Gold is considered a fine investment, especially in hard economic times, when monetary values are decreasing. Demand for gold typically increases during such times raising the value.

During such periods, you may want to sell your scrap gold if you need the cash, taking advantage of the increased value.

But what is a good price for scrap gold? You can of course, easily find a buyer and rely on their evaluation of your gold items, but it is always a good idea to conduct your own research about their worth, as this will put you in a better bargaining position.

You can do this easily by determining the value of your gold. You simply need to find its karat and weight. Some jewelry actually has it’s karat stamped on it. If not, you need a gold testing kit consisting of 10K, 14K, 18K, and 22K bottles of nitric acid and a black test stone to test the gold yourself. Some kits even come with a weighing scale.

If gold coins are included in your scrap gold, verify if they have numismatic value, which could be higher than the value of their gold content. You may need to take the gold coins to a numismatist.Karat Chart

Sort your items according to their karat and weigh them. Karats represent the percentage of gold in your jewelry. If it is a 22K, this means it has 0.9167% gold, 18K has 0.750%, 14K has 0.585%, and 10K has 0.4167%. In order to arrive at the gold content of your gold, multiply the right percentage with its weight. Once you have the product, multiply it by the current price of gold. You can easily find this on the Internet.

Typically, however, buyers will not pay you this price. This is because they will need to process your scrap gold, perhaps melting and transforming them into bars. They will likely offer a price somewhere between 60 to 80% of the prevailing market price.

There are buyers of scrap gold who offer extra services, such as a pick-up service or free assay. Like gold, not all buyers are of the same quality. Some are more transparent in their dealings with their clients, and some pay better prices.