Selling Your Gold: What You Should Know

As the largest buyer and appraiser of jewelry directly from the public, Cash4Gold has transformed the gold business in America and set the standard for service and efficiency in the industry. Cash4Gold has completed more than 700,000 transactions, and a staggering 94 percent of customers accept the company’s offered payment for their goods rather than requesting that their jewelry be returned.

To continue, and even improve, that trend of satisfaction, Cash4Gold makes education of the consumer a top priority. Before you send your broken or unwanted jewelry to Cash4Gold, it is important to be an educated consumer so that you can set proper expectations for your impending payment. Cash4Gold, as a buyer and refiner of gold, values your jewelry entirely on its precious metal content – the melt value. In the vast majority of cases, your jewelry will be melted down, so workmanship is not a consideration. (Note that this does not apply to The Estate Buyer, a wing of Cash4Gold that purchases fine estate jewelry for resale.) Cash4Gold appraisers use state of the art technology, including three different methods, to verify results when qualifying your jewelry.

Here are some important points to keep in mind before sending Cash4Gold your unwanted or broken jewelry:

1) You will not receive retail price – for example, what you paid for your jewelry in a store – from Cash4Gold. The price paid for a piece of jewelry in a store has very little to do with the actual gold content and melt value. Retail jewelry stores will mark up the price of their jewelry by three, 10 and even more than 20 times their actual worth, thus distorting the true value of a piece of jewelry. Even if someone buys a ring, for example, on sale or at a significant “discount” from a retail jeweler, the price paid still far exceeds the value of the metal itself.

2) Be wary of insurance appraisals that are for “retail replacement value.” It is common for people to get insurance appraisals for their jewelry – particularly if the cost to replace it is significant. However, it’s important to keep in mind that these appraisals establish the cost to replace lost or stolen jewelry at retail value. In other words, if a watch that was purchased for $1,000 is lost or stolen, it will likely cost approximately $1,000 to replace it. This price has nothing to do with the actual value of the metal. Look at an insurance appraisal’s fine print, and you will find it says, “Not an offer to buy.”

3) Jewelry stores use appraisals as marketing tools. Jewelers may appraise your jewelry for more, but be careful to get clarity on the context of that appraisal. Often, their offer is for trade-in only. You may be getting “more” for your jewelry, but only in exchange for another item or items marked up a significant percentage by the retailer.

4) Condition and spot price influence payment from The Estate Buyer. The Estate Buyer is a portion of Cash4Gold that handles fine jewelry (Tiffany or Rolex, for example) which has value beyond its gold content. That said it is important to remember that even the value of these items will erode. Payment for a new Rolex watch would not be the same as payment for a used and weathered one. Whereas condition has no bearing on melt value, it is of critical to The Estate Buyer.

5) Engravings are not always accurate. Look closely at the inside of a gold ring and you may find a faint engraving that indicates whether it is 10k, 14k, 18k or otherwise. Jewelry owners tend to trust these engravings as record of fact. Unfortunately, engravings/stamps on jewelry cannot always be counted upon to be accurate. Unscrupulous dealers who create or sell this jewelry have been known to mislead by incorrectly stamping gold. While most manufacturers will stamp gold appropriately, it is quite common for some to misrepresent the quality of an item to make you believe you are getting a better deal.