You don’t have to choose between sentimental value and practicality.
Supplying your own gold lets you give a new piece of jewelry a deeper connection to your history — while potentially reducing the cost of making it. Heirloom jewelry itself may be worth something, but its history can be worth even more. Reusing it gives that material a new purpose and lets your jewelry grow with you.
You’re getting smarter, wiser, and more beautiful. Your jewelry should keep up!
If you’re ordering one of my Classics, you’ll see two prices on the website: one using gold supplied by you, and one using gold supplied by me. When you supply your own gold, I test it when it arrives and credit you for its full value toward your piece.
You don’t need to have the exact amount of gold listed on the website, either. Here’s how it works.
Your old jewelry gets a new life. And you get its full value credited toward your new piece.
- I test and weigh your jewelry when it arrives, then email you with the results and any price adjustments.
- Too much or too little is okay. Excess can be returned or credited; if you’re short, I credit what you supplied and invoice you for the rest.
- Most jewelry is professionally refined and recycled with other customers’ gold, so your original gold won’t necessarily remain physically identifiable in the finished piece.
- If the jewelry is very sentimental, let me know first. I can often work with it directly, depending on its composition and condition.
Send me your jewelry
You can send me old jewelry, gold bands, broken pieces, or other gold you no longer wear. Please don’t worry about cleaning it up or sorting it perfectly — I’ll take care of that here.
When your gold arrives, I weigh and test every piece to determine its weight and purity. I’ll email you with the results and let you know whether you’ve supplied enough gold, too much, or exactly what we need.
This is also when I’ll make any necessary price adjustments.
What if I have too much or too little?
If you send too much: you have two options. I can return the excess gold to you with your completed piece, or you can choose to have its full value applied as an additional credit toward your jewelry.
If you send too little: I’ll credit you for the full value of the gold you’ve supplied, then send you an invoice for the remaining gold I’ll need to provide.
So you don’t need to know exactly how much your gold is worth before you send it. I’ll determine that once it arrives.
What happens to the gold?
Most of the jewelry I receive is group recycled with jewelry supplied by my other customers. It’s professionally refined and returned to me as pure gold, which I then use to make jewelry.
This means that your original gold doesn’t necessarily remain physically identifiable in your new piece. After refining, the material has been separated and purified, so the gold atoms in your finished jewelry won’t necessarily be the same atoms that were in your original ring or chain.
Your gold’s value, however, is fully credited to your project.
For many people, that’s the most meaningful part of the process: you’re taking gold that already has a history with you and giving its value a new life, rather than buying newly mined gold for the project.
Recycling also means I can work with a known source of gold rather than relying entirely on newly mined material. No gold supply chain is perfect, but using 100% recycled gold from a known source is, in my opinion, a pretty good option.
What if I want my gold in my new piece?
If the gold itself is highly sentimental, like a wedding ring from a parent, a piece of jewelry from someone who has died, or something else where the physical material matters as much as its value, please reach out to me before I begin work.
I can often work with your gold directly rather than sending it through the refining process. This is a more specialized process, and there are some additional considerations and risks that we’ll discuss beforehand.
Gold that contains very little solder is ideal for this kind of work. Plain gold bands, gold bars, rounds, and bullion are generally the easiest materials to work with directly.
More complicated jewelry can be more challenging. Chains, for example, can contain a lot of solder and other materials. Solder can introduce contaminants into the gold that may cause problems such as porosity when the metal is melted and fabricated.
If your piece is highly sentimental but isn’t an ideal candidate for direct reuse, don’t assume that means I can’t work with it. Reach out. I’m always willing to look at what’s possible, and we’ll talk through the risks and figure out a Plan B — and, if necessary, a Plan C — before I start.
Why Reusing Gold Isn’t as Simple as Melting It Down
Working with customer-supplied gold isn’t as simple as melting down an old ring and pouring it into a new one. Every piece of jewelry has a different history, amount of contaminating solder, and alloy. The gold’s karat only tells us how much gold is in the alloy, not what the other ingredients are. It’s a true mystery soup!
This is one reason you don’t see many jewellers or casting houses willing to work directly with sentimental materials. It requires specialized knowledge, lots of client communication, and a willingness to slow down when the material doesn’t behave as expected. And sometimes, despite doing everything right, things go wrong. Working this way can mean more labour, more uncertainty, and less predictable margins than simply starting with clean, known metal. I choose to offer it because I’ve seen that in many cases, the the sentimental value of the jewelry outweighs its financial value — and because part of my job is knowing when to proceed, when to change course, and when to tell you that something isn’t worth the risk.
Making your new piece
Once I’m ready to begin, the gold is melted down and formed into an ingot. I then roll, draw, hammer, and otherwise work that material into the sheet and wire needed to construct your jewelry.
Everything I make in my studio is fabricated rather than cast. That means I’m building your piece from these raw materials, rather than creating a wax model and casting it.
What Does Hand Fabricated Mean, and Why Should You Care? →
When I supply the gold for your piece, I use gold from the Royal Canadian Mint. The Mint’s gold supply supports Canadian mining and manufacturing jobs; 94% of the mined gold used in their products is sourced directly from Canadian mines. They also have strong policies against forced labour and child labour across their supply chains.
Source: The Royal Canadian Mint 2025 Impact Report
Whether you’re supplying your own gold or choosing gold from me, the goal is the same: to create something new from a material that can last for generations.
Still Have Questions?
If you have gold with a story behind it and you’re trying to figure out what to do with it, I’d love to talk it through.
Book a Free Consult