How much is one ring worth after gold prices soared in 2025?

I asked my husband to take off his gold wedding band — again. I wanted to see one more time what I’d get if we wanted to sell it.

Sure, we’ve been married 30 years. But after 30 years of marriage, well, he’s learned to roll with oddball requests — and even ribbing when the ring initially didn’t want to come off.

“We buy gold” signs grab your eye after gold prices broke one record after another in 2025. The record price for spot gold was trading at an intraday high of $4,380.99 an ounce Oct. 17, according to Kitco.com.

On Thursday morning, Dec. 11, the day I trekked out in the cold to get a few price quotes, the spot gold price was trading around $4,250 an ounce — up nearly 63% so far in 2025.

On Dec. 11, gold shot up to the highest point in more than a month, following the Federal Reserve’s decision Dec. 10 to cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point. Traders expect lower interest rates ahead, which can be bullish for gold prices.

Yet if you’re thinking about taking advantage of high gold prices to get rid of some gold, maybe a broken chain for a locket or even a gold ring from a loved one, you shouldn’t expect to receive the same amount of money everywhere you go.

What different jewelers and pawn shops offer to pay a seller for old gold jewelry can vary substantially — even as much as 50% in one example I found recently. Sometimes, the price difference is even higher.

Gold is volatile in price but viewed as a hedge against uncertain times — and we’ve had our share in 2025. Persistent inflation; three rate cuts by the Federal Reserve in 2025 after three rate cuts in 2024, which make some savings vehicles less attractive; a decline in the value of the U.S. dollar; global tensions relating to tariffs and wars.

Gold is commanding a higher price for many shoppers this holiday season, too, according to the annual PNC Christmas Price Index that reviews the cost of the gifts from the classic holiday carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

“Five gold rings saw the single-biggest price jump by far” in that grouping of 12 categories, including a partridge in a pear tree. The price of the partridge remained unchanged at $20.18 for one bird, but the pear tree shot up in price by 14.3% to $400 in the past year, according to the index now in its 42nd year.

By contrast, the “five golden rings” in the song soared in price by 32.5% year-over-year. It’s sort of a bargain when you consider the 45% jump in gold prices, as of Oct. 31. Jewelers, obviously, didn’t raise prices as much to try to hold onto some sales.

The five gold rings would cost $1,649.90 in 2025 based on the PNC analysis.

The cost of the 12 gift basket rose 4.5% compared with last year, outpacing the Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index year-over-year reading of 3% for September, which was released Oct. 24.

Data is compiled using sources from across the country, including dance and theater companies, hatcheries, pet stores and others. Overall, the total cost to buy the 12 gifts that comprise the PNC CPI for the holidays hit $51,476.12 in 2025.

Buying all the gifts rattled off in the popular, but incredibly annoying Christmas song would have cost you $46,729.86 just two years ago in 2023. And, oddly enough, in 2023, the price for five gold rings was $1,245 and had stayed flat for the first time in more than five years.

With the exception of metro Detroit’s frosty temperatures and icy walkways, early December was a perfect time to see what one might fetch for some gold jewelry.

If you’re pricing your gold, hit a few spots on the same day around the same time. If you spread it out over a few days, the price of gold can fluctuate quickly and it’s tougher to compare offers.

My advice: Shop around to get a better idea of the going rate for what you’re selling. And, don’t plan to pay for a second honeymoon trip in Hawaii by selling your wedding ring.

Typically, I have not seen pawnshops and jewelry stores here post prices. You bring your items for a quote, or you call to find out what’s being paid that day.

Longtime readers of my column might remember that I’ve used my husband’s ring as a benchmark in shopping trips, a simple band with no diamonds or gemstones that would complicate things or need to be removed.

We’ve seen our spikes in gold prices before — admittedly, nothing quite like 2025.

I first wrote about pricing gold back in August 2008 when we saw “We Buy Gold” billboards on the highway from some tony jewelry stores. Gold was trading around $925 at that time.

In 2008, one jeweler quoted me a price of about $74 to sell off my husband’s 14-karat gold wedding band, substantially less than I paid for his classic gold wedding band in 1995.

Just three short years later, the wedding band jumped in value, according to one quote, to around $207 in August 2011. My husband maintained that was slightly more than I paid for it in 1995. Gold was above $1,700 an ounce in trading then.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, I was quoted around $230 for my husband’s gold ring at one store. But another local store quoted me $105 and another $155 in August 2020. Gold was trading at around $1,950 an ounce when I did my shopping more than five years ago.

My experience has been that offers to buy gold can run the gamut.

On Dec. 11, I visited four stores on one day. It was doable.

I did not run into long lines of people selling their gold. In fact, many times I was the only customer in the store in the late morning and early afternoon. At a pawn shop in Berkley, I had to wait a few minutes while one customer asked how much money he could get for unloading a guitar. But that was it.

And I’ll admit upfront, I was stunned to hear the first quote out of the gate.

The man behind the counter at the 14K Pawn & Exchange store on Woodward Avenue in Berkley took my husband’s gold ring and put it on a digital scale. The simple band weighed around 7.6 grams, he said. Gold is often weighed in troy ounces, which contain 31.1 grams each.

He initially offered $420 for the ring if I wanted to sell it. After we talked a bit, he changed his mind and said he’d be willing to buy it at $450.

Wait, wasn’t I offered $105 to $230 for the same ring just five years ago?

I supposed I shouldn’t have been shocked.

The price of gold had more than doubled since I wrote a column back in the summer of 2020 after gold then hit a record of around $2,070 an ounce on Aug. 6, 2020.

The clerk at the Berkley store — which is near a Great Clips and Crispelli’s Bakery and Pizzeria — suggested that I’d likely find only a few dollars difference in the price being offered to me if I shopped elsewhere.

I hopped in the car and drove roughly 4 miles to Clawson where a giant inflatable Grinch stands near a sidewalk sign proclaiming “We Buy Gold.”

Inside the store, I was immediately greeted by Guinness, a beautiful black retail dog at Clawson Jewelers on Main Street.

When I said I was pricing my ring, owner Joe Ghadaf asked me whether I had priced it elsewhere already. What price was I offered? I told him I would not disclose the price until he gave me his quote. A manager weighed the ring and gave me a quote of $300.

When I told them I was just quoted $450, he said he was shocked and that was a very good price. But Ghadaf said he’d go to $470 but only if I agreed to sell the ring on the spot, right then and there and not price it any further. He was a little agitated when I said I’d have to think about it — and he said he would not guarantee that price.

I didn’t sell it because, as with past tests, I’ve had no intention of selling my husband’s wedding ring. He wears it all the time. It represents a commitment, not a commodity.

I walked out of the store and navigated the icy municipal parking lot in Clawson behind the store and climbed into my husband’s 11-year-old Ford Explorer to head to Oakland Mall in Troy.

The minute I pulled into the mall parking lot, I was hit by memories of times gone by. Macy’s closed its landmark anchor store in Oakland Mall early in 2025 as it shut several locations nationwide. Signs in the mall that say “Please excuse our appearance” as ongoing construction in some spots continues.

As I walked in the mall, I headed to the Kay Jewelers because I thought that store bought gold, but the clerk told me that wasn’t the case. I walked across the center court, passing Santa and his setup, and went to MJ Diamonds, two doors down from the Orange Julius.

The woman took the ring, weighed it and simply said $350 and then walked away.

I made one more stop and headed north on Interstate 75 to Big Beaver Road and the Diamond Vault of Troy, which sits in an office complex across the street from Fidelity Investments and Shake Shack.

After I was buzzed into the store from the lobby, I was directed to a small office. The man named Randy was wearing a similar gold band. When I commented on it, he told me that my gold ring was as traditional as you could get with its milgrain edge.

And what would I get for the ring? Would the price be closer to $300 or $450?

Randy offered me $428.41 for the ring on the spot around 1:10 p.m. on Dec. 11. He told me prices can change every few minutes.

What have we learned here? Well, it is wise to price your gold jewelry at more than one location, given that I could have accepted an offer for as low as $300 or as high as $450 or $470 on the same Thursday afternoon.

Each time I’ve tried this experiment, I’ve reached the same conclusion. You don’t always get a similar price quote within a few hours of pricing your gold at a few stores.

Another wake-up call: Selling one piece of simple gold jewelry typically will not bring you anything close to the $4,200 or more that has been quoted for gold on TV or radio lately.

I spoke with Randall Cole, CEO of Diamond Vault of Troy, by phone a few days after my pricing experiment. (I price the gold as a consumer, not identifying myself as a columnist. I did not give anyone my name when I sought a price for the gold wedding band.)

Cole said he has seen an uptick in business as many consumers are selling inherited pieces, broken chains, one earring that’s missing its mate.

“Just about everybody knows that gold is epic,” Cole said.

He has been in one aspect or other of the gold business for 50 years and hasn’t seen anything like 2025’s price climb.

Gold is bought by gram, but he noted that prices can change all the time. He doesn’t generally give price quotes over the phone. The Troy outlet uses X-ray machines to reveal the purity of the piece’s gold content. Others may use an acid test.

He noted that pricing can vary for a variety of reasons in a marketplace, including the lack of knowledge by sellers.

In some cases, a seller expects an unrealistically high price. Buyers say they’ve got to pay for refining fees, including the cost of shipping the gold to a refinery and insurance. And a jeweler or pawn shop must hold onto the item for at least nine days in Michigan before being able to sell it or melt it down.

“What’s gold going to be in 10 days? We don’t know. It can go down as fast as it went up,” Cole said.

Many consumers also might think they’ll be offered the same price, anywhere they go. But that’s not true. And some unscrupulous buyers will take advantage of consumers.

They know they’re dealing with a customer who doesn’t know what they’re doing when it comes to selling precious metal, Cole said.

“In some places, it’s almost like a shell game. They’re moving the metal around from pile to pile.”

Some sellers put some items in a scrap pile, saying they won’t buy those pieces of jewelry. Then, they offer $10 or $15 for the pile of items that could be worth more. Or someone might say a piece is 10K when it is really 14K so they can offer the consumer less money.

In some cases, Cole said, a pawn shop might offer a high price if they’re considering restoring an item and selling it as new or as-is, possibly making a profit selling it to someone else instead of melting it down for the gold.

“If they really like it, and it’s not damaged, they might pay a little bit more,” Cole said. “What do you care? You might not care at all. You might have inherited it from an uncle you really didn’t know.”

A person who is emotionally invested in a ring or necklace, though, might be dealing with clouded judgment. For that reason, he recommends getting items valued before something happens and you need the cash.

Frank Ljuljgjurovic, the owner of 14K Pawn, said December is typically busy with people trying to sell jewelry to raise cash for holiday bills. Now, of course, the high price of gold makes people more willing to part with gold jewelry and bullion coins.

Coins bring the most money, he said, because they are pure gold.

During a phone interview, he said the shop was paying around $72 a gram on Dec. 15. “Last year, it was probably 40 bucks so it’s a big difference,” he said. (I was offered about $60 a gram a few days before the phone interview.)

“They come here, they’re going to get top dollar right now compared to everybody else,” he said.

Coins, he said, will get resold. Jewelry often gets melted down. If a piece of jewelry is in good condition, he said, it might be resold at the store. “It all depends on what the item is.”

Many people, he said, aren’t buying jewelry right now because it’s too expensive for them to buy, given the high price of gold.

Ljuljgjurovic, who opened 14K Pawn in 2013, said some people are very shocked with they walk out with thousands of dollars when they’re selling a few pieces of gold jewelry. “They’re not expecting to get a lot of money for them,” he said.

One cautionary note: Diamond rings might not sell for as much as you’d imagine, he said, as the popularity of lab-grown diamonds has driven down the value of natural diamonds. “Nobody is buying natural anymore; everybody is just buying lab,” he said.

Those who are selling items will need to give a name, signature, a thumb print, and have ID. The sale is reported to police to make sure that stolen goods aren’t being sold to a dealer.

Ghadaf, the jeweler in Clawson, explained his initial $300 offer on my husband’s ring, saying that sometimes he’ll first test out how serious a customer is about selling an item. He doesn’t know whether someone actually intends to sell the piece of jewelry that day or, maybe, is just gauging the market.

“We have people who shop us from other jewelers,” he said.

Ghadaf, who has been in the jewelry business 37 years, told me by phone that he will to take a second look at a piece, he said, and make another offer if someone intends to sell a piece of jewelry.

He wants to know, he told me by phone, if someone really wants to get rid of an item.

Sometimes, he said, jewelers will buy a gold ring or other piece of gold jewelry to melt it down later for their own use.

Jewelers take some risk, he said, given that they don’t know whether the price of gold will drop soon after they buy an item, indicating that a lot of variables go into what a jeweler is willing to offer for gold.

Some key tips:

• See www.goldprice.org or www.kitco.com as a guide to the gold market.

• If you’re selling more than one item, make sure you understand that the higher the karat, the more gold content. Different karats — say 14 karat and 10 karat — should be weighed separately and priced accordingly. You should get more money for 14K than 10K.

• A piece of jewelry marked 18K gold is 18 parts gold mixed with six parts of another metal. 18K is 75% pure gold. A piece marked 14K gold is 14 parts gold mixed with 10 parts of another metal. 14-karat is 58.5% pure gold.

• Ask whether there is a charge for removing the diamonds or stones.

• Be cautious when someone promotes the “best price” on gold. You still might need to negotiate.

• The Michigan Precious Metal and Gem Dealer Act requires precious metal dealers to register with the local government or local police agency where they intend to do business. Precious metal dealers must keep a permanent record of each transaction and keep all precious items received for at least nine calendar days to make sure the item isn’t stolen.

Who knows where the price of gold is heading. It’s never a straight shot up.

If you’re in a financial bind, though, selling off unwanted jewelry can pay a few bills. If you lost one earring, you might not feel bad if you sold off another. I did that once, wishing, of course, that I waited until 2025 to sell that single, broken 14K gold earring. Boy, do I wish I waited.

Contact personal finance columnist Susan Tompor: stompor@freepress.com. Follow her on X @tompor.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How much is one ring worth after gold prices soared in 2025?