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When you have gold or silver at home, it’s not easy to decide what to do with it. Do you hold onto it hoping for prices to go higher someday, or do you take advantage of good prices today? Where do you go to sell it? And most importantly, how do you make sure you get a fair price?
It can help to know what buyers are looking for when they buy gold and silver. The price you can get for a piece depends on its purity, weight, condition, design, original paperwork, and rarity. At Muzeum, we treat each piece separately and pay attention to the details. When you sell gold in Toronto, you want to make sure you get a fair market price, which is why we provide free in-person evaluations.
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The most common gold items we see include:
Luxury and designer-brand gold jewellery is also sought-after. Designer jewellery in good condition can be sold to collectors rather than melted down for bullion, potentially earning a better price. Brands like Tiffany & Co., Cartier, Bvlgari, Van Cleef & Arpels, Marco Bicego, Piaget, Buccellati, and many more are consistently in demand.
Note that not all pieces will have collectible value, but the precious metal content will always be valuable. Learn more about the gold items we buy and how we evaluate pieces.
Silver can be found in all kinds of items from jewellery to bullion to cutlery and tea settings. It’s often inherited in the form of coin collections and heirlooms and comes in a wide range of purity and rarity. People often come in wondering if their items really are silver or not.
You can take a look for yourself by seeing if the item has a hallmark stamped or marked on the piece to indicate its purity. Typical hallmarks include .500 (50% pure), .800 (80% pure), and Sterling or .925 (92.5% pure, based on an old standard). Coins like the Canadian Silver Maple Leaf will have an even higher purity at .999 or finer. On objects like cutlery or tea settings, you may need a magnifying glass to see the hallmark, usually located on the bottom.
Some of the more common silver items that we buy include:
Credit: freepic.diller Via: Freepik
There are several factors that we consider before offering a price, and they vary depending on what kind of item you bring in. These are some of the factors we look at.
When it comes to precious metals, purity is one of the biggest factors affecting price. The purity might be expressed in terms of carat, often used for jewellery or fineness, as is usually the case with coins and jewellery. Bullion is based on fineness of the metal, usually in percentage purity (99.9% or .999).
Gold is a very malleable metal, meaning that 24K or pure gold can be dented or bent out of shape fairly easily. It must be alloyed with other metals to give it more durability when it’s shaped into jewellery. Other metals can also be added to alter the colour. For example, white gold is created by alloying with palladium or silver, while alloying with copper can give a piece of jewellery a pink hue, as in rose gold.
When it comes to silver, different purities can be found in coins from around the world, as the silver content in circulation coins changed over time and according to denomination. The most common purities are between 40% and 90%. In Canada, the precious metal stopped being used in circulation coins in 1967 as the costs became prohibitive. The Mint started using nickel coinage instead. In the United States, only coins minted in 1964 or earlier will have any silver content (except some John F Kennedy half dollars dated from 1965-1969).
When you bring your pieces to us, we confirm the purity by using XRF machine technology. This allows us to determine the exact metal breakdown of the item with greater certainty.
The condition of coins, jewellery, and other pieces can affect their value, especially if you are hoping they have collectible value. Numismatic coins are those that have a higher value than either their face value or their precious metal content. Collectors are willing to pay more due to limited mintage, errors made in the minting process, and other distinguishing features.
Collectability can raise the price of your piece. By working with a wide market of collectors, we ensure that pieces brought to us get a fair market price. The market depends on what collectors are looking for at any given moment.
When it comes to coins, a numismatist is the best specialist to comment on the market. Trained numismatists at Muzeum have access to an extensive database of thousands of collectors. They can tell you with certainty if a coin has value beyond its precious metal contents (the value of the gold or silver within the piece itself).
Not all coins or jewellery are collectibles. Many silver circulation coins can still be found easily enough that they are not worth more than their precious metals content. When it comes to jewellery, some pieces are simply outdated, while broken pieces will also derive their value primarily from their precious metal content rather than brand name, design, or rarity. An expert can help identify whether or not there is a collectible market for your valuables.
We believe in transparency. Find out what we pay for coins, jewellery, and all gold and silver items before you even step through our door. We can connect you with collectors of coins, jewellery, and all precious metals items and find the best avenue for you to sell. If you are not sure if your items are collectible or just worth the precious metal, book a free evaluation and find out from an expert!
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