Articles Guides
Receipts, Buy-Back and the Paperwork That Protects You
The least interesting part of buying jewellery is the only part that will still matter in twenty years. What a bill must carry, what buy-back terms actually mean, and why the document matters most when nobody is thinking about it.
Nobody has ever walked out of a jewellery shop pleased about the receipt. It is the last thing handed over, it goes into a drawer, and it is forgotten until a moment that is usually not a good one — a claim, a sale, a division of property after a death.
At that moment it is the only thing that speaks for you, and it is entirely too late to improve it.
What a bill must carry
A jewellery bill is doing more work than an ordinary receipt, because it is describing an object whose value comes from properties you cannot see. It should carry all of the following.
- The shop's name, address and tax registration details.
- The date of the transaction.
- A description of each item, specific enough to identify it.
- Gross weight, stone weight and net gold weight, separately, for each item.
- The purity of each item, and any hallmark reference.
- The rate applied and the unit it is applied in.
- Making charges and wastage, as separate lines.
- Stone details, where there are stones: weight, count and quality description.
- Tax, shown separately.
- The total, and the method of payment.
If any of these are missing, ask for them at the counter. Every one of these is a line a shop's system produces as a matter of course; a bill that lacks them is a choice, not a limitation.
Why the itemised weight matters more than the total
Because the total is the only figure on the bill that will be worthless in ten years. Prices change. Weight, purity and workmanship do not.
An insurer settling a claim needs to know what to replace, and "one gold necklace, Rs 400,000" does not tell them. Eighteen point two grams of 22-carat gold with a stated stone content does.
Buy-back and exchange terms
Most shops will take back what they sold. The terms vary considerably and are worth understanding before you buy rather than after.
The questions to ask are simple.
- Do you buy back your own pieces, and on what basis — current rate, or something below it?
- Is the deduction different for exchange against a new purchase than for cash?
- What proof do you require? Some shops require the original bill; others will assay and take anything.
- Are making charges recoverable at all? Usually they are not, and you should hear that clearly at the outset.
That last point is the one that surprises people most. Making charges buy you an object, not an investment. If your purpose in buying gold is primarily to store value, that argues for simpler pieces with lower labour content, and it is a perfectly reasonable thing to say out loud in a shop.
Hallmarking certificates
Where a piece is hallmarked, the certification is part of its documentation. Keep it with the bill. A hallmarked piece with its paperwork is straightforwardly resaleable; the same piece with the paper lost has to be assayed again, at your cost.
Keeping the records
Photograph every piece against a plain background, with a ruler in the frame for scale. Photograph the bill. Keep the images somewhere that is not the same building as the jewellery.
Update the list when something is sold, remade or given away. A remade piece should get a fresh bill describing what it is now, because the old bill no longer describes anything that exists.
The households that come through a loss or an inheritance without a dispute are, almost without exception, the ones where somebody kept a list. It is twenty minutes of work, once, and it is the highest-return twenty minutes in this whole subject.