Hallmarked Gold
- Fourteen Carat (14ct) Unhallmarked Gold
- Fifteen Carat (15ct) Hallmarked Gold
- Fifteen Carat (15ct) Unhallmarked Gold
- Eighteen Carat (18ct) Hallmarked Gold
- Eighteen Carat (18ct) Unhallmarked Gold
- Twenty Two Carat (22ct) Hallmarked Gold
- Twenty Two Carat (22ct) Unhallmarked Gold
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