Guide · pillar content
Selling scrap gold in the UK: the honest playbook
Everything sellers get wrong — and how to walk away with the best realistic price for your gold, silver, platinum or palladium.
Selling old gold, silver or platinum in Britain is one of those jobs that feels like it should be simple and somehow never is. You look up a price, do a rough sum, and then the shop offers you roughly half of what you expected. This guide walks through exactly how the whole thing works — how items are valued, who pays what, how to sidestep the usual tricks, and where you actually stand on tax — so you can sell with a straight back and a number already in your head.
1. Know the two numbers before you go
Every sale comes down to two figures, and confusing them is where most people lose money. The first is the melt value — the raw metal content of your item priced at today's spot rate. The second is the realistic payout — what a buyer will actually hand over once they've taken their cut for testing, refining, price risk and profit. Almost every calculator online shows you only the melt value, which is why so many sellers feel ambushed at the counter. Run your pieces through our gold calculator first and note both numbers; the realistic-payout figure is the one that matters when you're negotiating.
2. Sort and weigh before you do anything else
Ten minutes of sorting at your kitchen table is the highest-paid work you'll do all week. Separate everything by carat — 9ct, 14ct, 18ct, 22ct — reading the little number stamped on each piece (375, 585, 750, 916 and so on). If you throw a mixed handful across the counter, a canny buyer can value the whole lot at the lowest carat present, and your 18ct chain quietly earns 9ct money. Sorting stops that dead. If you can't find a mark or aren't sure what it means, our hallmark decoder explains every UK standard.
Then weigh each group on a scale accurate to 0.01 g — cheap jeweller's scales are fine. Remove obvious non-gold bits where you can (stones, steel spring clasps, watch movements), because you're only being paid for the precious metal. Enter each carat group as its own row in the multi-item calculator and you'll get a combined melt value and payout in one go.
3. Know what each type of buyer really pays
There's no single "gold price" you'll be offered — it depends entirely on who you sell to. As a rough guide to what buyers pay as a percentage of melt value:
| Where you sell | Typical payout | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Pawnbroker | ~50–65% | Instant cash today, or a loan against the item |
| High-street "cash for gold" / jeweller | ~60–70% | Convenience, face to face |
| Online mail-in refiner | ~85–90% | The best mainstream price for scrap |
| Specialist bullion dealer | ~90%+ | Coins, bars and larger high-carat lots |
Counter-intuitively, posting your gold to a reputable online refiner usually beats the shop on the corner, because they work at refinery scale with low overheads and publish their per-gram rates for you to check. Pawnbrokers and high-street buyers pay for the convenience of paying you now. Slide the payout presets on the calculator to see what a fair offer from each looks like before anyone makes you one — and treat anything under about 60% of melt for ordinary scrap as a starting bid, not a fair price.
4. Selling by post without getting stung
Mail-in refiners pay the most, but only use ones that make the process transparent. The signs of a good one are easy to spot: fully insured freepost, your parcel photographed or filmed on opening, a clearly published per-gram rate, and a no-obligation offer that lets you decline and have your gold sent straight back. Steer clear of anyone with no insurance, a "melted on arrival" policy, or pressure to accept within minutes. It's also worth knowing that paying cash for scrap metal is restricted by law in the UK, so a legitimate buyer will normally pay you by bank transfer or cheque — being asked for photo ID and proof of address is a sign of a properly regulated business, not a red flag.
5. Time it if you can — but don't obsess
Nobody can reliably predict where the gold price is going, so don't let anyone tell you they can. What you can do is check where things stand. If you're not in a hurry, glance at the gold price history to see whether the trend has been up or down, and set a price alert so you're nudged when it moves. If you need the money now, or you're simply clearing out unwanted bits, don't agonise — focus on getting the best realistic payout today rather than chasing the perfect price that may never come. A great rate on today's price usually beats a poor rate on a slightly higher one next month.
6. Get everything in writing
Before you hand anything over, ask for a written, itemised quote that shows the price per gram for each carat. A transparent buyer will produce one without blinking; anyone who won't is telling you something. Keep the paperwork, and never feel rushed by a "today only" line — gold's value doesn't evaporate overnight, and walking away to compare a second quote is always allowed. For the full step-by-step version of this, see our guide to selling scrap gold in the UK.
7. Tax: usually nothing, occasionally something
For most people selling old jewellery, tax simply doesn't come into it — retail jewellery normally sells for less than it cost, so there's no gain to be taxed. Where Capital Gains Tax can apply (typically investment gold held at a profit), three things usually keep an ordinary seller clear: the annual CGT allowance (£3,000 for 2025/26 — verify the current figure with HMRC), the £6,000 chattels exemption that covers most individual items or matching sets, and the fact that legal-tender UK coins such as Gold Sovereigns and Britannias are CGT-exempt outright. If you've inherited pieces, your cost base resets to the value at the date of death, so only any rise since then could count. Our CGT quick-check gives a rough estimate, and there's a fuller explainer on how much gold you can sell without paying tax. None of this is tax advice — check your own position with HMRC or an accountant.
8. Silver, platinum and palladium: what changes
The same two-number thinking applies to the other metals, with a few wrinkles. Scrap silver tends to pay a lower percentage of melt than gold, because a dealer's fixed testing and refining costs eat a bigger share of a low per-gram value — so selling in bulk (a full canteen of cutlery rather than a single fork) gets you a better rate, and watch out for EPNS "silver plate", which isn't solid silver at all. Platinum is denser than gold and a plain band can be worth more than it looks, while palladium is valuable but genuinely volatile, so timing matters more. For both, a specialist refiner beats a general high-street buyer who may not even price them correctly.