Snapped chains, single earrings, crushed rings, class rings, dental crowns and bench sweeps. Scrap pays on purity and weight, so damage costs you nothing at all.
This is the single most useful thing to understand about scrap gold, and it is the thing most first-time sellers do not believe until they see it happen. Gold does not degrade. A chain that snapped in 1988 contains exactly the same gold it contained the day it was made. Because scrap is priced off purity and weight and then sent to a refinery, condition is completely irrelevant to the number.
Which means there is no reason to repair anything, polish anything or apologize for the state of anything. Tarnish, dents, kinks, missing stones, tangled knots — none of it changes the math.
We say this on every page and mean it more here than anywhere else. Gold darkens with age; base metal often stays shiny. The instinct is exactly backwards, and every week someone tells us they nearly threw out the bag that turned out to be the valuable half.
Bring it unsorted. We will separate the karat gold from the plated pieces on the counter, group by purity, and show you each pile before anything is weighed.
Acid testing is the quick classic — a scratch on a testing stone, a drop of graded acid, and the reaction tells us the karat range. Fast, reliable on common marked pieces, and cheap enough to run on everything.
Electronic testing reads conductivity through a probe and gets us a karat estimate in seconds without marking the piece.
XRF spectrometry is the one that matters for scrap. It fires low-energy X-rays at the item and reads back the full elemental composition — how much gold, how much silver, copper, nickel, palladium or platinum. That is how unmarked pieces, dental alloys and mystery lots get priced accurately instead of conservatively. Conservative pricing on unknown metal always means less money for you.
The New York trade often quotes in pennyweight, which trips people up. One pennyweight (dwt) is 1.555 grams. One troy ounce is 31.103 grams, or 20 pennyweight. A quote of "$X per pennyweight" is a larger unit than a quote of "$X per gram," so always confirm which unit a buyer is using before comparing offers. We will quote in whatever unit makes it easiest for you to check our number against someone else's.
Plated and filled items carry no recoverable gold. Look for GP, GF, 1/20 12K GF, HGE, RGP, or vermeil. We test them anyway, at no charge, and tell you rather than absorbing them into a vague number for the whole lot. Vermeil is the exception worth a second look — the sterling underneath is genuinely worth something.
Photos help. Condition doesn’t matter.
| Unit | Equals | In grams | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 gram | 0.643 dwt | 1.000 g | The clearest unit for most sellers |
| 1 pennyweight | 1/20 troy oz | 1.555 g | Common in the NYC jewelry trade |
| 1 troy ounce | 20 dwt | 31.103 g | The unit gold spot is quoted in |
| 1 standard ounce | — | 28.349 g | Not used for gold — do not mix them up |
No. Scrap gold is bought on purity and weight alone. A snapped chain, a crushed ring and a perfect bangle of the same karat and weight are all worth the same amount, because all three are headed to the same refinery.
Yes, and they are one of the most common things we see. A single earring has no resale value as jewelry but the exact same melt value as its missing partner would have had.
Yes. Crowns, bridges and inlays are fine as-is; you do not need to clean or separate anything. Dental alloy varies widely — often somewhere between 10K and 22K equivalent, sometimes with palladium or platinum content — so it gets XRF-tested rather than acid-tested.
Please do not. People routinely discard real gold because it looks tarnished and hold onto plated pieces because they look bright. Bring it all in one bag and we will sort it with you at the counter.
Yes. Filings, casting sprue, polishing sweeps, findings and repair-shop scrap are handled at wholesale rates. Lots that need to be melted and assayed for an accurate reading are quoted after assay, and we will explain that process before you leave anything.
Because you are standing there watching it happen. Acid tests, electronic testing and XRF readings are all done at the counter with the screen turned toward you. Nothing goes into a back room at any point.
Any amount. There is no minimum. Payout rates do improve with volume, so if you are sitting on a large lot it is worth gathering it into one visit instead of several.
Text photos to 646-846-0401 or send them here.
30 West 47th St, 9th Floor, New York, NY 10036 · Walk-ins welcome, no appointment needed.