If you have some old gold to sell it is important to shop around. Due to high market values, the gold buying business has gotten very competitive in the past two years. Every one who buys gold has a different system for determining their prices, but almost all pay by unit of weight and karat. Call several places and ask them what they are currently paying for the standard karats of gold (10K, 14K, 18K etc.) Be wary of businesses that wont give you a price over the phone. Most legitimate buyers have a set formula and should be able to tell you a per gram or per pennyweight price. Some businesses have different prices for different quantities of gold, which will work against you if you only have a small amount of gold. Keep in mind that the market price changes about every ten minutes so the price could go up or down very quickly.
As for unit of weight, some use grams and some use pennyweights (dwt.). A pennyweight is 1/20 of a troy ounce. To convert grams to pennyweights multiply by .64301. To convert pennyweights to grams multiply by 1.5552. When you get pricing from different gold buyers, make sure to convert all of the prices into one unit before going with the highest bidder. Say you have 2dwt 14K gold, that is 3.11 grams. If someone says I’ll pay $14 a pennyweight that’s $28; if they say $14 a gram that’s $43.54.
Once you find the store which pays the most per unit, find out what their policies are. When it comes to selling gold, almost every buyer has a final sale policy. (See the last post about selling items of sentimental value). Some will pay cash, some by check. Some stores will pay more if you use the money as credit towards a purchase. Do they remove stones like diamonds, do they buy the diamonds, or do they leave the diamonds in the jewelry? Do they buy any jewelry as jewelry or only as scrap? Can they advise you on which pieces are better sold as jewelry and not scrap?
At Precious Metals we try to offer competitive pricing, but we would never claim to have the highest payout. First, there are too many gold buyers in Boston and its surrounding towns and cities to possibly know what they all pay. We also don’t negotiate pricing. Some buyers will offer you a low price, but will negotiate up to a higher one. They are hoping that the seller will take the low price without haggling. We offer one price to all of our customers who get paid by check. It is the highest price we can offer. We do, however, pay out more if the money is used towards a purchase or repair, but the entire amount must be used.
Why should you sell at Precious Metals?
Because we will tell you what to sell as scrap and what not to sell. If you have a nice necklace that you could get more money for if you sold it on ebay or craigslist, we’ll tell you. Not only that, we’ll help you. We can show you how to post on either of those popular websites, take close up pictures of your jewelry, and help you determine a fair asking price, at no charge. If you don’t want to sell online there are several consignment stores we can recommend as well.
Any stones that are easily removed we will remove at no charge. We will also give you an honest evaluation of the stones.
Our pricing structure is entirely transparent. We’ll go through the math with you from the market price to the price you are paid. If you don’t like the price we are offering, there are no obligations.
We pride our selves on our honesty and superior customer service. There are more than a few gold buyers who will be happy to buy your wearable jewelry at scrap prices and sell it on ebay or in their store for ten times what they paid you.
