Gold recycling stagnating – despite or because of record prices?

Urban mining, i.e. the recovery of gold from electronic waste, has been increasing substantially. The lion’s share of scrap gold destined for recycling is sourced from jewellery, watches and old coins, which are easy to process. The main motivation for gold owners to part with their scrap gold is the gold price. The higher the potential payout, the more scrap gold is usually sold. Many commodity experts were therefore surprised when they learned that while the global gold recycling volume remained at a high level in Q1 2025, it had decreased by 7 per cent compared to Q4 2024. This is due to several factors, one of which is closely linked with the seemingly never-ending price rally of the precious metal.

Do scrap gold owners expect further price increases?

According to the ‘Gold Demand Trends’ report for Q1 2025, published at the end of April, the reluctance of scrap gold owners might, in fact, be due to the continued strong gold performance. Over the last twelve months, the precious metal has steadily appreciated, by around 50 per cent in the Eurozone, from 63 € per gram to 95. Apparently, quite a few gold owners  assume that their scrap gold could become even more valuable in the future. In addition, many had already sold their old jewellery last year in view of the high gold price at the time and are now carefully watching its further development.

Asia: Gold jewellery as hard currency and collateral 

While the sales behaviour of scrap gold owners in Europe and the US remained largely unchanged in Q1 2025, gold recycling in Asia declined more significantly – from 170 to 148.40 tonnes, a drop of 14 per cent. Gold plays a much stronger monetary role in countries such as India and China than in the West. Asian scrap gold owners might therefore prefer to keep their precious metal as a crisis-proof ‘currency’ rather than exchanging it for fiat money, possibly also due to fears of a recession caused by the threat of a trade war with the US. In Asia, jewellery is also used as collateral in the form of so-called ‘gold loans’ for major purchases, as it is considered more fail-safe than cash.