There are many reasons to buy or sell scrap gold, silver, diamonds etcetera. In the recyclables trade it’s simply part of daily business, jewellers trade in gold scrap and related materials according to their needs, private persons buy high quality lots for investment, and many amateur jewellers buy little bits of the stuff for their hobby.

Before deciding to buy scrap gold, jewelry, diamonds or watches, one should know a bit about qualities and prices - especially of gold, which is not only a commodity by itself, but also part of many scrap watches and jewelry items. Scrap gold prices change all the time, along with the general gold price. When buying scrap gold or “broken gold”, you should be aware that alloyed gold (less than 24 karat) costs proportionately less, like a 9 karat gold necklace being much cheaper than a 24 karat gold necklace - all other things being equal.

The closer to pure gold, the higher the price - generally. But sometimes there are other precious metals mixed with the gold, like silver, platinum or rhodium. If such metals are present in your lot, the seller will let that reflect in the price. For example, dental gold (gold fillings, gold teeth) often contains platinum… and platinum has a higher price per ounce than gold.

Although scrap gold prices change every day, it can usually be had fairly cheaply via auctions (even perfectly wearable scrap gold jewelry!), where it’s important to know the following about purity as expressed in karat:

24 karat is 999.99 fine
22 karat is 916.6 fine
18 karat is 750 fine
14 karat is 585 fine
9 karat is 375 fine

There is no such thing as totally pure gold: even the fineness of 24 karat (the purest gold available) is expressed as 999 parts per 1000, because it is impossible to produce real pure gold without even the slightest impurity. When it comes to buying gold scrap, it is important to know how much gold there is in the piece or lot, and what the day price happens to be. Oh… don’t be afraid that the supply will ever run out: gold is almost indestructible, so all the gold ever mined still exists, somewhere. With the right equipment, gold can easily be recovered from even the most complex mixes. It can be melted down, re-refined and recycled an infinite number of times. Part of the gold necklace you buy today, may once have adorned the slender neck of queen Nefertiti.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 7:00 am and is filed under Shopping. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.