Selling gold and silver jewellery, coins, bars, and other valuables is an opportunity to raise some quick capital that you can add to your investments, use to pay off debt, or put toward the purchase of something that you really want.

When you’re cleaning the clutter out of your house, old gold and silver jewellery or coins are some of the more exciting things to get rid of. They can be worth a lot of money, whether you have a collector’s item or an antique or it’s just made from precious metals. There’s always a market for gold and silver.

However, finding a professional buyer of gold and silver is crucial if you want to get the best offer and earn more from your old jewellery. There are plenty of businesses that will buy your old jewellery, but only a few that will give you the best possible prices.

These are some of the things you should look for in a gold and silver buyer.

Find Buyers with a Trusted Reputation

A brand’s reputation is the perfect place to start. The more online reviews they have, the better. Be thorough when you go through the online reviews. Is there a bad review that seems like an outlier, or are there other reviews that mention similar issues? What do they do well, and what kind of service can you expect when you show up?

The longer a buyer has been in business, the better. You’ll also want to make sure you find a business with a brick-and-mortar location to avoid scammers like hotel gold buyers, who typically underpay for your valuables and are out of town before you know it.

Expect Transparent Evaluations

Part of the process of selling your precious metal valuables is having them evaluated by the buyer. The thing you should look for when the evaluation happens is transparency.

Two things will happen with an evaluation:

• The buyer will weigh each piece of jewellery.
• The buyer will confirm the purity of each piece of jewellery.

You want to make sure that the evaluation happens in front of you. Metal composition should be confirmed with an XRF machine, or X-Ray Fluorescence, which gives a precise breakdown without damaging the item.

Get Multiple Quotes

This part can take a bit of work, but getting multiple quotes will help you make sure that you get the best price available. It’s fairly standard procedure, and a good buyer will be understanding if you want to take your jewellery somewhere else to get another offer.

Look for Bullion Prices Pegged to Market Prices

Another quality of a reliable buyer is that they base their offers on market prices. Buyers will always have their own overhead to cover, but the closer you can get to spot prices, the better.

Look for prices posted on the buyer’s website. Public prices are a great way to estimate how much your own jewellery should be worth before you step into their store.