A gold buyer makes money on the gap between what they pay you for the metal in a piece and what a refiner pays them for the same metal a few days later. The refiner settles at close to the full market value of the fine gold - typically the high nineties as a percentage - and the buyer pays you less than that. On 19 August 2026 published UK counter offers for 9ct scrap ran from about £35.80 to £37.90 a gram against a melt value of about £38.60, which is 93% to 98% of melt; postal and high-street buyers who do not publish a rate commonly pay a good deal less. Everything else - testing, rent, staff, fraud losses, the risk that spot falls between buying and settling - has to come out of that gap, which is why volume matters more than margin.

What is a piece of gold actually worth to a buyer?

Start with the number everyone in the chain prices from. The London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) Gold Price is set twice a day, at 10:30 and 15:00 London time, and every UK buyer, dealer and refiner works from it or from the live spot price around it. On 19 August 2026 gold opened at £3,203.77 per troy ounce (Forbes Advisor UK), which is £103.01 per gram.

A piece of jewellery is not pure gold. Its value to a buyer is:

weight (g) x fineness x spot per gram = melt value

Fineness is the proportion of pure gold in the alloy: 9ct is 375 parts per thousand, 14ct is 585, 18ct is 750, 22ct is 916. So at £103.01 a gram the melt value of one gram of 9ct is £38.63, of 18ct is £77.26 and of 22ct is £94.36. Our scrap gold calculator does this arithmetic against the current price.

Melt value is the ceiling. Nobody in the chain pays 100% of it, because the metal has to be melted, assayed and refined before it is worth spot. The question is how far below the ceiling each party sits.

How much do gold buyers pay?

It varies enormously, and the only reliable way to know is to compare published per-gram rates on the same day. Here is what buyers who put a number on their website published on 19 August 2026:

Buyer (type) 9ct per gram 18ct per gram As % of melt (9ct) Source
Gold-Traders (postal / online specialist) £35.82 £71.65 93% Prices we pay, 19 Aug 2026, 22:06
Birmingham Gold Company (Jewellery Quarter counter and postal) £36.63 £73.27 95% Live gold prices, 19 Aug 2026
Plus Gold Refining (refiner with a public counter) £37.90 £75.80 98% Scrap calculator, updated 9am 19 Aug 2026
Landale Metals (Edinburgh, trade counter rates) £37.58 £75.16 (hallmarked) 97% Counter buy prices, 19 Aug 2026, AM fix
H&T, Ramsdens (high-street pawnbrokers) Not published Not published - Quote on request

Two things stand out. First, the published specialists are all within a few points of each other and all above 90% of melt. Gold-Traders states it outright: "currently paying 89.4% of spot for scrap gold/jewellery and 93.2% for Sovereigns" (against their own live spot figure, taken at a different moment from the Forbes open, hence the different percentage in our column). Second, the big high-street names do not publish a per-gram rate at all. That is not necessarily a sign of a poor rate, but it means you cannot check it before you go.

The bottom of the market is much lower than the table suggests, because the worst payers do not publish. The Office of Fair Trading investigated five postal "cash for gold" companies between 2009 and 2011 and secured undertakings from CashMyGold, Cash4Gold and Postal Gold to publish per-gram prices, state clearly that offers were based on scrap value, and give customers a reasonable period to reject an offer before the gold was melted (OFT case record, GOV.UK). Which? had found the postal buyers offered "shockingly bad value" against high-street jewellers and pawnbrokers. A buyer who advertises "top prices" without a figure is asking you to trust them.

As a rule of thumb for a consumer, 85% of melt or better from a walk-in buyer is a fair offer for ordinary 9ct and 18ct scrap; 90% or better is good; below 75% means walk out. For the trade - a jeweller selling a month's counter takings to a refiner - anything under 95% of fine content needs explaining.

Where does the refiner's price come from?

The buyer's outlet is a refiner or bullion house - Baird & Co in London, Cookson Precious Metals in Birmingham, Landale in Edinburgh, a dozen smaller operations - which melts the lot, assays a sample for exact fineness, and pays for the fine gold content at the day's price.

Refiners do not publish their trade terms. Baird's refinery page describes melts "of a kilo or two" through to 300 kilos and the ability to forward sell or make advance payments, but gives no percentages (Baird & Co refinery). Cookson's scrap FAQ says charges depend on "the quantity of materials you give us, the assay type ... the process we use", lists turnaround times (clean hallmarked scrap same or next day, lemel five working days, sweeps 10-15 working days) and settlement by bank transfer, cash, credit to account or metal in return - but no figures (Cookson scrap FAQ).

What a trade settlement statement contains, in the terms we have seen, is three lines:

  • Accountability - the percentage of assayed fine gold the refiner credits you for. Clean hallmarked jewellery scrap sits in the high nineties. Sweeps and lemel are lower.
  • Treatment or melt charge - a charge per lot or per kilo for melting and sampling. Small lots carry a minimum.
  • Assay charge - a fixed fee per sample, sometimes waived above a weight.

The public evidence that trade settlement lands in the high nineties is the trade counters that do publish. Landale's trade rate for fine gold on 19 August was £100.11 a gram, 97% of the £103.01 spot at the Forbes open; its 9ct trade rate of £37.58 is 97% of 9ct melt. Plus Gold, a refiner selling direct to the public, was at 98% on 9ct. A refiner paying a regular trade customer sits at or above those numbers, minus the charges.

The worked example

A customer brings a broken 9ct chain and two odd earrings. Total weight 20.0 g, all hallmarked 375. Spot is £103.01 a gram.

Step Calculation Amount
Melt value 20.0 g x 0.375 x £103.01 £772.58
Counter offer at 85% of melt £772.58 x 0.85 (£32.83/g) £656.69
Refiner settlement, illustrative: 97.5% accountability on 7.5 g fine 7.5 g x £103.01 x 0.975 £753.26
Less illustrative treatment and assay charge for a small lot -£25.00
Net from refiner £728.26
Gross margin on the lot £728.26 - £656.69 £71.57
Gross margin as % of melt 9.3%

The 97.5% and the £25 are illustrative because the refiners do not publish; swap in your own statement. The shape does not change: on a £770 lot the buyer clears about £70 before a single overhead.

Now the overheads. A counter with one member of staff costs, conservatively, £4,000 to £6,000 a month in rent, rates, wages, insurance and testing consumables. At £71 gross per 20 g lot, that is 55 to 85 lots a month - 1.1 to 1.7 kg of 9ct - just to stand still. Most independent buyers do not see that weight, which is why almost every one is also a jeweller, a pawnbroker or a watch dealer, and gold is the sideline that pays for the footfall.

Why does the buyer pay less than the refiner does?

Because five costs sit between the counter and the settlement statement, and the buyer carries all of them.

Testing and assay risk. The counter establishes fineness in thirty seconds with an acid kit, an electronic tester or an XRF analyser; the refiner establishes it with a fire assay after melting, and when the two disagree the refiner's number wins. Plated base metal, under-carat "9ct" from abroad, solder-heavy pieces and stone-set items all push the assayed fine content below what the counter weighed. A buyer paying 98% with a cheap acid kit loses money on every mistake. See XRF vs acid vs electronic testers.

Melt loss. Melting and sampling lose a little metal; the accountability percentage is partly a charge for that. The buyer also loses the weight of solder, springs, settings and dirt that went over the counter scale as "gold".

Spot risk between buying and settling. A buyer who settles with the refiner weekly holds a week of purchases at prices fixed on the day of purchase. Gold moved 1.54% in the week to 19 August 2026 and 7.79% over the month (Forbes Advisor UK). On a £10,000 week a 1.5% fall is £150 - twice the gross margin in the worked example. Larger buyers hedge by selling forward to the refiner on the day they buy, or settle daily; a small counter carries the exposure and needs a wider spread to cover it.

Fraud and title. Stolen jewellery, fake hallmarks and tungsten-cored "bullion" all reach the counter. Identity checks, a record of every purchase and holding periods cost time, and a bad lot occasionally costs the whole amount paid.

Compliance. Taking cash at or near £10,000 puts a buyer into HMRC's High Value Dealer regime (a flat £10,000 since 30 June 2026 - see High Value Dealer registration). Selling the lot to the refiner is a reverse-charge supply - see do I charge VAT on scrap gold. Neither costs much in cash, but both need records kept.

Is there more money in keeping a piece than melting it?

Often, yes. A hallmarked Victorian bangle, a signed brooch, a branded chain or anything with a saleable stone is worth more as an object than as metal. A buyer who can tell the difference pays scrap for it and sells it as second-hand jewellery at two or three times melt - a far wider margin than the 5 to 10 points available on scrap. It is also where the VAT treatment forks: metal sold as metal goes to the refiner under the reverse charge; a piece sold as a piece is sold under the VAT margin scheme. The two must not be mixed in one record.

What we could not verify

  • Refiner trade terms. Baird & Co, Cookson and the other UK refiners do not publish accountability percentages, treatment charges or assay fees. The 97.5% and £25 in the worked example are illustrative figures consistent with terms we have seen; yours will differ. Ask for a written schedule before your first lot.
  • High-street rates. H&T and Ramsdens did not publish a per-gram price on their websites when we checked on 19 August 2026. We cannot say where they sit against the specialists.
  • Hatton Garden Metals. Its prices page could not be retrieved on the day; it normally publishes per-gram rates and is worth checking directly.
  • The spot figure. We used the 19 August 2026 open of £3,203.77 per ounce from Forbes Advisor UK. The dealers' figures above were taken at various times the same day against a moving price, so the percentage column is accurate to a point or so, not a decimal.

Sources

This is general information, not financial or tax advice, and it is not a quotation. Gold prices move by the minute and buyers change their rates without notice. Check today's price and the buyer's published rate before you sell, and take VAT and AML questions to your accountant.

Milleso's gold desk prices a counter buy as weight x fineness x spot, records the melt-or-keep decision and the VAT treatment at intake, and flags the lot as reverse charge when it goes to the refiner - so the settlement statement can be checked line by line against what was paid at the counter.