Before we begin, when we talk about gold here, we are talking about 24k gold specifically. Taiwan, being part of Asia, prefers 24k gold.
There is often a cluster of gold shops in larger cities in Taiwan. They will display their gold buying and gold selling price prominently. I think it is per gram, but I have forgotten for the moment. Any gold piece in a gold shop has two numbers: a gold value listed as weight and an artisan cost in Taiwanese dollars. Because the cost of gold fluctuates day to day, they multiply the listed weight and the current gold sell cost and add it to the artisan cost to get the total sale cost for that day.
At many shops, trading in old gold works like this:
You show the shopkeeper the gold you want to trade in. They sort it into 24k or 22k or reject, pry out any stones in the trade-in, and weigh the gold.
When you trade in gold, most shops subtract the weight of the 24k gold you trade in from the 24k gold weight of the pieces you buy. If you are simply selling gold, all shops give you money based on their lower gold buying cost. Obviously, this makes it more worthwhile to trade in old gold for new gold jewelry rather than outright sell.
You are generally expected to pay in cash at gold stores. They will show you a price on a calculator and then type in a slightly lower price that would be the cash price.
The cash price is negotiable, but not by a lot because you are only negotiating the “artisan” cost. At the more modern stores where they bundle the price into one, the prices will be higher since they are already accounting for their highest expected gold price fluctuation, but there is more leeway for negotiation.
