I've tried selling jewellery on eBay, but without any success and have given some to charity, which feels good, but doesn't actually help my finances. I inherited some jewellery late last year and at the same time had a sort out of my existing jewellery. A couple of the pieces I'd inherited needed resizing or professional cleaning and so I decided to rationalise my jewellery and sell some of the jewellery I never wore, to pay for the work to the pieces which had some sentimental value.
I sorted through everything, kept items which I felt I would wear and made a pile of everything else. From that I tried to eliminate pieces of costume jewellery made out of stainless steel or which were silver plated, these were consigned to landfill. I then sorted the remainder into piles of silver, yellow gold and white gold. I only really wear white metal jewellery and so didn't have much yellow gold. Some of it was clearly a different colour to the rest and so I thought it must either be plated, or some other metal, but I included it just in case.
I then did an online search to find a reputable company to sell my jewellery to. Hatton Garden Metals came up a few times, so I registered with their site. I weighed the various collections of metal and input the weights into their website, to get an idea of how much I could expect from selling my metal to them. Silver really has very little value, but gold is still valuable. I was amazed to see that my collection was worth £283 (£261 for gold and £22 silver), but I was sceptical as there were some stones which would need to be removed which would reduce the weight, and as I mentioned above, I wasn't sure all the gold items really were gold. I decided that as long as I got more than £100 I'd be happy, as that would pay for the work I needed doing to the jewellery I'd inherited. I packaged it all up and posted it off.
I heard back a couple of days later that, as I'd suspected, some of the items weren't pure metal and they could pay me £147 (£127 for gold and £20 for silver). If I wasn't happy, they could return the items to me at a cost, but they'd have some damage (stones would have been removed and some pieces marked from testing). As any jewellery they returned would just go back into a drawer, I was happy to get nearly £150 for jewellery I didn't wear, so I happily accepted their offer.
The money was paid into my bank account within a couple of days. The whole process was really painless.
If you've got jewellery which means anything to you or that has any history, I wouldn't suggest selling it to a metal merchant. However, if you're like me and have a drawer full of jewellery you don't wear, it's an easy way of turning it into money that you can make more use of. I was happy with Hatton Garden Metals, but again, it's worth checking reviews, as you don't want to post your jewellery to a disreputable company, and risk never hearing from them again, or getting a poor price for your possessions.
To give you an idea, this is the jewellery I sold (yellow gold, then silver, then white gold). Some of it was broken or damaged, but as they simply remove stones and melt the metal down, it doesn't make any difference to them.
If you decide to sell anything, let me know. I'd love to hear how you get on.
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