Selling Your Gold or Silver?

By Jeff Boyd, Boyd Jewelers - Wesley Chapel, FL

If you’re selling gold or silver, you want to get the best price available. Perhaps you’ve been buying gold & silver for many years and now you think it’s time to offload some of your collection. Or maybe you’ve inherited some gold & silver from a family member or are cleaning out your broken or damaged jewelry. Whatever your case may be, we look at all the most important things you should consider before you sell your gold or silver, including:

• Getting a fair price
• Selling different forms of gold and silver (coins, bars, jewelry, scrap metal)
• Where to sell your gold and silver

Whenever you decide the time is right for selling gold and silver, the three primary factors to consider are price, convenience and safety.

What’s a Fair Price for Your Gold & Silver? The question everyone asks when selling precious metals is what price they’ll get. So, how do you know how much your gold & silver is worth? Here are some of the factors that determine how much you could potentially receive when you sell your gold or silver.

Selling Gold & Silver Jewelry - It’s difficult to get the same resale value when selling your gold and silver jewelry than other bullion products. This is because most jewelry today includes an alloy along with other decorative pieces. Since it is not pure gold or silver, its value is more subjective. A refiner has to melt it down and refine it before making a bar, coin, round or even more jewelry. This additional labor means most jewelry today will fetch a lower resale price than what was paid for it.

Selling Scrap Metal - You’ll typically receive a lower resale price for scrap metal than you would for bullion bars, coins or rounds. This is because scrap metal has to be melted down and then fabricated into a form that investors or industrial manufacturers desire. Most bullion dealers don’t accept scrap metal as a sell-back, preferring instead only fabricated products. If you’re looking to sell scrap metal, we will gladly make you a fair offer during your visit.

Where to Sell Your Gold and Silver - Once you have some gold and silver to sell, you need to decide where to bring it. Generally speaking, most people go to a pawn shop or a Cash for Gold dealer. Reputable precious metals dealers are often few and far between in person and many are moving their business online, opening up new possibilities and risks. 

While selling to a pawn shop or Cash for Gold business means you won’t have to ship your gold and silver items, keep in mind that they almost always won’t make you the best offer. They may not even recognize what a particular piece of jewelry is or what it’s actually worth in the market. There’s typically room for negotiation, but you’ll almost always receive less than what a reputable jewelry store will offer. 

When you think of buying appliances, you usually think of Best Buy & Home Depot. When you want household supplies, you go to Walmart or Target. Use the same logic - sell your valuables to a strong, specialized, reputable jewelry buyer. 

There are places you should avoid:

• Check-cashing, payday loans, or other business that buy gold as a “sideline” part of their business will never pay the highest.
• Mail-in centers and weekend hotel buyers will not be your best venue. If you live in a rural area where a strong gold buyer is simply not available, it will usually be worth driving to a reputable jewelry store.

At Boyd Jewelers, we will purchase your broken precious metal jewelry, gold teeth, gold & silver coins, diamonds, and gemstones.  

If you need to have an item appraised we have a licensed jewelry appraiser on staff and will carefully document every characteristic that makes your jewelry unique and determine the appropriate appraised value.

If you are looking for repairs, Boyd Jewelers has a GIA trained goldsmith who  professionally repairs & restores your jewelry to its original splendor. Every piece of jewelry being repaired is treated as if it was our very own.

Boyd Jewelers is a Better Business Bureau Accredited Company and a Member of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA) along with the Jewelers Of America Association. Whether you are in the market to buy, sell, repair or appraise, we pride ourselves on providing the highest quality of craftsmanship & guarantee our services for life.