Recent work

Jobs we're proud of

Gold and silver buying in Houston, Texas, with free evaluations and cash paid on the spot.

Book online Read the reviews

Gold Buyer completing a final quality inspection beside a residential water heater

Case notes

Six recent jobs, explained.

An old glass jar tipped on its side at the back of the shop counter with its mixed coins now sorted into long even rows across a dark counter mat, four coins set apart on a small felt square in front of the rows

Houston · Coin collection

A coffee can of change with four coins that mattered

The owner wanted it weighed as junk silver and paid out. We sorted it first, which took the better part of an hour, and found a 1916-D dime, two early Walkers and a Carson City dollar sitting in with the common dates. Those four were paid separately, at collector value, and they came to more than the rest of the can put together.

An estate lot spread across the counter and grouped into trays — one of yellow gold, one of white metal, one of plated pieces pushed slightly aside — with three empty jewelry boxes stacked at the end

Houston · Estate buyout

An estate where a third of it was not gold at all

Two executors, a deadline, and three jewelry boxes. Sorting it out found gold-filled and plated pieces mixed all the way through, which is normal and which nobody wants to discover after the money has changed hands. We separated the plated out in front of them, showed the tester reading on the questionable pieces, and priced only the real metal.

A sterling flatware service laid out in rows on a counter mat with the knives separated into their own group at one end, a hand settling a stack of spoons onto the counter scale

Houston · Sterling flatware

A flatware service that was half silver plate

It arrived as one chest, sold to the family decades ago as a set. Most of the service was sterling and marked, but the serving pieces and every knife handle were plate over a weighted core. We weighed the sterling, set the plate aside with the marks pointed out, and explained why a knife handle almost never weighs what it looks like it should.

Broken chains, single earrings and bent rings separated into four distinct piles on a felt tray, each pile a slightly different shade of yellow, with a heavier bangle sitting alone in the fourth

Houston · Scrap gold

One bag, four karats, four different prices

A bag of tangled chain, odd earrings and a few broken clasps. Weighed as one lump it would all have been paid at 10K, because that is what a single number for a mixed bag means. Sorted, it was 10K, 14K, 18K and a 22K bangle, and the 22K alone was a quarter of the payout on a fraction of the weight.

A vintage wristwatch face-up on a bench block with its bracelet laid out straight beside it and its caseback resting alongside, a jeweller's loupe standing on the mat

Houston · Luxury watch

A watch that stopped in 1994 and was still worth a car

It came in with a dead movement and a stretched bracelet, offered as a gold case to melt. The case was gold, but it was also a sought-after reference with its original dial intact — and an original dial is most of the value on that model. We bought it as a watch, not as metal, and said out loud what the difference was.

Sealed bullion bars laid in a neat overlapping row beside three tall stacks of silver rounds and two capped tubes, with a handheld metal analyser resting at the edge of the group

Houston · Bullion lot

A bullion lot with two bars that were not bars

Thirty ounces of silver and a few small gold bars from a private sale years earlier. Everything checked out except two of the gold bars, which came back wrong on the tester and rang wrong when weighed against their stated size. We showed the owner both readings. They kept the counterfeits as evidence, and we bought the rest at spread off spot.

Reviews