I want to sell gold filled and gold plated necklaces from the 1950s, made in Korea. I have dozens of them equaling several pounds. From Becky in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin

Hi Becky,

It is nearly impossible to recover any relevant amount of gold from plated items because the gold is plated so thinly that there are only a few microns of actual gold in each plated item. Furthermore, the cost to refine plated items is higher than with 10 Karat - 24 Karat gold so there is no value in refining it.

Gold filled jewelry on the other hand, may have some value. Typically, a few pieces of gold filled jewelry will not yield much return but if you have pounds, you should get some return. I suggest using the US Postal Service’s flat rate shipping boxes. They are great for shipping small, heavy items such as jewelry. Remember to request the “Delivery Signature Required” option when you ship.

Because we can not take your gold plated jewelry items, we would recommend selling them as costume jewelry on EBay or local consignment shops. Hope this helps!

I have an 18k gold plated wall sconce light fixture. It retailed for $2300 new. Since it was so expensive, I’m wondering if it has more than just the typical thin layer of gold plating and if so, would it be possible to salvage the gold? – From David

Hi David,

Without seeing or testing the light fixture I cannot say for certain if the gold on your light fixture is more than a plating. However, usually the retailer and/or manufacturer will let the buyer know if an item contains a significant amount of gold because it would be a major selling point for them.

Also, it can be easy to get hung up on the retail price of an item, but it is very different from the melt value of the item. Even though the retail price is high does not mean that price translates to the precious metal value, which is the only value that refiners take into consideration.

If the piece is not damaged, I would guess that the retail value of it would be worth more than the precious metal value. Arch Enterprises would not be able to offer you a return for the gold plated item because there would not be enough gold to extract. I would check to see if your wall sconce is a brand name and even if you could sell pieces of it separately. Hope this helps!

I have a 51 piece 24K gold plated flatware set that is supposed to contain 63 pieces (I’m missing 12 salad forks.) If it were a full set, it’s only going for about $50 on E-Bay. It is not marked 24K, but the certificate included with the set states they guarantee it to be so. So let’s just assume this to be true. Would I be better off to sell this online for $40 or $50 or sell it as gold scrap? Thanks. - Mark in Las Vegas, Nevada

Gold Plated Flatware

Hi Mark:

Unfortunately, plated gold flatware typically only contains a microscopic layer of gold. In most cases, the flatware is plated so thinly that it costs more in energy and time to remove the gold than the gold is worth. Therefore, most precious metal refiners cannot offer payment for gold plated items.

However, the value of your flatware depends greatly on the metal underneath the gold plating. In some cases, manufacturers plated the gold over sterling silver. If your set is gold on sterling silver, the set should be worth more than $50.00 for the silver value (market price of silver and weight depending). If they are gold plate on stainless or copper or another base metal you are best to sell them on ebay.

To give you a feel for the melt value, we buy sterling silver by weight and pay around $175 a pound at this time.* If you want to determine what metal is under the gold plating, you can send us one piece to test in our XRF analytical lab to determine if it is silver underneath the gold or you might be able to dig up some information by calling/writing the manufacturer.

You can see how the XRF machine works Arch Enterprises Video Site.

* Price reflects the price of silver when this blog article was published and my not reflect the current price of silver, which changes daily.