What Most People Don’t Realize When Selling Old Gold Jewelry

Whenever you trade in old jewelry, you may make more dollars but you will never make more gold.

Let’s break that down: 

Imagine you bought a $500 chain ($50/per gram) that weighs 10 grams when the gold price was $35/gram.

Fast forward. Gold is now $110/gram, and a jeweler offers you $1,000 for the piece (Buy back price: $100/per gram).

On paper, it feels like you won because you turned $500 into $1,000. But now you have to buy back in so you take that $1,000 and try to reinvest in a new chain but the price of new gold chains is no longer $50/gram. The new price is $140/gram because of the new market rate of gold plus labor charges for the new chain.