Sell scrap and broken gold jewellery

What gold looks like after years in a drawer

Gold barely tarnishes: an 18ct chain kept in a box for decades comes out the colour it went in. 9ct gold, which is mostly other metals, may darken a little but rarely goes black. Gold does go dull, collect grey fluff in the links and pick up a film from skin and perfume. Silver in the same box will have gone black, and brass dark and slightly green at the joins, so a piece that stayed yellow while everything around it changed is worth a second look.

Colour on its own settles nothing. 9ct is a pale, slightly straw yellow because it is more than half other metal; 22ct is deep and almost orange. White gold is a faintly yellow grey under its rhodium plating, rose gold is pink from copper, and a brass curtain ring can sit in the middle of all of them and look convincing. Weight in the hand helps with 18ct and 22ct, which are noticeably dense; 9ct feels much like silver, so weight settles little on its own.

• Broken chains, knotted chains, single lengths with no clasp, and clasps with no chain
• Single earrings, earrings with the butterfly missing, and pairs you never wore
• Rings that were resized, cracked or worn thin at the back, or are simply the wrong size now
• Bracelets and bangles with links gone, charms off a charm bracelet, and cufflinks without partners
• Brooch frames with the pin snapped, pendants with the bail pulled through, tie pins and collar studs
• Anything you cannot name at all

The carat numbers, and where they hide

British gold carries a hallmark struck by an assay office, and the part of it most people can read is the millesimal number: the three figures that give the parts of gold per thousand. You will need a magnifier and good light. The marks are tiny and often half worn away, and on a ring they sit inside the shank, where a finger has worn them for years. The gold hallmarks guide shows where to look on a ring, a chain and a pair of earrings, and which stamps mean plated rather than solid.

Gold fineness marks and what they mean

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• Inside a ring shank, opposite the stone or opposite the join
• On the flat tab soldered beside a chain clasp, or on the clasp itself
• On the post or the butterfly of an earring, which is often where the only mark on a pair is
• On the edge of a pendant bail, under a brooch pin, on the inside of a bangle near the hinge

Before 1975, 18ct and 22ct were marked with a crown and the figure 18 or 22 rather than 750 or 916. Having no mark at all is common and not necessarily a bad sign. Gold under one gram does not have to be hallmarked, a great deal of jewellery was bought abroad and brought home, and very fine chain is often marked only on a tag beside the clasp, or not at all if it was made abroad. On an unmarked piece the checks do the work the mark would have done. The UK hallmarks guide shows the whole mark, office by office.

The pieces that only look like gold

Plated jewellery is base metal with gold on the outside, and when it is new it can look identical to the real thing. The layer is measured in millionths of a metre. There is not enough of it to recover, so a plated chain is worth nothing as metal however convincing it looks; we list it and send it back to you free. The guide to plated, rolled gold and gold-filled pieces shows how each is built.

GP, GEP, HGE

Gold plated, gold electroplated, heavy gold electroplate. A skin of gold on brass or nickel.

RGP, GF, 1/20 12K GF

Rolled gold plate and gold-filled. A thicker layer, bonded rather than plated, but still a small fraction of the weight: 1/20 12K means one twentieth of the weight is 12ct gold. Common on old watch chains and Edwardian brooches.

Vermeil

Gold over sterling silver. The gold is a thin layer; the silver underneath is real, so the piece is bought as silver.

Doublé, plaqué, rolled gold

The French and older British names for the same construction. Usually stamped on the back of a brooch or inside a bangle.

No mark, and a different colour on worn edges

A common sign of plate. Where a plated piece has rubbed, on a ring shank, a chain edge or the high points of a brooch, copper or grey base metal shows through. Rose gold is pink all the way through, so colour alone does not decide it.

Please do not file, scrape or acid-test anything at home. To read beneath the surface, past any plating or wear, those tests need a notch cut to bare metal, and a notch in a signed Victorian brooch takes value off something that was never scrap. If you want to know before you post, photographs cost nothing, and what you can safely check at home covers the tests that leave no mark.

Send the whole tangle

The common instinct is to pick out the pieces that obviously say 375 and leave the rest. There is no need to sort. Photograph everything, including the pieces you are unsure about, and the reply says which look worth posting. Anything in the parcel that is not bought is listed and returned free, so when in doubt, leave it in.

• Leave the chains tangled. Knots make no difference, and we untangle them here.
• There is no need to sort by carat. We do that, and a mixed bag is the normal state of a drawer.
• Do not clean anything. Polish takes off a little metal and can wipe the detail off an old piece.
• Leave stones in their settings. Lifting them at home damages the claws and can lose the stone.
• Leave clasps, jump rings and earring backs attached. Some of them are gold; the steel parts inside are left out of the weight.
• Costume jewellery is not bought. Leave it out if you are sure; if you are not, it can travel in the same parcel and comes back with anything else you decline.
• A drawer of gold is small but can be valuable. Tell us roughly what is in it before you post so the right service is used; posting safely and cover explains how to pack it.

If the drawer belonged to someone who has died, set aside first anything the family may want to keep; there is no hurry. If the jewellery is still part of an estate, the executor decides whether it is sold, and we will ask for evidence of that (identity and provenance checks explains what). The rest can come as you found it, and a piece someone wants later can be asked back before you accept.

Photographs first cost nothing and are the step we would rather you took. Tip the drawer onto a plain tea towel, take three or four pictures, and send them on WhatsApp to 07369 296063. If you do not use WhatsApp, ring or text the same number. A person tells you from the pictures what looks worth posting and gives you a rough idea, and nothing leaves the house until you have decided.

The full list is on what we buy, and inherited jewellery covers a drawer that came from a relative. Coins, bars and watches are on selling gold by post and the pages it links to.

What happens to a bag of mixed gold when it arrives

1. Logged as one lotThe parcel is photographed unopened, then its contents are counted and photographed together under your reference. Nothing is separated before that record exists.
2. Laid out and identifiedEvery piece is looked at under magnification, its marks read and noted, and the obvious plate set to one side. Anything that might be worth more as it stands is set aside here.
3. Weighed and checkedEvery piece is weighed and checked for its metal before an offer is made. The methods used depend on the piece and are listed on the offer. How items are tested explains what each method can and cannot show.
4. ItemisedYou get a list of what arrived, described piece by piece, with the plated and base-metal items named and the reason they are not gold.
5. One offer for the lotA single written offer, sent to you to think over. Nothing is sold, melted or altered until you say yes, and declining costs you nothing; offers, returns and payment explains your choices.

Stones, enamel and pearls are not metal and steel springs are not gold, so their weight is estimated in place and left out. We never take a stone out without your written agreement, and never before you have accepted (the terms, clause 4.4). If you agree and accept, stones are lifted where that can be done without damage and posted back to you. Where lifting would break the setting, the piece is left intact; if you sell it like that, the stone goes with it and is not paid for, so you may prefer to have that piece back, and the offer says which pieces this applies to. The stones and non-metal guide explains what in a piece is not metal and why.

The pieces in the bag that should never be melted

It happens before anything is weighed, it costs you nothing, and it is why each piece is looked at on its own. A broken antique or signed piece may still sell as jewellery, because many are repaired and resold. Anything you would rather take elsewhere goes back to you free, whether or not you sell us the rest. A coin in a pendant mount is treated as a coin first, for the reasons on gold coins and sovereigns.

What we buy, and what we leave out

Stopped before anything is treated as scrap

• Signed pieces and pieces with a serial number are set aside as possible jewellery before anything is treated as metal
• Early hallmarks and hand-made work are set aside, and we tell you they may be worth more to an antique dealer or at auction
• Rings with larger stones, or stones with a certificate, are set aside; we do not value stones, and we say where to have one assessed
• Named-maker charms and complete charm bracelets are set aside and you are told before any offer
• Victorian and earlier pieces, including mourning jewellery, lockets, cameos and seals, are set aside even when unmarked, damaged or out of fashion
• A coin mounted as a pendant is treated as a coin before the mount is treated as metal
• Where a piece may do better at auction or with a specialist, we say so in writing and post it back free if you would rather take it there