Materials and items
What we buy, and what we send back
Gold, silver, platinum and palladium are bought by post, whole or broken, marked or unmarked, subject to the exceptions below and to identity and ownership checks. The service is built for boxes and bundles; a single piece is welcome to ask first. What is not bought comes back to you, listed and unaltered, at our cost.
You do not need to know what it is called to ask.
Illustration Computer-generated. Not our bench and not a customer’s lot.
In short
Assaypost buys gold at any carat, sterling, Britannia and continental silver, platinum and palladium by post, whole or broken, marked or unmarked, and mostly as mixed lots. Silver plate, costume jewellery, loose stones and base metal are not bought; anything that arrives and is not bought is listed and posted back at our cost with whatever you decline.
Part I · 5 entries
Gold
Jewellery at any carat, coins, bars, dental work and gold-cased watches. Each page below says what the item looks like, what it is confused with and what happens to it here; selling gold by post covers the process from photograph to payment.
- Scrap and broken gold jewellery
The tangle at the back of the drawer is the gold most people own. You do not need to sort it; working out what is what is our job.
- Gold coins and sovereigns
A sovereign in a drawer looks like every other sovereign. The date, the tiny letter and the condition are what separate them.
- Gold bars and bullion
A bar is easy to identify and also easy to fake, so each one is measured and compared with what its refiner published.
- Dental gold
Two crowns that look identical can be quite different alloys, so each one is checked separately.
- Gold watches and pocket watches
Many yellow watches are not solid gold, and some of the ones that are should never be taken apart. Both questions come first.
Part II · 3 entries
Silver
Sterling, Britannia and continental silver: cutlery, tea sets, trays, coins and bars. Plate can look the same, and it is not bought.
- Silver cutlery and flatware
Many canteens brought down from a loft turn out to be plate. One mark on the back of a fork usually tells you which yours is.
- Silver tea sets and hollowware
Turn everything upside down. The marks on the underside of a tea set tell you more than anything on top of it.
- Silver coins and silver bars
Two identical-looking shillings can be sterling, half silver or hold no silver at all. The date is what separates them.
Part III · 1 entry
White metals
A white ring is easily mistaken for something else, because platinum, palladium and white gold look alike. How items are tested explains the checks, whichever metal it turns out to be.
What is not bought, and what comes back anyway
Sending something on either list costs you nothing, because much of it looks very like the things we do buy. It is identified, named on your list with the reason, and posted back at our cost with anything else you decline (the terms, clause 11.1). If most of a bag is costume, send photographs first: the reply says what is worth posting, which keeps the parcel small.
Not bought
- Gold-plated, rolled gold and gold-filled pieces. Marked GP, GEP, HGE, RGP, GF or 1/20 12K, or not marked at all. The gold on them is real, but there is too little for us to buy, and gold-filled is not bought in household quantities (ask first about a large quantity); some, such as rolled-gold Albert chains and lockets, sell as objects elsewhere.
- Silver plate. Electroplate (EPNS, EP, A1, EPBM), which has only a thin coat of silver; Old Sheffield Plate, a thicker layer of silver fused to copper; and nickel silver, which contains no silver. None is bought, but good Old Sheffield Plate can sell at auction.
- Costume jewellery and base-metal fittings. Including clasps, chains and settings that were fitted to real pieces at some point.
- Loose stones on their own. Stones set in jewellery are left out of the weight, and returned after you accept if you agree in writing to their removal; stones arriving without any metal are sent straight back.
- Steel, chrome, pewter and Britannia metal, the last being a pewter alloy that has nothing to do with Britannia silver. Cutlery blades, base-metal denture frameworks, and tankards and trophies that turn out not to be silver.
- Amalgam fillings. They contain mercury, so they are hazardous waste rather than scrap, and should go back to a dentist.
Comes back to you
- Stones. Not paid for as metal, and left in their settings until you have accepted an offer and agreed in writing to their removal; then lifted where that can be done without damage and posted back. Where lifting would break a claw, we tell you before you accept: the stone stays with the piece and is not paid for, so you can have that piece back instead.
- Watch movements, dials, hands and glasses. Posted back at our cost if you ask, once you have accepted an offer, since nothing leaves a case before then. Never separated from a watch flagged as possibly worth more as a watch.
- Handles, insulators and liners. Wooden teapot handles, bone and ivory insulators, glass liners out of sugar bowls and salt cellars. Nothing is taken off a piece before you accept, and a piece with ivory in it comes back whole.
- Coins with no silver in them. British circulating coins dated 1947 onwards, and the cupro-nickel commemorative crowns sold in presentation packs. Maundy money and silver proof and bullion coins of any date are silver, and are bought.
- Boxes and cases. Canteen boxes, ring boxes, presentation cases and coin folders. Not bought; returned at our cost.
- Anything that may be worth more than its metal. A signed brooch, a scarce date, a watch by a known maker (running or not), a complete service, period jewellery. Flagged in writing before any offer, with a note that it may be worth more to a specialist, an auction house or a dealer, and posted back free if you would rather sell it there.
Send the whole lot
Mixed parcels are what the service is built for. A jewellery box, a canteen, a few old coins and a tobacco tin of odds can travel together and be dealt with as one lot, with one written offer at the end of it. Sorting them is our job. How it works follows a lot from the first photograph to payment.
If you are unsure about a piece, photograph it and ask before deciding whether to send it; you can keep it at home while you decide. Anything that may be worth more whole is better kept back until a specialist has seen it. If this came from a house you are clearing or an estate you are dealing with, house clearance gold and silver, probate and estate jewellery and inherited jewellery set out how a mixed lot is handled from the first photograph onwards.
Items we hold rather than buy
An item is held rather than bought only where there are reasonable grounds to suspect it is stolen, and you are told in writing what is held and why; the procedure is on responsible sourcing. Where your right to sell cannot be confirmed, the item is not bought and comes back to you. Ivory is different again: a piece with an ivory handle or insulator is not bought and not kept, so send photographs of it rather than posting it, and if one arrives anyway it comes back to you whole. The ivory guide and the identity guide explain both.
If you cannot name half of it
Most people cannot, which is the reason to send photographs before you send anything else. Tip the box onto a plain cloth, take a few pictures, and a person will give you a rough idea of what the marks suggest, what is likely to matter and whether anything may be worth showing to a specialist first. We may miss things a specialist would not, so if you already suspect a piece matters, ask a specialist first. For the marks and trade words you will meet along the way, the glossary of gold and silver terms explains each one.
Still not sure where your pieces fit?
You do not need the right word for what you have. Photograph it and send it. A person writes back with what it seems to be, and which guide to read next.
Nothing is sold until you say yes. Say no and everything comes back by tracked, signed-for post at our cost.
No WhatsApp? Call or text 07369 296063, 6am to 10pm, seven days a week.
A person reads every message
Your photographs are looked at by a person, not software. A question that needs a long answer gets one.