What if all you've got are the ugly but heavy gold chains from the "Saturday Night Fever" era? With these, your best bet is selling to a refiner for the melted-metal value, said Jeff Clark, editor of an industry newsletter called BigGold.
With gold prices near historical highs, heavy rings and chains could bring a pretty penny -- about $850 per troy ounce of pure gold.
To figure out how much you'll get for an individual piece, look for a karat stamp. This is normally on the inside of a ring, and on or near the clasp of a necklace or bracelet.
If the stamp shows that it's 24-karat gold, your item is pure and likely to be worth nearly the current spot price of the metal. But it's more likely to be 14 karat (about 58 percent pure), which means you need almost twice as much weight to get the same gold content and payoff.
Can't find a stamp? The piece may have been sized, filed or cleaned so much that the stamp was cut or worn away. Or it could be that your item simply isn't gold.
A quick way to determine whether it's not gold is to expose it to a magnet. If it sticks, and it's not gray or green in color, it's something else. Gold is not magnetic, Clark said. (Gold is sometimes alloyed with iron, which is magnetic, but that alloy will make it turn gray or green.)
Once you determine the gold content, weigh all the pieces with the same gold content and multiply the total weight by 0.912. Why? A troy ounce is a touch heavier than an ordinary ounce, so you have to adjust.
If you have a full troy ounce, you can now multiply the spot price by the percentage of gold content. In other words, if gold is selling for $850 an ounce and your gold is 14 karat, or 58.3 percent pure, it's worth about $495 ($850 times 58 percent).
Dillon Gage Refinery in Dallas pays 98 percent of the gold's value, after subtracting a $30 assay fee per lot, Clark said. Precious Metal Recovery in Farmington Hills, Mich., pays 95 percent of the value but doesn't charge an assay fee, which is a charge for verifying the gold content.
The catch with selling to a refiner? You'd better not want the item back. Refineries determine the metal's purity by melting it. If you don't like the price after the jewelry is melted, you can ask for the blob of gold back, but the necklace is gone for good.
Then there are scrap dealers -- including many companies that advertise on television that they will give you cash for your gold. But they will turn around and sell it to a refiner. Which means that in order to make a profit for themselves, they'll pay you less, Clark said.
"It's a popular movement for people to try to turn their jewelry into cash," Clark said. "But you're going to get a lot less from these scrap dealers than you would from a refinery."