Tips For Selling Your Valuables To A Pawn Shop For Quick Cash

Posted on: 13 May 2019

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If you need cash and don't want to apply for a loan or if you know you can't get one due to poor credit, then selling valuable items you own could be the best choice. For instance, you could sell your gold jewelry to a local pawn shop. If you've never sold or bought anything from a pawn shop before, you might not know what to expect. Here are a few tips that might help.

Decide If You Want To Sell Your Jewelry Or Get A Loan

When you do business with a pawn shop, you usually have two options. You can sell the pieces for cash and surrender them on the spot, or you can take out a cash loan and then get the pieces back when you pay off the loan. You may want a loan if the jewelry has sentimental value, but often, selling the gold outright could be the best choice when you're in a financial bind.

Determine What The Jewelry Is Worth

It will be difficult for you to determine what the jewelry is worth if you don't know much about gold or diamond prices. If you have something you know is valuable, such as diamond and gold jewelry or an antique, then you may want to get a couple of appraisals before you take your jewelry to the pawn shop. A jewelry store may appraise valuable jewelry for you to give you an idea of its worth. For less expensive pieces, you can somewhat estimate their value yourself although it will be just an estimate. First, separate your gold jewelry and chains by karat weight. The weight is marked on the jewelry somewhere, and it reflects how much gold is in the jewelry. Then, weigh each pile of jewelry, and this gives you the weight of each pile of gold karats. Input these numbers in a gold value calculator, and it will return an estimated dollar value.

One thing to keep in mind is that your jewelry may contain stones or other things not made of gold, and that will affect the weight. Having these rough estimates of the value of the jewelry will help you decide if you want to accept the offer from your pawn shop and if you want to get a loan or just sell the pieces.

Your local pawn shop is in business to make money so they may offer a lower amount than you anticipate, but if you're not using the jewelry anyway, the cash will probably be more important than gold chains you no longer wear. A pawn shop is a good way to get money when you have valuables you want to part with, and you're not restricted to just jewelry. Anything someone else might want to buy could be of interest to the shop owner, such as power tools or high-quality electronic equipment.