If you are curious to know how much a pawn shop will loan or buy a wedding ring for then this is the post you need to read, immediately!
This is one of those questions that I get asked all of the time!
“How much will a pawn shops give me for a wedding ring?”
Unfortunately, this questions is pretty difficult to give a straight answer on because of just how many different types and styles of weddings rings there are out there.
You have wedding rings made out of silver, gold, platinum, and in men’s cases, titanium and tungsten as well.
In addition, there might be diamonds involved, and there might not be.
If there are diamonds in the ring, they can be of all different sizes, shapes, and overall qualities, which makes it really difficult when trying to come up with just one answer that covers everything.
But with all of this in mind, I’m going to do my best to give you a cheat sheet if you will.
Hopefully I will be able to put together all of the various elements that a pawn shop might be taking into consideration when they are evaluating your ring and by the end, hopefully you will be able to put it all together and come up with an estimation for what they might offer you.
Keep in mind however, not all pawn shops are the same. They don’t all operate by the same rules, so you will find a large degree of variance between different pawn shops in most cases.
Let’s get started on breaking this down.
Pawn shops love to take in wedding rings. Of all of the different types of wedding rings that pawn shops buy, gold wedding rings will bring the most money.
The Metal That Your Wedding Ring Is Made Out Of
The first thing that we have to take into consideration when looking at what a pawn shop might give you for your wedding ring is what metal it is made out of.
In the case of woman’s rings, it will typically either be gold, platinum, or silver.
In the case of men’s rings, it could be all of those, or titanium and tungsten as well.
Gold Wedding Rings
To understand how a pawn shop will be evaluating the gold of your ring, you should read: How Do Pawn Shops Price Gold
You will learn that pawn shops are looking at the purity of the gold (or karat) and the weight of it.
Most woman’s wedding rings weigh between 1 gram and 7 grams at most.
Most men’s ring weigh between 3 grams and 10 grams at most.
Using those numbers, a woman ring will likely have anywhere from $10 to $100 in gold weight while means wedding rings will have anywhere from $20 to $120 in gold weight.
Silver Wedding Rings
If your wedding ring is made out of silver, it will be worth far less than gold.
Using the same weight ranges as the gold rings, you are talking about .20 cents to $1.50 for woman’s rings and $.50 to $2.00 in silver weight for men’s rings.
Big difference, isn’t it?
That’s one of the reasons that silver rings are so much less expensive then gold rings when you buy them new.
Platinum Wedding Rings
Platinum wedding rings are going to be worth around the same amount of gold rings for the most part.
There may be a 10-30% discrepancy between the two prices, but it’s not that great in the bigger picture of things.
Titanium Wedding Rings
In How Much Would A Pawn Shop Give You For A Titanium Ring, you learn that when it comes to titanium rings, there really isn’t much that a pawn shop can offer you on them.
You see, titanium rings just aren’t worth all that much unfortunately because titanium isn’t a precious metal.
That means a pawn shop can’t melt them down to get their money back and would have to depend on finding someone who fit that exact size ring to come in and buy it – which is pretty tough to do on that kind of metal.
Therefore, if your wedding ring is made out of titanium, the pawn shop probably won’t take it.
Tungsten Wedding Rings
Much like titanium, tungsten isn’t a precious metal.
Because of that, there isn’t much a pawn shop can do with tungsten rings when they are brought into their stores.
Most pawn shops won’t buy tungsten rings, although you may find one or two out there that would be willing to help you with it.
You can read more about pawn shops and tungsten rings in: Do Pawn Shops Buy Tungsten Rings
The Diamonds & Other Stones In Wedding Rings
When it comes to the stones in wedding rings, you will typically find three types.
Diamond
Moissanite
Cubic Zirconia
Diamond Wedding Rings
As long as the wedding ring that you are trying to pawn or sell is made out of a precious metal like silver or gold, they will be happy to take it in. If it has diamonds in it, it will be worth even more!
In How Pawn Shops Price Diamonds, you learn that diamonds are priced based on four factors.
If your diamonds is relatively clear, and a good color, you can typically expect to get between $1-$2 per “POINT” for diamonds that are under 1 carat in most cases.
There are 100 points per carat, so if the diamond that is in your ring is .47 carat, it is 47 points.
As you cross over the 1 carat threshold, the price that pawn shops will pay for diamonds will rise greatly as they are typically worth much more.
Moissanite Wedding Rings
As you learned in Do Pawn Shops Buy Moissanite Rings, wedding rings that have moissanite stones in them aren’t going to be worth much more to a pawn shop than if they had nothing in them at all.
Moissanite certainly costs a lot when you buy it new in the store, but since it is just a man-made stone, it’s not rare and therefore not valuable.
Diamond dealers, who typically work closely with pawn shops, have no interest in them. This means that the only chance a pawn shop would have to get their money back out of it is to sell it to a retail customer, and as soon as you tell them that it is essentially a fake diamond, it becomes a very hard sell.
That having been said, you may still find one or two pawn shops out there that will give you a little bit for it – but it won’t be much.
Cubic Zirconia Wedding Rings
As you learned in Do Pawn Shops Buy Cubic Zirconia, cubic zirconia has absolutely no value what so ever and pawn shops won’t pay anything for them.
Putting It All Together To Figure Out How Much A Pawn Shop Will Pay You For Your Wedding Rings
You should now have all of the information you need to make a pretty good determination on how much a pawn shop will pay you for your wedding rings.
Here Are The Steps
Find Out What Metal It Is Made Out Of – Figure out if it is made our of gold, silver, or another metal. Determine it’s weight if a precious metal and then use the resources provided to determine an approximate value of the metal.
Figure Out The Size Of Your Diamonds If They Are Present – Using the resources provided, if you can get an approximate diamond size, you can partially determine what a pawn shop might value it at.
Combine Those Two Numbers – When you add those two numbers that you come up with, you will have an idea how much a pawn shop would pay you for a wedding ring.
Mandy Dormain started working for Pawn Nerd in 2020. Mandy grew up in a small town in northern Tennessee. But moved to New York for university. Before joining Pawn Nerd, Mandy briefly worked as a freelance journalist for several radio stations. She covers politics and economy stories.
