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Should 24K gold plate be removed from broken chandelier?

December 29, 2009

In an oft repeated scenario in our home, I just removed an item from the trash which my husband had thrown away: this item being a broken crystal chandelier base. The chandelier fell from our ceiling 25 years ago and has sat in the attic all this time to be a source for spare crystals, if ever needed. We needed the space recently so my husband removed the crystals and threw the gold base away. I began to wonder today, while thinking about the high price of gold, whether it was foolish to throw away something as large as it is and covered, supposedly, with 24 karat gold. What do you think?

Thanks,

Jeannine Burkhart
housewife/retired engineer - Knoxville, Tennessee, USA

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Hi, Jeannine. Unless this chandelier was really really expensive ($10 thousand and up) the gold plating is probably about 15 millionths of an inch thick. As a retired engineer, I'm sure that with that information you can estimate the value of the recovered gold. If gold collectors at the stores that say "We buy gold!"are not interested, and they know the economics of recovering gold from plating, I don't think you would be interested. Good luck.

Regards,

Ted Mooney, P.E.
Striving to live Aloha
finishing.com - Pine Beach, New Jersey
December 30, 2009

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Jeannine,
I agree with Ted on this. If the base metal is brass you could take it to a scrap yard and sell it (when you get enough brass to make it worth your while). The brass weight would be worth more than the amount of gold that's on it. Get a strong magnet and check it out.

Mark Baker
Fellow Plater - Syracuse, NY, USA
December 30, 2009

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If the thickness of the gold is 15 millionths of an inch thick, as Ted suggested, the dollar value of the gold contained would only be about $.16 per square inch at a $1100 gold market. The gold may very well be thinner than that - I doubt if it's any thicker. All in all, unless you had a huge amount (which you don't), the only value to any buyer would be the base metal.

If you know the thickness of the gold, the gold value per square inch, in dollars, can easily be estimated by first dividing the gold market price in dollars by 100,000 and then multiplying this answer by the gold thickness in millionths of an inch.

Chris Owen
- Nevada, Missouri, USA
December 31, 2009