Is There a Pot of Gold in Your House? By Allison Dow

With the price of gold at an all time high, you can make some good money on salvage jewelry or scrap jewelry. You can find it in many places, start with your own jewelry box. You may have outdated or broken pieces of jewelry. Most eyeglass frames are at least gold filled, remove the lens on your old frames and turn those in. Sometimes friends and relatives even give me their broken pieces of jewelry for free. Most people don’t know what to do with a single earring or a broken piece of jewelry, so they will just give it to you. I have even gotten these items free at estate sales. If you point out an item is broken they will often sell it to you for a few cents or give it away. I also save scrap pieces of wire and head pins that I have left from wire wrapping, making earrings etc.. All those little pieces will eventually add up.

Ebay is another great place to find items. I have seen large lots of earrings, necklaces and old jewelry sell for less than $5.00. You don’t care what the items look like or if they are broken, as long as there are some gold or silver pieces and they are cheap. You can buy the lot, remove the stones and separate out the gold and silver. You may end up with a lot of scrap and some great clasps or beads and pieces.

You can take the scrap to jewelry supplies stores, pawn shops, and even some jewelry stores. I have seen signs popping up around my city that say we buy your gold. I personally use Rio Grande. First I remove any stones or non-metal objects. Then you need to separate your gold into 10K, 12K etc and they will even accept gold filled items. They will accept sterling silver as well. You can either read the assay marks or test the items yourself. I have some gold and silver test kits and they are very helpful, but don't worry if you don't have one. The shops will test the items themselves. I have found that a lot of items are not marked, especially older clasps, findings, and most beads.

It's really worth the effort and it’s a new twist on recycling. Happy Hunting!

Allison is the owner of Estate Beads