How it works
How the number is made.
Melt value is the worth of the pure metal in your item: weight × purity × spot price. It is a starting point for a conversation with a dealer. It is not a promise of what you’ll be paid.
What we show, and how
- Gold and silver spot price
- A public price feed. Every price shows its update time. It is a reference price, not an exchange feed.
- Live
- Shop locations
- OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL): pawn shops, coin shops and gold buyers. We show only what is tagged; missing details say “not listed”. We do not verify shops.
- Live
- Missing addresses, phones and websites
- Overture Maps Foundation places data (CDLA-Permissive-2.0), which combines business listings from Meta, Microsoft and others. We fill a missing detail only when Overture lists the same business name within 120 m of the shop on OpenStreetMap, so two independent sources agree. We never overwrite what OpenStreetMap has.
- Monthly
- Shops OpenStreetMap does not have
- Overture Maps listings for pawn shops, gold buyers and coin dealers (never plain jewelry stores). We add one only when Overture rates it at least 90% likely to exist, the US Census Bureau confirms the street address is real and within 400 m of the map pin, and the pin is in the state the address names. Car-title and payday lenders are left out.
- Monthly
- Chain stores
- AllThePlaces (CC0), which reads each chain’s own store finder every week. Used for FirstCash stores (First Cash Pawn, Cash America Pawn and its local brands). These are the chain’s own addresses and phone numbers, labelled “chain’s store finder”.
- Weekly
- Google rating and review summary
- Shown live from Google Maps when a shop matches Google by name within 150 m. Google writes the summary; we show it as is, labelled, with a link to the reviews. We never store or rewrite Google content.
- Live
- Your location
- A rough city-level estimate from your internet address (GeoJS), or your browser’s precise location if you allow it. The precise location is sent only to OpenStreetMap for map tiles and to Nominatim for place names. ZIP codes and cities are checked against GeoNames postal data (CC BY 4.0) held on our site. Never stored by us.
- Live
- Licences
- Official registers: NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (open data) and the Oklahoma Department of Consumer Credit roster. A shop shows “Licence verified” only when the register matches it by phone and location, name and location, or street address. Other states link to the official lookup.
- Live
- Verified badges
- A shop shows “Licence verified” or “Registered business” only when our server fetched an official record and it matched that shop by name and street address. Each badge shows the agency, the record number and the date checked. Visitors can trigger a check, but never supply the result.
- Live
- Official links per state
- Consumer protection offices from USA.gov, weights and measures offices from NIST, and state business searches we tested live on Oct 2, 2026.
- Live
- Still in business?
- We check whether each listed shop website still responds, and show the date we checked. A working website does not prove the shop is open.
- Live
- Offers, fees and reviews
- Reports from real sellers. Each one is priced against the live spot price when it is sent and checked by a person before it appears. “Verified” means a moderator saw the written quote or receipt; the photo is then deleted. We never copy reviews from other sites; Google ratings appear only live and labelled.
- Live
What we will never do
- Sell rankings, badges or better placement to shops.
- Show a made-up price, fee, rating or licence status. Missing means “unknown”.
- Label a named business “bad” without a documented source.