Selling your jewellery - navigating a mine-field is easier!

If you have jewellery to sell, what's the best way of going about it? Ben here to help steer you through the various options - I've been working with jewellers, auction houses, bullion dealers and online marketplaces for decades and I know all the tricks! Here's some free advice (buckle in, its a deep dive!)

Do your research

Knowledge is power and if you know what you have, you're in a better position from the start. You could spend a long time learning how to read hallmarks (blog post to follow on hallmarks soon!) but to learn the basics is fairly easy. Having said that, not everything is marked and as long as you follow the rest of my advice don't worry too much. If you have something unusual or a signed piece for example then google can help you find other examples on sale (or more usefully, similar items that have actually sold via auction etc).  You can of course look up similar items on Ebay but the rule here is, look at the sold items not the for sale items! Anyone can put a 50p piece with Paddington or something on ebay and list it for £50,000. It doesn't mean that its worth that much! Something is only worth what someone else is prepared to pay. You can do this by selecting "sold items" under "filter".

Bear in mind condition, in the antiques world you can generally knock a zero off the value of something if its damaged but with jewellery damage can affect the value in a lot of different ways - if its something that can be put right easily then the value shouldn't be badly affected.

Remember your economics at school? Its all about supply and demand, if you own something that is available in very low numbers, ie its rare then it usually follows that it will be more valuable...but! if not many people are in the market for it, it doesn't matter how rare it is.    

Next, understand the intrinsic value - if your item, especially when dealing with precious metal, eg if you have a 9 carat gold chain that weighs 20g then just the scrap value is Between £500 and £550 (at time of writing, beware, gold going up by the day!) so this is the start point for the value of your chain. You'll be doing well to sell it for more than this to a dealer or at auction but its a great place to start. Evaluating gemstones is a much tougher thing to do so you're a little bit in the lap of the gods! After you know the intrinsic value you can start to think about rarity, desirability, condition etc. And if its signed Cartier then forget about the weight! 

You can of course trust us to look after you! (Apologies for the shameless plug - and everyone says the same thing of course so you'll have to make up your own mind!)  

Finally, understand valuations. If you ask eg a jeweller to value a piece of jewellery you'll get a number, this number depends on what you're asking him - an insurance valuation is a huge, made up number to make you happy (in theory its the cost to have something re-made to the same specifications which invariably is expensive). If you ask him to buy the piece of jewellery though, you'll get another number! This second number is the true, wholesale, second hand value that he's prepared to pay. An auctioneer will give you another value, the price he thinks he'll achieve etc etc.  So just beware that just because you have a piece of paper with a price on, that is not the value!

Should you sell to a local or high street jeweller?

It depends. Just like any butchers, bakers or fishmongers on the high street, there are good ones and bad ones! Jewellers come in all shapes and sizes and as a rule, a small independent jeweller will usually be easier to work with and likely to offer more than say, a national chain (who will just look at you blankly). Rule of thumb - The swankier the joint, the more bills they have to pay and the less they want to deal with you! 

One thing to realise though is the sheer variability in prices for jewellery. Two identical 1 carat diamond rings could be £3000 in one shop and £6000 in another! There aren’t many other industries that just, frankly, make up prices based on what they think they can get! Our suggestion would be to go and get a quote or two but don't accept just because you have your head turned by a high price! At the time of writing, 9 carat gold can be scrapped for nearly £27 a gram (and double for 18ct etc) so that's your start point if you have something worth more than the metal value. You can always ask us for an opinion and we buy pretty much everything! 

Should you sell via auction?

This can work out fine…sometimes. But you really need to educate yourself before venturing down this path. Here’s an example – Let’s say you had a gold coin to sell and the scrap value of the gold was £300. An auctioneer will be very happy to sell this for you. You would rightly ask how much commission they would take – and after a little haggling you might agree on 20%. Great, job done you may say! - There's no hassle, they need to earn a bit as they are taking all the risks etc so that’s fair? So what happens now? Most gold coins are only worth the value of the gold content and the price they achieve is very predictable. So the hammer comes down and you’ve sold your coin. But here’s the catch. The auctioneer doesn’t always tell you that the buyer also pays a commission (20-30%). So if the coin is worth £300 and buyer commission is 25% then a buyer will bid £240 for it because £240 plus 25% is £300. They won’t pay more than this because they can buy as many identical coins as they like for £305 from a bullion dealer. So you get the hammer price minus your 20% seller fee or £192. The auctioneer gets £108. I wouldn't have said that's very fair. Especially as you might have to wait 3 months from consignment to receiving funds! We’d pay you £300 the same day we received your coin! Not that we're keen to buy coins, not really our thing, but you get the point!?   

Now let’s say you had a similar coin but it was 300 years old and very rare – this coin is worth more than just the gold content, it will be prized by a collector. In this instance a specialist coin auction could be the right way to sell, even with the aforementioned fees (which can ALWAYS be negotiated down if you have something good).

The same applies to all jewellery - auctioneers will tell you its the only thing doing well at the moment (mostly true), that their auctions are online and so seen by buyers over the whole world (mostly true) and that they'll get you the best price (sometimes) but make sure you ask the right questions and make them squirm a bit! A really good question to ask is "So hang on, you're charging me 15% and the buyer 25% so if the hammer price is £1000 then the buyer pays £1250, I end up with £850 and you get £400? Do you think that sounds fair!?"  

Again, we'd always be happy to give you some advice if you think you have something good. And if you do want to send it to auction, we could get you a better rate. Anyway, we would always help you make an informed decision on how to sell. 

Should you sell via eBay or online marketplace?

This definitely can be a good option if you are happy to put in the time and are ok with a little risk. We sell on eBay and other market places as these are open to the whole world and this means you can occasionally get some really good results. You’ll have heard horror stories about people pretending not to receive their item and so on and it’s true that eBay do generally side with the buyer, even if they are obviously a fraudster! But, its risk and reward and if you’re up to the challenge, eBay (and the others eg Etsy which is a bit more complicated to sign up to) can be a lot of fun!

Should you sell to a refinery/bullion dealer for the scrap price?

Sometimes this is your best bet. Until quite recently it was quite rare that we melted anything that wasn't broken or very poor quality - we can usually find homes for second hand jewellery. But as the gold price has gone through the roof several times over the last year or two its becoming impossible to sell some items for a profit. Example - if we bought a gold bracelet for the scrap price of say £500, 2 years ago, we could have happily asked £600 for it and had buyers lining up. Today though, that same bracelet could be worth £1000 just in scrap but our buyers don't know or care that the price of gold has gone up so much! So we might find that we'd never be able to get more than the scrap price as its still the same bracelet but its double the price than a year ago! So melting pots have been very full recently! It's a good idea to check with us first if in doubt. An antique or signed piece can still be worth more than just the gold price. 

Should you sell via cash for gold type websites?

All I'll say here is proceed with extreme caution! And read this:

What are the sneaky tricks to look out for when selling gold and jewellery online?

There are a lot! 

1. The “spot price” 

Some companies will publish the “spot price” or “today’s gold prices” on their website as if this is the price that they are going to pay you – it’s not. Unless it says, “This is the price we are paying today” be wary! The so called “spot price” which is the price gold is virtually traded on the international markets. A quick phone call to ask “Can you guarantee that you will pay me £x (the price on your website) if I send you my jewellery?” Should tell you what you need to know. There’s nothing wrong with this necessarily as long as it’s made clear. We think it makes things a bit confusing so we don’t do it. 

 

No-one can sell scrap (ie broken and useless) gold for the spot price. We get as close as we can for scrap gold and actually, we can and do pay the spot price or even more for some items.

 

2. “Guaranteed” best rates

Always check the terms and conditions - many sites will offer to pay the “guaranteed best rates” but there’s always an (*) and a disclaimer that says something like “We will match any quote from a competitor, simply send us a written quite from them…etc” 

We don’t make you do any of that, if you can find a retail gold buyer that is paying more than us, send us the link (or tell us where it is) and we’ll at least match their price (as long as it is a real company genuinely paying those rates). Finally, we look at your items as a parcel, work out how we can squeeze the most out of it all and then make an offer. It’s not just about a cold-hearted calculation of £x per gram.

 

3. Lowball offers

Most reputable sites will make you an offer for your gold based on the weight and that’s that. But just the same as when you buy or sell anything, the buyer has the absolute right to offer whatever they like and this will be dependent on many factors, their overheads, how much profit they need to make etc. There are no rules or regulations that say someone has to offer you a certain price and it’s up to people’s conscience what they offer for gold. So, companies are within their rights to make a lowball offer to start with hoping that 80% of people will accept. This is basically just haggling and some people love to haggle! Those that query the initial, low price may be offered a lot more. We would offer you our best price, first time. You may query this if you think we’ve missed something but you can trust that we will do our best from the start, no nonsense.

 

4. No mention of cost to return

Some companies will only send your items back after you’ve sent a bank transfer to cover the cost. It’s fair that companies protect their profit margins and so we don’t think this is unreasonable but just check the small print!   

As a rule of thumb, read the 1 star reviews first - these will tell you everything you need to know. 

Phew, hope you could follow all of that! Good luck and if you need some free, impartial advice, please ask away!