Complimentary insured delivery on orders over €250 · Every piece hallmarked and dispatched from Amsterdam

Shop Gold Gift Fine Gold Gifting

Keizersgracht, Amsterdam

Two benches, one scale, and a rule about not guessing

Shop Gold Gift started because buying gold as a gift was harder than it needed to be. Ten years on, it is still run by the two people who opened it.

How it started

In 2015 one of us wanted to buy a christening gift. Something small, in gold, that would still mean something in thirty years. The search went badly. Jewellery shops showed plated pieces with the word “gold” doing a lot of unearned work. Online listings gave weights as “approx.” and fineness as a guess. Bullion dealers sold bars with no presentation worth handing to a godparent. Nobody was selling the actual thing: a modest piece of real gold, honestly described, presented well enough to give.

We spent the following year learning the trade properly rather than assuming we already knew it. A bench course in Utrecht, a long apprenticeship with an engraver in the Jordaan, and months of sitting with a scale and a set of reference weights until we could tell by feel what a piece should weigh. The first Shop Gold Gift order went out in March 2016: a 9 carat bangle and a 1 gram bar, boxed, to a customer in Haarlem who had asked for something suitable for a granddaughter.

Where we are now

We are still small on purpose. Two benches on the Keizersgracht, one calibrated scale that gets serviced annually, a stockroom that holds what we can actually inspect, and a working relationship with two casting houses and a handful of mints. Roughly eleven thousand orders have gone out the door since 2016. We have never had a wholesale account, we do not dropship, and we do not list anything we have not held in our own hands.

That constraint decides the shape of the business. It is why the range is narrow, why we ask what the occasion is before we quote, and why we will occasionally tell someone that the thing they came for is not the thing they want.

What we actually do all day

Most of the work is unglamorous. Weighing twice. Photographing pieces against a grey card so the colour reads true. Chasing assay office turnaround. Writing out the same explanation of what 585 fineness means, for the fortieth time, because it is the fortieth person who has asked. Packing boxes so the certificate card sits where it can be seen the moment the lid comes off.

Engraving is the part people assume is romantic and is mostly a matter of patience. Cutting a date into a bar face takes about twenty minutes of concentration and no drama at all, and it is the part of the job we would miss most if we stopped.

What we will not do

Four practices we have deliberately left alone

Gold retail has a set of habits that are legal, common, and quietly misleading. These are the ones we have chosen not to adopt, and what we do instead.

No rounded weights

A quarter of a gram sounds like nothing. Across a consignment it is a real amount of metal, and it always rounds in the seller’s direction. Every piece we send carries its measured weight to two decimal places on the certificate card, taken from a scale that is serviced and traceable.

Measured, not estimated

No vague metal descriptions

“Gold tone”, “gold finish” and “gold colour” mean nothing and are chosen because they mean nothing. Plated, vermeil and gold-filled pieces on this site are named that way in the heading, and the certificate card repeats it. Solid gold is stated with its fineness.

Named in the heading

No investment talk

We do not tell customers that gold will hold its value, that it is a hedge, or that now is a good time to buy. We are not authorised to give that advice and we do not know the answer. Bars and coins here are gifts and collectables, priced against the published benchmark on the day you confirm, and that is the whole claim.

Gifts, not products

No pressure selling

We quote in writing and then wait. No countdown timers, no “three left”, no follow-up emails designed to wear you down. Gold prices move, and if the benchmark shifts while you are deciding we will tell you rather than quietly holding the old number and hoping you do not notice.

Written quotes, no chasing

Ten years, briefly

How the studio grew

Shop Gold Gift, year by year
Year What changed
2016 Opened with two benches on the Keizersgracht. First order: a 9 carat bangle and a 1 g bar, boxed, to a customer in Haarlem.
2017 Added hand engraving in-house after eighteen months of part-time training. Introduced the certificate card carrying fineness and measured weight on every order.
2018 First corporate account, a shipping firm ordering retirement gifts. Set the ten-unit minimum and the consolidated invoice process that we still use.
2020 Walk-in trade stopped; the studio moved entirely to written enquiries and dispatch. Turned out to suit us better, and we never went back.
2021 Began buying an XRF verification service for every incoming consignment, independent of the supplier’s own assay paperwork.
2023 Extended insured delivery to Switzerland and Norway. Added the thirty-day unworn return window, replacing a fourteen-day policy we had considered too tight.
2025 Returns rate held under one per cent. Added the gift-set assembly service that now accounts for roughly a third of orders.

Sourcing

Where the metal comes from

We buy from two casting houses in the Netherlands and directly from a small number of mints for coins and bars. Every incoming consignment is checked with X-ray fluorescence before it is accepted, independently of whatever assay paperwork travels with it. A supplier who cannot tolerate that check does not become a supplier.

We ask for chain-of-custody documentation on all new gold and we will not knowingly handle metal from conflict-affected or unregulated artisanal sources. That is a statement about our own diligence, not a certification of the entire supply chain — we are a two-bench studio and we are honest about the limits of what we can trace.

What we check on arrival

  • Fineness by XRF, on every piece, against the stated grade
  • Weight on a calibrated scale, recorded and compared to the supplier figure
  • Hallmark presence and legibility, with the assay office identified
  • Chain-of-custody paperwork filed against the batch reference
  • Physical inspection for porosity, solder colour mismatch and setting integrity

What we refuse

  • Metal that fails XRF at any fineness, regardless of the paperwork
  • Pieces where the hallmark is illegible or has been struck over
  • Plated goods described by the supplier as solid, which happens more often than it should
  • Anything we cannot weigh ourselves before it goes into stock

Checks we do not skip

Four checks behind every parcel

The same four steps apply whether the order is a €38 keepsake or a corporate run of forty pieces. Nothing below is optional, and nothing below is charged for separately.

  • Assay office mark Solid gold above the exemption weight is struck with a recognised assay office mark. We do not sell unstruck solid gold.
  • Independent fineness check An XRF reading is taken on each consignment and kept on file against the order, so a disputed weight can be traced back.
  • Insured transit cover Every parcel ships under a declared value with signature on delivery. Full cover applies from the moment it leaves the studio.
  • Certificate in the box Metal, fineness, measured weight and the hallmark reference travel on a card inside the box — not on a sticker outside it.

Finding us

The studio, and when we are in it

The studio occupies a first-floor unit on the Keizersgracht, a short walk from the Spiegelkwartier. There is a bench for setting and finishing, a second for packing, and a calibrated scale that everything passes over twice.

We are not a walk-in shop and there is nothing to browse on the premises. If you would like to see a piece in person before committing, write to us and we will arrange a time — viewings are by appointment and there is no charge for one.

When we answer

Monday – Thursday
09:00 – 17:30
Friday
09:00 – 16:00
Saturday – Sunday
Closed
Public holidays
Closed

Times are Europe/Amsterdam. Enquiries that arrive outside these hours are answered on the next working morning.

Studio & correspondence

Shop Gold Gift
Keizersgracht 241, Unit 4B
1016 EA Amsterdam
Netherlands

info@shipgoldgift.org
support@shipgoldgift.org

Work with us

Tell us what the occasion is

Two or three concrete options, with photographs and weights, usually within one working day.

Make an enquiry See the collections

info@shipgoldgift.org · support@shipgoldgift.org