The jewelry industry continues to grow as days go by and multiple jewelry trends seem to be picking up as time goes by. Generally, there are different types of jewelry designed to meet the needs of different people and made to match your personal needs.
Gold-filled jewelry, is just but one of them. It is composed of a solid film of gold, which is industrially bonded to a base of any base metal or sterling silver. More often than not, the solid gold layer is comprised of about 5% of the items total weight.
In certain contexts where the layer of gold is comprised of less than 5% of the item’s overall weight, you may find related terms such as ‘gold overlay’ or ‘rolled gold plate’ being used. This gold layer on the gold-filled jewelry is often five to ten times thicker than the one produced by regular gold plating and at times fifteen to twenty five times thicket than the one produced by gold electroplate.
A great number of high-quality gold-field jewelry pieces have the same visual appearance and aesthetics such as high carat gold. In addition, you can comfortably wear gold-filled items daily and they have the potential to last you between 10 and 30 years before the layer of gold eventually wears off and exposes the metal underneath.
Based on this background information, let us expound on who exactly purchases gold-filled jewelry and delve deeper into whether you can sell gold-filled jewelry for scrap.
Who buys gold filled jewelry?
Everyone can purchase gold filled jewelry, sometimes a great number of people buy gold filled jewelry for use while another group of people buy gold filled jewelry for recycling purposes.
You can buy gold-filled jewelry that is small pins, chains and bracelets for beautification purposes. These pieces often contain quantities of gold that can be recycled.
Also, you can always purchase trophies, commemorative items or plaques. In addition, you can purchase gold-filled eyeglass frames or gold-filled cutlery and crockery.
Can you sell gold filled jewelry for scrap?
Yes, you can. You have the option to turn all your bent, chipped, unwanted, broken or scratched gold-filled scrap and gold-filled jewelry into a great deal of cash when you sell them to any companies that deal with recyclables.
Perhaps you may have come across multiple deals that are offered on various auction sites, offering you a platform through which you can sell all your items from scrap gold filled watch bands and cases to necklaces, pins and other items. In most cases, you may find that a plain wrong or a very confusing weight measurement can be used to describe these items so that the buyer can base his calculation on inflated numbers.
Calculating the actual worth of gold-filled scrap based on known standards is actually a very crucial factor if you want to successfully sell your gold filled jewelry for scrap. In as much so, this will only give you a rough idea of theoretical value. Reality is that, we need to always consider gold-filled scrap for what exactly it is without sugarcoating or exaggerating it any point in time. By that we mean that, we need to look at it as is- scrap, that is, an old and already used item. This means that the gold layer will or has suffered from the surface of any item or in some cases, you may notice the peeling off of the gold layer from the item.
More often than not, in pieces of gold filled jewelry that have been soldered together, you will realize that the solder adds the weight of base metals to that specific jewelry piece, and this may affect the base metals to standard gold ratio. Surface wear, has the potential to easily tally for a quick reduction of yield by about 10-20 % if not a lot more than the actual theoretical calculation. For this reason, you are advised to always try to observe the surface of your gold filled jewelry then estimate the wear. On that note, items that have excessive surface wear are less valuable and will be rejected by most pawn shops.
Another very important point that you would need to know when trying to sell your gold filled jewelry for scrap is that calculating the value of your gold filled pieces only relates to the parts that are actually gold filled and not the entire jewelry piece. For example, if you own a pocket watch that has a gold filled casing, chances are that the entire mechanism inside isn’t made form gold. Therefore, the mechanism is not part of your calculation to estimate the value of the piece. Otherwise, you will find yourself paying gold prices for basic stainless steel.
Overall, there are so many jewelry types that have a great variety of structural related items which aren’t gold filled and should always be excluded when trying to calculate the gold value of your piece. You won’t always be able to see what is on the inside, but are advised to always look into the scrap of gold filled jewelry and if possible always ask for the weights of the gold filled parts separately.
To sum it up, buying and selling scrap gold filled jewelry can be extremely lucrative! The trick is to always know how to price it correctly on your own without having to always bank on the seller description. Whether you choose to process the scrap by yourself or send it out to a refiner, always try to part the different types of gold filled scrap so that you can monitor the actual gold yields average for each category agin the theoretical numbers.
Conclusion
Gold-filled jewelry pieces are certainly a more economical option than solid gold. Although they are not solid gold, rest assured that they tend to have the same desirable properties and visual appearances of solid gold. An added advantage is that they are quite durable and can always be re-sold.
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Tiger is a fashion&jewelry lover. He is also a fashion jewelry manufacturer that help thousands of small business to grow and also do business with some big fashion jewelry brands. He is a truly metal expert and he will share some information you are looking for.