Cash for gold companies Cash for gold: the Which? investigation
Cash for gold firms offer consumers money in exchange for unwanted jewellery
Which? cash for gold investigation
We identified three items of gold jewellery to use in our investigation, and then purchased four of each:
- Four identical nine carat gold bracelets from H Samuel, costing £115 each
- Four identical nine carat gold bangles from Ernest Jones, costing £215 each
- Four identical nine carat gold necklaces from Ernest Jones, costing £399 each.
Each set of three items was valued by:
- Three independent high street jewellers
- Two independent pawnbrokers
- National pawnbroker chain the Money Shop
- Four TV advertised gold buying firms.
The four cash for gold companies we sent the jewellery to were: PostalGold.com, Money4Gold.co.uk, CashMyGold.co.uk and Cash4Gold.com.
Which? compared cash for gold companies with jewellers and pawnbrokers
What we expected
We expected even the best merchants we tested to quote significantly less for the jewellery than we had paid just days before. This is because we were selling the items second hand, and were told we would be offered their meltdown value.
Even so, we were amazed at some of the sums we were offered: anything from just over £6 to almost £40 for our £115 bracelet, and from £22 to £119 for our £399 necklace.
