Platinum & palladium
Selling Platinum & Palladium Scrap in the UK: Jewellery, Bars & What Buyers Pay
Platinum and palladium sit in an awkward blind spot. Most people know roughly what gold is worth, but hand them a platinum ring or a bag of palladium offcuts and they've no idea whether they're holding something valuable or a curiosity. The short answer is that both are genuinely valuable, sometimes more per gram than mid-carat gold, but selling them well takes a bit more care than selling gold does. Here's what UK buyers actually pay and how to get a fair number.
Platinum jewellery is usually 950, and it's dense
Most platinum jewellery sold in the UK is 950 fineness, meaning 95% pure. That's a higher purity than 18ct gold, which is 75%. Platinum is also about 11% denser than gold, so a platinum ring in the same style as a gold one weighs more, and every one of those extra grams counts. Put purity and density together and a plain platinum band can carry more metal value than a lower-carat gold equivalent, which surprises people who assume gold always wins. It's also why you should never let a buyer eyeball a platinum ring and quote it as if it were the same weight as a gold one, because the extra grams are real money.
The melt maths mirrors gold and silver. Take the platinum spot price per troy ounce, divide by 31.1035 to get the per-gram pure figure, then multiply by the fineness, 0.950 for a standard piece. Our platinum calculator handles this for you once you know the weight and mark. Just remember spot moves constantly, so treat any figure as an estimate rather than a locked-in offer.
Palladium: valuable but volatile
Palladium is the wild card. Over recent years its price has swung dramatically, at times trading above gold and at other times well below it. That volatility matters more than with any other metal here, because the difference between selling on a strong week and a weak one can be substantial. Before you sell, look at where the price has been trending. Our palladium price history gives you that context, and the palladium calculator turns the current spot into a per-gram estimate for your fineness.
Palladium jewellery is typically 950 or 500. It became more common in the UK after 2010, when palladium got its own compulsory hallmark, so if your piece carries a proper palladium mark it's reasonably easy to date and value. If it doesn't, a specialist will need to test it. You'll also find palladium in dental alloys, in industrial offcuts and, increasingly, in older white-gold pieces where it was used as the whitening metal, so it turns up in places you might not expect.
The single best thing you can do with palladium is not rush. It's the most timing-sensitive metal an ordinary seller is likely to hold, and a fortnight's patience can genuinely change the payout.
Why a specialist refiner beats the cash-for-gold counter
This is the part that separates a good sale from a poor one. Platinum and palladium are harder to assay than gold, and many high-street "cash for gold" outlets simply aren't set up for them. Some will lump anything white and heavy together as "white metal" and price it as if it were the cheaper option. Others will lowball because they don't have the equipment to test it properly and won't take the risk. Either way, you lose.
A specialist precious-metals refiner or dealer who genuinely handles platinum-group metals will test each piece correctly and price it on its actual content. From a good specialist, a realistic payout on clean, hallmarked platinum or palladium scrap runs somewhere around 75% to 90% of melt, depending on quantity and the buyer. As with all scrap, bulk earns a better percentage because the fixed testing and refining costs are spread across more metal. If you can identify your marks first, use the hallmarks guide to confirm them, so you walk in knowing what you've got.
A word on catalytic converters
Platinum, palladium and rhodium are the reason old catalytic converters have value, and people sometimes assume they can weigh a cat like scrap jewellery. They can't. The PGM content is spread thinly through a ceramic honeycomb, and the amount varies enormously by vehicle. Catalytic converters have their own specialist scrap market, priced by the specific make and model of the unit rather than by simple metal weight. If that's what you're holding, take it to a dedicated catalytic converter buyer who prices by the part number, not to a jewellery scrap counter.
Getting the best realistic figure
Pull your pieces together and sort them by metal and fineness. Confirm the hallmarks where you can. Check the current spot and, for palladium especially, the recent trend, then run the numbers through the relevant calculator so you have an honest melt estimate to measure any quote against. Approach a specialist rather than a general gold counter, and if you're selling palladium, be willing to hold for better timing. Do that, and you'll turn a metal most people underestimate into a fair, well-informed sale rather than a rushed one at "white metal" rates. None of this is tax or financial advice, but it is the difference between a good payout and a disappointing one.
All figures are estimates of melt value, never offers. Not financial or tax advice.