Selling Scrap Gold Online

July 11, 2011 - by mosesbet · Filed Under Sell Gold Leave a Comment

In case you are in need of some extra cash, selling scrap gold is an easy way of making some quick bucks. Despite so many economic ups and downs, gold prices have been rising steadily. This is a great time to clean out your jewelry box and sell scrap gold to make a significant amount of money. You can sell your scrap gold in the comfort of your home on internet. Before you go ahead, you need to know what exactly qualifies as scrap gold and how to calculate its value.

Things that Qualify as Scrap Gold

Anything that contains gold can be called scrap gold. This includes things like broken or bent jewelry, damaged gold coins, gold jewelry with missing stones, gold wire, gold sheets, gold brooches/pins, gold flakes, gold plating, placer gold, damaged gold watches, dental crowns made of gold as well as gold alloys.

Scrap gold covers everything from which gold can be recovered. If something containing gold is damaged or broken and cannot be restored to its earlier form, it makes sense to sell the gold content in it as scrap. Although this will not give you the face value of the article, you can recover its gold value. As far as scrap gold is concerned, the state of the article does not matter, only its gold content matters.

Steps to Calculate the Value of Your Scrap Gold

In order to ensure that you are not fooled by dealers, you need to have an approximate idea about the value of your scrap gold. The first thing you need to do is separate all the scrap gold into different categories based on purity/fineness, for instance 14k, 18k and 22k. If you are not sure about the purity of an article, you can get it assessed by a jeweler/dealer or conduct an acid test on your own.

The stone and acid required for acid test can be bought from any jewelry suppliers. Once you have the supplies, all you need to do is rub the gold article you need to test on the stone and put appropriate acid on it. For instance, if you think that a gold ring is 18k, but you are not sure, you can rub it on the stone and put a drop of 18k acid on the mark left by it. If there is no change of color, it means that the purity of ring is 18k or more. You can once again conduct the test with 22k acid, this time if the mark turns brown, it will confirm that the ring is 18k.

Once you have separated your scrap gold into different categories, you need to weigh each group. You will need a jeweler’s gram scale for this, which can also be obtained from jeweler suppliers. The final step is to find out the current gold price. This is readily available on internet or in newspaper. Calculate per gram price and find out price for each carat group. Finally multiply the price for each group with its weight. This will give you the value of your scrap gold.

Tips to Sell Your Scrap Gold

Scrap gold can either be sold online or offline. If you need instant money, you may approach local jewelers, but they may not offer the best price. In case you have an old gold coin, it is best to take it to a coin dealer than a jeweler as its numismatic value may be higher than its gold value. You may get best prices for scrap gold online, but you need to be extra cautious. Auction on sites like eBay is also a good option to sell your scrap gold.

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