Caibai takes back its own gold at 15 yuan a gram
Without the shop's original receipt the same gold loses 6% of its weight and pays 25 yuan a gram. 时代周报 priced both routes at the Beijing flagship on 1 October.
By The Retail Desk
What changed
The receipt is the price. Caibai charges a flat 15 yuan a gram to take back gold bought on its own slip. Without that slip the shop cuts 6% of the weight, then charges 25 yuan a gram.
What it means
- If you sell gold back: Keep the original receipt. On 52 grams the fee gap is 442 yuan before any weight is cut.
- If you price trade-ins: The 6% cut is 3.12 grams on 52. Caibai publishes no recycling base price, so that metal is unpriced here.
- What this is not: One retailer's terms, not a market tariff.
Key figures
| With receiptflat fee, weight intact | ¥15/g |
|---|---|
| Without receipt6% weight cut first | ¥25/g |
| Counter pricejewellery gold, 1 October | ¥1,248.00/g |
| 52-gram braceletmetal only, workmanship excluded | ¥64,896 |
| Fee gapon 52 grams, computed | ¥442 |
Source: 时代周报 via 21jingji · terms observed 1 October 2026 · published 3 October 2026 16:14 CST
The receipt is worth 442 yuan
Two routes, two fees. With the shop's own purchase slip the fee is 15 yuan a gram and no weight is deducted. On 52 grams that is 780 yuan.
The other route compounds. Without the slip the shop deducts 6% of total weight, then charges 25 yuan a gram on what remains. The fee becomes 1,222 yuan on the same piece.
| Route | Weight cut | Fee per gram | Fee on 52 grams | Grams lost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| With Caibai receipt | none | ¥15 | ¥780 | 0.00 |
| Without receipt | 6% | ¥25 | ¥1,222 | 3.12 |
| Difference | 6% | ¥10 | ¥442 | 3.12 |
Notes on this table
Fee rates, the 6% weight cut and the 1,248.00 yuan counter price are 时代周报's, from a 1 October visit to Caibai's Beijing flagship, published 3 October. The last two columns are Carat Capital's arithmetic: 52 × 15 = 780; 52 × 0.94 = 48.88 grams, × 25 = 1,222; 1,222 − 780 = 442; 52 × 0.06 = 3.12 grams. Caibai's recycling base price is not published, so the value of the 3.12 grams is not priced here.
Buying splits at both ends
Big tickets cleared fast. A couple bought a 52-gram antique-method bracelet at 1,248.00 yuan a gram. Multiplying gives 64,896 yuan before workmanship.
Small tickets held budgets. An office worker compared one-gram pure-gold beads against a budget under 2,000 yuan. Sales staff put young buyers' budgets at 1,500 to 2,000 yuan.
The bar counter sat empty
Investment bars lag. On the fourth floor the investment-bar counter held three or four customers while the jewellery floor stayed busy. Staff described buyers waiting rather than transacting.
Jewellery gold fell since August
The discount drove it. Jewellery gold is about 100 yuan a gram below its end-August level, so a 50-gram bracelet costs roughly 5,000 yuan less. Both figures are the buyer's own account, not a measured series.
What to watch
- 8 Oct 2026Golden Week ends. Tests whether the two-ended buying pattern was a holiday effect.
- Mid-Oct 2026Any change to Caibai's published depreciation fees. The 15 and 25 yuan rates are the testable part.
- Nov 2026Next Chinese counter board. Tests whether the 100-yuan fall from August holds or reverses.
The story so far
Go deeper
What would change this call
A published recycling base price. The fee schedule is only half the cost of selling gold back, and a base price materially below the counter level would make the 3.12 grams the larger loss, not the 442 yuan.
How a Chinese gold trade-in is costed
A retailer buys old gold against a daily recycling base price, then deducts a per-gram depreciation fee for refining and remaking. Where no purchase receipt proves the piece's origin, a percentage of total weight is written off first as loss, and the fee is charged on the reduced weight. The base price, not the fee, sets most of the payout.
Method
21jingji's carriage of 时代周报's report was fetched to raw bytes (39,667) and searched for the exact strings printed here: 1248.00元/克 one hit, 15元/克 one, 25元/克 one, 6% one, 52克 two, 6.5万元 one, 1500元到2000元 one, 100元 one, 5000元 one, 10月1日 two, 菜百 ten. The page's own datePublished reads 2026-10-03T16:14:11+08:00. Every figure in the last two table columns is Carat Capital's arithmetic on those rates, shown in the table note; nothing in them is quoted. The 100-yuan fall and the 5,000-yuan saving are a named buyer's account inside the report rather than a measured series, and are labelled as such. The archive was searched before filing: in website/content/articles.json the strings Caibai, 菜百, depreciation fee and recycling base each return zero hits, so this fee schedule is new to the paper. One coincidence is named so it is not read as a repeat: 1,248 returns hits in the archive, and they were opened — Carat Capital's own 1 October piece derives 1,248 as Lao Feng Xiang's 29 September counter level by subtraction. That is a different retailer, a different city and a different date from Caibai's 1,248.00 on 1 October; the shared digits are coincidence, not repetition.