Old Gold, New Ornament: How Exchange and Remaking Actually Work

Very little gold in Nepal is bought once and kept forever in its original form. It is inherited, it goes out of fashion, a design suits a mother and not a daughter, and eventually it comes back across a counter to be exchanged or remade. This is one of the most routine transactions in the trade and one of the least understood by the people bringing the gold in.

What the shop is actually assessing

Three things, in this order.

Purity

Nobody can tell the fineness of a worn ornament by looking at it. Older pieces frequently are not what they were sold as, and pieces from different sources in the same box can differ from one another.

The traditional method is the touchstone, where a streak of the metal is compared against needles of known fineness. Most established shops now use an X-ray fluorescence machine, which reads composition without damaging the piece and takes under a minute. If a significant quantity is involved, the definitive method is fire assay, which destroys a small sample.

You are entitled to see the reading. Ask.

What is not gold

Stones are removed or their weight deducted. So is enamel, lac filling, and any core inside a hollow piece — some traditional bangles and neck pieces are built around a filler, and that filler has been on your scale at home for decades pretending to be gold.

Solder is the subtler one. The joints in an ornament are a lower-grade alloy, and on a piece with many joins the effect on overall fineness is not trivial.

Refining loss

Turning old mixed-purity gold back into usable metal loses some of it. That loss is real and it is charged. It should be a modest percentage, and it should be stated as a number before you agree to anything.

Why the credited weight is lower, and when that is fair

So the weight you are credited is the assayed gold content, minus stones and filler, minus a refining deduction. It will be lower than the number on your own scale, and that by itself is not evidence of anything wrong.

What you should expect is for each of those steps to be shown to you separately. Gross weight in, stone and filler weight out, assayed purity, resulting fine gold, deduction percentage, net credit. Six numbers.

A shop that gives you one number and no working is asking you to trust a calculation you are not allowed to see. That is the point to ask questions, politely and before you hand anything over.

Exchange against the same shop, or sale for cash

These are not the same transaction and they usually do not carry the same terms.

• Exchange, where the credit goes against a new purchase from the same shop, generally gives you the better rate. The shop keeps the customer and the margin on the new piece.
• Outright sale for cash is usually assessed less generously, because the shop is now simply buying metal.

Where you bought the piece originally can matter as well. Many shops offer better terms on their own work, since they know exactly what is in it.

Remaking, which is a third option

If the gold is good and the design is the problem, the piece can be melted and remade rather than exchanged. You pay making charges and wastage on the new piece but you are not paying for metal, so the cost is very much lower than buying outright.

The catch is that it is irreversible, and some old pieces are worth more as they are than as their metal. Hand-worked pieces from a good karigar, anything with genuine age, and anything with family history attached should be looked at by someone who knows craft before it goes anywhere near a crucible.

Practical points

• Take the original bill if you still have it. It settles the purity question immediately.
• Weigh the pieces at home first, so you have your own starting figure.
• Do not let pieces out of your sight during assessment, and do not leave gold overnight without a signed receipt describing each item.
• Get the assessment from more than one shop if the quantity is meaningful. The variation between offers is often larger than people expect.