When it is time to dig into the jewelry box to sell gold jewelry for cash, there are some things you need to know about the gold exchange for cash and how to get
cash for gold that makes sense for you. As an educated retail buyer, you often check out the store ads to see the price at which different retailers are offering the same product. In the gold buying world, it's a bit more difficult because there is less advertising to enable you to compare prices without going all over town to various gold buying shops. However, an easy way to do your comparisons is to check out websites that
publish their cash gold rates which allows you to compare their price of gold to other sites or stores. You should also know the price of gold for that current day and there are great gold reference sites like Kitco.com.
This site will give you the current price of gold for the current day and guidance for the future trend of the price of gold. Of course you also need to know the quality of the gold when selling gold jewelry. You must compare the same piece on each site or store. If for example, you have a 14k gold necklace, you need to also know its weight in grams or pennyweights. Sites that allow you to convert from gram to pennyweight can be trusted because they aren't using the pennyweight conversion to confuse the sale. Once you know your gold content (i.e. 14k is 585 parts of 1000 of pure gold), you need to understand that this is not 24K gold (1000 parts of 1000) but a lesser portion of gold. The gold will be weighed and valued based on its gold content. The gold buyer will also weigh and test the content of the gold through the use of various gold testing comments. The most common gold testing method is an acid test that allows the gold buyer to determine, 1) if the piece is real gold or a fake, and 2) the content of the gold in the piece, i.e. 10k, 14k, 18k or 22k (gold is rarely if ever used at 24k in jewelry.)
For gold buyer websites with a solid reputation as demonstrated by referrals or the
BBB, you can trust that they will properly test, weigh and evaluate your gold. Thus, many people send in their gold to
trusted sites in a jumbled heap of gold and costume jewelry straight out of the jewelry box. This will leave the issue of sorting and evaluating the gold and non-gold to the gold buyer. Without definitive weights and gold contents, you must therefore trust the site operator. It's a lot more work to sort the gold from the non-gold, but this is an easy way to simply get it done and have someone else handle the messy work. We have many packs that come in that are 90% costume jewelry with little or no gold content, but it saves the consumer much effort in doing the sorting and testing themselves. We always offer this service as an option to our customers and they seem to appreciate the effort as it is a free service.
In the gold buying business, it comes down to trust and customer service. Everyone wants cash for gold quickly, but you need to be a smart seller. If you know your seller and others have validated their credentials then you will have a much higher chance of successfully getting the most cash when you sell your old jewelry. Be smart and find a gold buyer that you can trust. It takes all the worry out of the process!