Your gold helps pay for your new piece of jewellery, regardless of whether we reuse your own gold or craft it from ours.
If you choose to have a new piece of jewellery made from your own old gold, the memories of the loved ones who wore the gold are preserved in the new piece. A typical example could be wedding rings, where old wedding rings from grandparents or great-grandparents on both sides could be incorporated into the new rings. Recycling your own gold in a new piece of jewellery incurs an additional charge.
The first step is to find out which piece of jewellery you would like, so that we can give you a price for your order. After that, we weigh your old gold or silver and find out what its fineness is – in other words, what carat it is – by looking at the hallmark and testing it. Here are the most common hallmarks:
Gold
333 – is 8 carat (333 parts gold out of 1000)
585 – is 14 carat (585 parts gold out of 1000)
750 – that is 18 carat (750 gold out of 1000)
Silver
925 is sterling silver (925 silver out of 1000)
To determine the value of gold, we benchmark it against New fortune - one of the companies in Denmark that offers the highest price for old gold and silver. We believe this is the fairest approach for our customers. Once we have determined the value of your old gold, we will deduct this amount from the price of your new jewellery. Please note that you can normally offset a maximum of approximately 50% of the price of the new jewellery against the value of your old gold.
Example of an example
NOTE! The price changes regularly! This is the current daily price as of 9/9 2026.
We only use your old gold in the new piece of jewellery if you specifically ask for it. The jewellery is then cast in its own flask, so as not to mix it with other people's gold. Here, it is often necessary to supplement with additional gold to ensure a successful casting, but you do not pay extra for this. We also add a little extra 24k (also known as fine gold) to be completely sure that the purity is maintained.
You can read more about how you can transform your old gold into new jewellery here
Gold is alloyed (mixed) with silver and copper to make it harder and cheaper. Old gold is often alloyed differently than modern gold, which can create certain limitations regarding which goldsmithing techniques can be used. In some cases, the metal is more resistant to being shaped after melting down, which causes it to splinter. Therefore, you cannot always ”just” melt the gold down into a bar and make a new piece of jewellery. However, we can avoid these problems if we cast directly in its own mould (investment flask).
You are always welcome to book a design meeting, or drop by to see us so we can best guide you.
If there are many stones that need to be removed from the gold, we charge an hourly rate for the extra work. Afterwards, you will get the stones back, unless they are to be included in the new design.
For example, if you have an old 8-carat ring but would like a 14-carat piece of jewellery incorporating your old ring, we alloy it up – meaning that we add some pure gold (24k) when we cast your new jewellery from your old gold. By adding pure gold or silver and copper, we can alloy up or down to your desired carat in this way.
It often makes good financial sense to recycle your old gold to offset the labour costs and possibly also use it to create a new piece of jewellery. Silver is significantly cheaper than gold, which is why it is often only worthwhile if you have a minimum of 30g. You might want to check the daily price of New fortune.
With old silver, the lowest purity we can work with is three-tower silver (830). Please note, however, that we only work with three-tower silver in very rare cases.
All Castens' designs can be made in silver, and you can already check the silver price for many of them by selecting the material in the drop-down menu on the website.
We are more than happy to reuse the stones from your old jewellery – or loose stones that you bring with you. In this case, however, the workshop disclaims responsibility should your own stones suffer damage during the setting process. A gemstone that has been worn CAN have hidden fractures which may mean it is destroyed when set in the new piece of jewellery – although fortunately this is very rare. Should this nevertheless happen, we will naturally do our best to find a suitable replacement, which will be added to the final invoice – though at cost price, as we have no interest in profiting from the situation. Should the worst happen, we will always inform you first that it will be necessary to find a replacement, giving you the opportunity to choose an alternative should you wish to do so.
You can always pop by the shop and have your options for reusing your stones assessed. We also have a wide selection of gemstones in the goldsmith's, which you are always welcome to choose from.
Another great way to recycle old gold is by having it remodelled. Here, we base our work on your existing piece of jewellery and alter it, often into something completely unrecognisable. At the same time, we do our utmost to retain any engravings that serve as proof that it truly IS the old piece of jewellery that has been remodelled.
Did you know that the gold we use at Castens is largely recycled? All the gold that has been sold to gold buyers around the world is sent to large factories, which, under controlled conditions, melt it down and extract the pure gold for re-alloying and processing. When we then order gold in the form of, for example, sheet or wire from our suppliers here in Denmark, it is precisely this recycled gold that we buy. Extracting new gold can have massive environmental and human consequences, which is why we fully support recycling the gold that has already been wrested from Mother Earth.