Two bangles of identical weight make the point well. They are both 10 grams and they are both stamped 999 and 925 but they look almost exactly the same as each other except for one of the two has 0.75 grams more of silver than the other and this little difference is the key to telling the difference between sterling and pure silver. Fine silver (puresilver) is 99.9 percent silver, and sterling silver is 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent base metal (mostly copper). The lender is interested only in the net silver content of the pledged item, so the purity level is important. The comparison below covers the two grades on composition, durability, tarnish, resale and loan value, with a worked calculation showing what the difference comes to in rupees.

Within the vaults of the institutions that facilitate the worldwide wholesale business in gold are found gold bars that are of a specific kind. The meaning of London Good Delivery in relation to a gold bar is simply certification of a bar of gold which has been certified by the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA) as being between 350 and 430 troy ounces in weight, with 995 parts per thousand purities, and serially numbered and marked by its refiner. This guide explains what LGD status involves, how a refiner earns it, and what the standard does and does not mean for gold loan borrowers in India.

Gold does not degrade when remelted. That single fact settles the recycled gold vs mined gold loan question before it starts: two pieces of the same karat carry identical loan value, whatever their history. Lenders test purity and weight at the counter, and the origin of the metal never enters the valuation. This guide explains what recycled gold is, how the purity check works, the one scenario where recycled origin can matter, and why the price paid for the gold has no bearing on the loan it can raise.

Form comes first. A lender's valuer never weighs a piece of silver until one prior question is answered, which is whether the item counts as collateral at all under the rules now in force, and plenty of genuine silver fails at that hurdle without a single test being run. The list of silver loan eligible items under the RBI directions effective from April 2026 is short: ornaments, jewellery, and coins that a bank has sold. Bars sit outside it. So do plated pieces, silverware, and anything held on paper. What follows walks through the silver loan acceptance criteria one category at a time, along with the purity bands, the weight ceilings, the ownership record a lender keeps, and the reasons the rejected items are rejected.

Three digits, punched small into the inner curve of a ring, and the composition question is already settled. Gold 375 is actually 9 karats. This means that an item marked like this contains 37.5% pure gold, while the remaining 62.5% is alloy, usually made up of copper or zinc, sometimes silver too. No doubts here at all. This is one well-known standard of gold that is being widely used in different countries of the world, mostly outside India, where you will see much more higher purities in use. Let us start by breaking down this hallmark, comparing 375 gold with 585, 750, 916 and 999, considering its pros and cons, and finally answering the main question raised by many Indians visiting this page.

Same rulebook, different price. Both loans run under one regulatory framework since April 2026, both use identical LTV slabs, and yet a borrower walking the two products side by side will usually find the silver quote sitting above the gold one. Why the silver loan rate is different from gold loan pricing is not arbitrary, and it is not a rounding habit either. Five structural realities drive it. How easily the collateral converts back to cash. What it costs to store per rupee lent. How young the silver lending market still is. How few lenders offer the product. And how hard silver's price swings compared with gold's. Each gets its own section below, followed by what a central bank rate change does to the picture and how a household holding both metals might weigh the choice.

Your necklace might be ninety years old. The weighing scale doesn't know that, and honestly, it doesn't care. When it comes to an antique gold jewellery loan valuation, the only things that count are the metal itself: how much net gold is in the piece, what purity it tests at, and the reference rate running that day. The age? The craftsmanship? The story your grandmother told you about it? None of that enters the branch calculation, and plenty of disappointing branch visits start with the assumption that it would. Whatever number comes out then has to fit inside the RBI's tiered loan-to-value limits. Up to 85 per cent for loans up to ₹2.5 lakh. Up to 80 per cent for anything above that and up to ₹5 lakh. And up to 75 per cent once you cross ₹5 lakh.

Same ten grams, valued twice. At ₹12,000 per gram, the locker holds ₹1.2 lakh of collateral. At ₹14,000, it holds ₹1.4 lakh, and nobody added a single gram in between. That's the inflation gold loan benefit in its plainest form: when inflation pushes gold prices up, the gold already sitting in your household becomes more valuable as security, and the eligible loan amount grows with it, inside the RBI's tiered loan-to-value limits. There's a second effect running quietly underneath, too. The rupees you repay a year from now buy less than the rupees you borrow today, so the real weight of repayment keeps shrinking while prices rise. Both mechanics are worked through below, along with the one genuine risk waiting on the far side.

Fifteen against eight, near enough. On the gold vs property 20 year return question, the published research points one way: roughly 15 per cent CAGR for gold in rupee terms over the two decades to 2025, against roughly 7.8 per cent for residential real estate on a national average basis, per the FundsIndia Wealth Conversations research using NHB Residex data. Compound that gap for twenty years and the same rupee ends up in two very different places. That said, raw returns only open the argument. Costs, taxes and liquidity finish it, and each gets its turn below.

Two facts close a gold coin loan cleanly. Nothing is owed anymore, and the recorded collateral has come back to you. That's it. Everything else is paperwork proving those two facts, and the gold coin loan closure documents doing the proving are the final payment receipt, a nil-balance statement or closure confirmation, the release acknowledgement, and the valuation certificate you were handed back when the coins were pledged. One thing before you sign anything, though. Compare the returned packet against that certificate, coin by coin, and get any mismatch into writing with the branch before the acknowledgement is signed. Not after. The order genuinely matters.