Suppose you come across some old jewelry or a rare coin collection while dusting out an attic or basement. Before you casually toss it aside consider that what looks like junk may actually contain valuable precious metals including gold, silver and platinum. Many old jewelry pieces, coin collections and serve ware have 14-karat and higher gold contents and real silver which is worth a lot of money in some markets. Gold buyers and sellers are always looking for more gold to melt down and if you have gold, silver or platinum in any form you can sell it online for a quick cash payout.

The first thing to know before going about selling gold is making sure you actually have gold to sell. Sometimes jewelry and other items can be gold plated or use an imitation metal that looks like gold but isn't. One easy way to tell if your old gold ring or serving spoon is made of gold is to locate the karat indicator, usually found on the side. This measurement tells an appraiser the karat content of a particular item. 24-karat is pure gold while 10-karat is a very minute amount of gold. It is illegal to trade in any items less than 10-karat gold. If your jewelry or object does not have a karat symbol than chances are it is not real gold. If the jewelry is really old try buffering it a bit to see if the karat content might be hidden by built up rust or grime.

When you know the karat content of a particular piece of gold you can then figure out the going rate for that particular content. Any successful online gold buyer will post their pay rates for 10, 12, 18 and 24-karat gold pieces but check frequently as these rates change on a daily basis just like any other metal on a stock exchange.

Another thing to consider when deciding to sell gold online is whether your jewelry is rare enough to be sold on its own or if you are looking to lump together several objects and sell it as scrap. The karat content of a particular watch may not be of high trade in value but the designer may be a rare artist whose works are valued. In this case it doesn't make sense to sell the watch as scrap since you won't get much because of the low karat count. Scrap dealers only care about the value of the metal, be it gold, silver or platinum. But if the rarities of a particular jewelry piece are prized enough you can market the gold jewelry on other merits besides the metal value.

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