Unmarked gold splits into two questions the moment you ask who is doing the selling. A customer’s family gold usually carries no mark because it was bought before the mark was compulsory, and it can still be sold. Your own unmarked tray is the second question, and it does not end the same way.
The obligation sits on the seller: the rule binds a jeweller selling gold jewellery in a notified district. So the piece handed across the counter is settled by a test, and the piece in your tray is settled by a decision.
Both sit under metal, purity and the bench. Reading a mark a piece already carries is a lookup, and the decoder below does it.
The obligation arrived in phases from 2021, and the districts it covers, the exemptions inside it and the grades a centre will mark are all amended by notification. Which of them reaches your shop this month has a published answer: BIS publishes each list, and the published list is what an inspector reads.
Two different pieces, two different rules: what a customer owns, and what a shop sells
Purana sona bina hallmark bik jayega kya, a customer asks at the counter most weeks. It will. A household may sell what it owns, and no mark is needed for that metal to change hands.
The rule runs the other way. The Hallmarking of Gold Jewellery and Gold Artefacts Order, made under the BIS Act, 2016, binds the jeweller who sells gold jewellery. The registration is yours, getting the article marked at a centre is yours to arrange, and the record is yours to keep.
| The piece in front of you | Who the rule binds | What has to happen before it is sold | Where the current answer is published |
|---|---|---|---|
| Family gold a customer brings in to sell or exchange | Nobody on their side; they are selling what they own | A purity test, a weight you both watched, and a voucher you write | The Order itself, which names the jeweller and not the household |
| Unmarked gold jewellery in your own stock | You, as the seller | The article is hallmarked, or it is melted and the new article is hallmarked | The Order and the notified district list, on the BIS site |
| Silver, plated or imitation pieces in the same tray | Not this order; silver marking is voluntary, and plated stock has no purity to mark | An honest description of the metal, rather than a mark | BIS for the silver scheme, your supplier for the plating |
Buying unmarked old gold: the test, the voucher, and one deduction to refuse
You do not need the original bill, and asking for one turns away good metal. A piece made decades ago by a village karigar has no paperwork behind it and may still be 22K. The touchstone, the karat meter and the assay each read something different, and how a counter really tests purity covers all three.
The shop’s side of that purchase is the record. A piece bought over the counter has no invoice behind it, so the voucher you write is the only document it will ever carry. Date, description, gross and net weight, purity as tested, amount paid, and the seller’s identity to whatever standard your accountant sets for cash purchases. Where that last line sits is a books question your CA settles.
One deduction to refuse to invent, on either side of the counter: there is no discount for a missing hallmark. The mark certifies purity and the test has just measured it, so a cut taken because the piece is unmarked is only margin, and calling it a rule does not make it one.
Where the customer is exchanging, the same test decides the credit; the new piece leaving your counter is your sale, and it goes out marked.
Why the absence of a mark says nothing about the metal
A hallmark certifies purity. The metal already had it. Gold that never went to a centre is no poorer for it.
A piece can be in three states, and only one of them is a certificate. Most of what walks in has nothing on it at all. Some of it carries a purity number punched by the maker or the shop, which is a claim by whoever held the punch. The third is a BIS mark with a HUID beside it, 6 characters that belong to that one article. The decoder linked at the top of this guide reads it and shows how to check that code free in the BIS Care app.
The first two are settled the same way, by testing the piece. The third can be looked up, and a lookup that returns a different jeweller, a different purity or nothing at all has answered you.
The stock in your own tray: what has to happen before it goes back on the counter
Weigh it first. Most shops carrying unmarked stock have never had it on the scale together, and the decision below is different at forty grams and at four hundred.
Then split the tray into three piles. Gold jewellery you mean to sell as jewellery, which is the pile the rule is about. Gold that will leave as metal, to a refiner or a melt, where no jewellery is sold. And what is not gold jewellery at all: silver, plated stock, imitation, loose stones.
For the first pile there are two routes: send the article to a centre and get it marked, or melt it, remake it and get the new article marked. Both end at a centre. A purity number you punch yourself is a claim about metal nobody assayed, and your registration stands behind it.
Exemptions inside the Order are real and the list of them changes, so if you believe your shop or part of your stock sits outside the obligation, read that entry yourself and keep a dated copy with your registration papers.
Melt and remake, or send the article to the assaying centre — the arithmetic that decides it
Everything you are weighing is already inside the piece. Metal survives anything. Making and wastage exist only while the piece does, and you paid the karigar for both. A design either sells or it does not.
Melting returns the first and destroys the second. Hallmarking keeps all three, and costs the centre’s charge per article plus its minimum per consignment, which is why you take this decision a consignment at a time.
| What you are weighing | Send the article to a centre | Melt and remake |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs you | The centre’s charge per article, plus its minimum per consignment | Melting and refining loss on the lot, then the karigar’s labour again |
| What survives | The piece, its design, and the making and wastage already paid | The metal, and nothing else |
| What comes back to the tray | The same article, marked | A new article, which is marked as a new article |
| How long it takes | The centre’s queue, which is a season rather than a fixed number of days | Bench days first, then that same queue |
| When it is the right call | The design still sells at a price you would accept | Nobody has asked for the design in a year |
So the call falls out of one question, piece by piece: will this design sell? If it will, mark it: making and wastage come back only while the piece is standing. If nobody has wanted it in a year, that money is already gone, and melting only admits it.
Check one thing before either route. A centre marks only the purity grades BIS notifies, so a piece made at an odd tunch may not be markable as it stands, and melt-and-remake stops being a preference. Stock whose only problem is that it sells slowly is a different call, taken by age in the Dead-Stock & Ageing Analyser.
What the queue and the turnaround at the centre actually cost in the weeks before Dhanteras
The weeks before Dhanteras and the wedding muhurats are when every shop in the district is sending metal. The line is longest exactly when your tray needs to be shortest. An assaying and hallmarking centre is a queue, and your consignment takes its place in it.
Metal sitting at a centre cannot be sold, photographed or put in the window, and a piece that misses the season waits a year. The fee is the small part of what that costs you; the calendar is the rest.
So count backwards on your own centre’s figure. Ask what it is turning consignments around in this month, and whether it holds a cut-off before the festival. Add transit both ways and your own photograph days. What is left is the last date a consignment can leave your shop.
Then send small lots through the quiet months, and send your fastest designs first: a consignment comes back on one day, so it refills your counter in the order you sent it.
Antique and jadau pieces, where melting destroys the value the piece has
A jadau piece is uncut stones set into beds of soft, nearly pure gold and held from behind with lac. The setting is the work. Melt it and the stones come loose, the lac burns away, and what returns is good metal and a heap of stones nobody has set.
Kundan work, where beaten pure gold holds the stone, sits in the same place. So do temple jewellery, filigree and old hand-set bridal pieces. The labour in them is not being done at that price any more. A buyer for the piece pays for that; a refiner pays for its weight.
Some pieces are worth more than their metal, and melting is the one call you cannot undo. Take a second opinion before any melt call on something old: an estate dealer, an auction house, or the family that brought it in.
If it goes back on the counter as jewellery, the obligation reaches it like anything else, and whether an exemption covers it is a question for the list, whatever the age of the piece.
Where the current obligation and exemption list is published, and why not to trust a forward
Print the BIS page with its date showing and keep it. Four things decide whether the rule binds a piece in your shop. All four are published: whether your district is notified, whether your shop or that article sits inside an exemption, which grades a centre will mark, and what your registration asks of you. Read the first two on the BIS site; get the other two from your centre and your registration papers, in writing.
A forwarded message carries none of what makes a rule usable: no date, no district, no notification number. Ask two things of anything that arrives in a seller group. When was it written, and who wrote it. Most forwards answer neither. When a rule seems to have changed, go and find the notification.
None of this is legal advice. Where a piece is worth arguing about, ask your BIS consultant or your association office, and expect the answer to carry a date.
Do one thing this week, before the season closes on you. Tip the unmarked tray onto the counter, weigh it, split it into the three piles, and send the first consignment, the designs that sell fastest, while the queue is still short.