Cash for Scrap Gold

Look inside a ring band, or on the small tag beside a clasp, and you will often find a stamp. American pieces usually give a karat: parts of gold out of 24. European and many imported pieces give fineness instead: parts out of 1,000. So a 14K stamp and a 585 stamp both mean 14-karat gold; the 585 figure sits a fraction above the 58.3% that 14 parts in 24 works out to.

Letters next to the number change the meaning. GF, GP, HGE and RGP mean gold-filled or plated: a layer of gold over another metal. A mark like 1/20 12K GF says the gold layer is one-twentieth of the weight, so the piece holds far less gold than its karat suggests. And 375, common on British pieces, is 9K, or 37.5% gold.

Scrap is gold that has stopped being jewelry: a chain snapped past repair, a ring bent out of round, one earring from a lost pair, a clasp found loose in a drawer, dental gold, or a mixed bag of all of it. A bend or a break does not change the metal. A crushed 14K band holds the same gold it did when it was round, and scrap is priced on weight and purity, not on whether it can still be worn.

On scrap, a stamp often tells only part of the story. Marks wear faint on rings worn for decades, and resizing can cut them away. A clasp may be a different karat from the chain it closes, and a spring-ring clasp usually hides a small steel spring. Dental gold rarely carries a stamp at all, and dental alloys vary widely. A mixed lot can hold 10K, 18K and plated pieces that look nearly the same across a counter.

In the U.S., a karat stamp is the maker’s own claim rather than an independent assay, and any stamp can be wrong. So the mark tells us where to start, and the test decides. If a piece turns out to be plated, or a lower karat than it says, you hear that at the counter with the piece in front of you, before any offer is made.

Testing is acid or electronic. An acid test works by rubbing the metal on a dark test stone to leave a thin streak, then adding a drop of acid made for a given karat. If the streak stays, the gold is at least that karat; if it dissolves, it is lower. An electronic tester uses a probe to read how the metal responds and shows the result as a karat. Either way, you watch it happen.

Then the scale, set where you can see it. Jewelers weigh gold in grams or in pennyweight, written dwt. One pennyweight is 1.555 grams, and 20 pennyweight make a troy ounce of 31.1 grams, the ounce gold prices are quoted in. A kitchen scale’s ounce is 28.35 grams, so an ounce figure from home will not match a troy-ounce price.

Each karat is weighed as its own group, because the math runs per purity: weight × purity × the day’s spot price is the melt value, and the offer is a percentage of that. Stones and settings are priced separately. If a number doesn’t trace back through those steps, ask before you accept.