Gold price used here: pure gold around €125/g in early July 2026 (so 18-carat around €90/g at spot, a bit less at buy-back). The price moves every day — check it on the date you're reading.
You've got a little box somewhere: a grandfather's chain bracelet, a broken necklace, odd earrings, a wedding band that no longer fits. Gold that's just sleeping. And one day a jeweller says the line that makes you dream: « bring it all in, I'll make you a beautiful piece from your own gold ». On paper it's magical — you turn unused sentiment into a piece you'll actually wear. In reality, there are two hidden invoices buried in that sentence, and nobody shows them to you before the quote.
The problem: everyone who recommends melting it down… sells it
Type « rework old gold jewellery » or « melt down inherited jewellery » into Google. You land on goldsmiths and jewellers. They'll all tell you it's a wonderful idea — it's their trade, and good for them. Nobody in those results has any interest in telling you « actually, in your specific case, it might not be worth it ».
I don't run a workshop and I have nothing to melt for you. My thing is gold by the gram. So I'll just lay out the numbers — the ones you can check yourself — so you decide with your eyes open.
« Melt loss »: the gold that goes up in smoke
First hidden cost. When you melt old jewellery to make a new piece, you don't recover 100% of the metal. Some is lost in the process — that's what's called melt loss: oxidation, residue, refining, plus old solders and alloys that don't recycle cleanly. In practice, the workshop typically deducts 10 to 15% of your gold before it even starts working.
Concretely: you bring in 20 grams of 18-carat gold. After melting, you're left with only 17 to 18 grams of usable gold. At ~€90/g, that's €180 to €270 of metal that evaporates — literally — at the very first step. It's not a scam, it's physics. But it's gold you had and won't have anymore.
The labour: the real heavy item, often above €2,000
Second invoice, and by far the heaviest: the work. Melting it down « with your gold » means a bespoke piece, handmade, in 4 to 6 weeks. You're no longer buying a mass-produced item off a production line: you're paying a craftsperson, their bench time, their level of finishing. Depending on complexity, labour starts around €800 for a simple piece and climbs fast above €2,000 as soon as there's stone-setting, volume or high finishing.
In other words: your gold almost never « pays » for the piece. It serves as raw material, but the bulk of the cheque is craftsmanship.
Remelting your jewellery isn't « getting your gold back for free »: it's losing a chunk of it to the fire, then buying craftsmanship back at full price.
Stones, the third deduction everyone forgets
If your old pieces have stones, don't assume they'll be reused free of charge. Unsetting, cleaning and re-setting are extra work — so extra labour. And some small old (or damaged) stones aren't worth the cost of remounting. The sentimental value of a family diamond is real; its resale value, much less so. Keep a cool head: the only part of your old piece whose value is measured by the gram is the gold.
When remelting is worth it — and when selling + buying second-hand costs less
Here's the real question, the one workshops don't ask. There are two cases, and they have nothing to do with each other.
- You're doing it for emotion. You want to wear your grandmother's gold, turned into something of your own. Then price isn't the point: you're buying a story, and a story has no price per gram. Go for it — but knowing that melt loss and labour mean the final piece will cost you more than an equivalent new piece in a shop. That's the price of bespoke and of meaning. Own it, it's legitimate.
- You're doing it to get a « beautiful cheap piece ». Wrong move. Between the 10-15% of gold lost to the fire and the €2,000+ of labour, you're paying the maximum. In that case, the honest maths is usually: sell your old pieces by weight (18-carat gold at spot, without the new-piece markup), then buy a second-hand piece already made, where someone else has already absorbed the labour loss. You get cash for your sleeping gold, and you pay for the second-hand piece at the real price per gram, not the workshop price.
The tipping point is almost always there: do you want one specific object that exists nowhere else, or do you just want a beautiful gold piece? For the first, remelting holds up. For the second, selling + buying second-hand wins almost every time.
And if you go the selling route, keep two reflexes: cleanly separate the value of the metal from the story you're told (that's exactly the logic for estimating the fair price of a second-hand gold piece), and don't forget the tax side of selling gold in 2026 if the amounts are significant.
To move faster on the part that's measurable
Before saying yes to a remelt quote — or selling — have your gold weighed and tested (18 carat / 750), and work out its value at the day's price. That's your reference point: below it, you're being had; above it, you're paying for work, and it's up to you to decide whether it's worth it. Once you know the weight, you can check in thirty seconds what the metal is really worth, and compare it with what 18-carat second-hand gold costs elsewhere.
Eleven second-hand 18-carat gold shops, normalised to the gram — to place the real value of your gold before you melt it.
To wrap up
Remelting an inherited piece isn't a bad choice — it's just a choice that has a price, and one that's always sold to you on its magical side, never on its double invoice. If it's for emotion, go for it, but with your eyes open on melt loss and labour. If it's for the savings, run the sell + buy-second-hand maths first: it often wins. I'm telling you what I'd check in your place; the sentimental weight is yours to weigh.
Sources for the figures cited:
- Labour pricing for reworking (from ~€800, bespoke 4-6 weeks): perrigot.fr, accessed 16 June 2026
- Cost of bespoke transformation and labour (often ≥ €2,000 for set pieces): jv-bijoux.fr, accessed 16 June 2026
- Remelting process and material loss (melting, refining): argent-cash.eu, accessed 16 June 2026
- Gold price 18 and 24 carat per gram (early July 2026): lingor.fr, accessed 16 June 2026