You may be thinking about selling your scrap gold for cash. It is a quick way to make some extra money from gold jewelry that you no longer want or perhaps even broken jewelry. But before you grab everything and go down to the nearest scrap gold buyer, there are a few things you should do:

Gather your gold and sort it

You need to know exactly what you have, so the first thing you need to do is get everything together, put it on a flat surface, and begin sorting through it. Look for the stamp indicating the karats of gold. You will be looking for such numbers as 14k and 18k; these are the most common. The k stands for karat. If you can't find a stamp, then set it in a separate pile. This gold will need to be tested for its gold content by a gold buyer.

Weigh and calculate how much gold you have

Weigh each karat pile separately, so you have a weight for each karat content value. Pure gold is 24k, so simply divide the karat number by 24 to get the percentage of gold content for that particular karat group. Then, take this percentage and multiple the weight for that particular karat group. You may only have one or two karat groups, that's okay. The last step is to convert to troy ounces. Gold is priced in troy ounces, so unless you are using a scale that weighs in this unit, you need to multiply your figure in ounces by 0.91.

Get quotes from the best gold buyers

You can go online or look up local scrap gold buyers, but you need to be careful who you are dealing with. You want to take your gold to a dealer that will not cheat you, especially when you are not sure of the gold content of one or more pieces of scrap gold. You also want a dealer to offer a fair price. The better gold dealers will sell directly to a foundry. You want to avoid scrap gold buyers who sell gold to other, more established, gold buyers. You will get a lower price, and they often don't have the expertise to evaluate scrap gold. The best way to determine the better gold buyers is simply through quotes. The best quotes will come from those dealers with no middleman.

Keep in mind that after doing the things listed above, you may not want to sell gold. The price of gold may drop in the future, but it may go up. Scrap gold is an asset, and you should consider it a part of your wealth whether you turn it into cash or not.