How This Gold Calculator Works
Every gold valuation comes down to one formula: weight × purity × spot price = melt value. The calculator above runs that math with three inputs. Weight is whatever your scale reads, in grams, troy ounces, pennyweight, or standard ounces. Purity comes from the karat: gold purity is measured in 24ths, so 14K gold is 14/24 — about 58.3% gold by mass, with the balance made up of copper, silver, zinc, and other alloy metals that give jewelry its strength. The spot price is the global market price for one troy ounce of pure gold, which this site pulls from a live market feed every 10 minutes.
A worked example: say you have a 14K gold chain that weighs 25 grams. The pure gold content is 25 g × 0.5833 = 14.58 grams. At the current price of $131.36 per gram, the melt value is $1,915.63. That number is the intrinsic value of the metal itself — what it’s worth as raw gold, before any buyer’s margin, refining cost, or haggling enters the picture.
Melt value is the single most useful number in any gold transaction because it is objective. Offers are opinions; melt value is arithmetic. Once you know it, every offer you receive can be expressed as a percentage of it — and suddenly you can compare a pawn shop’s flat “$400 for the lot” against a refiner’s per-gram rate on equal terms.
Gold Value by Karat — Live per Gram and per Ounce
The table below converts the current spot price into per-gram and per-troy-ounce values for every common karat. It updates with the live price, so you can use it as a quick reference without touching the calculator. Notice how steep the drop is: 10K gold — still legally “gold” — carries less than half the value of pure 24K, gram for gram.
| Karat | Purity | Value per gram | Value per troy oz |
|---|---|---|---|
| 24K | 99.9% | $131.23 | $4,081.81 |
| 22K | 91.7% | $120.42 | $3,745.54 |
| 21K | 87.5% | $114.94 | $3,575.16 |
| 18K | 75.0% | $98.52 | $3,064.42 |
| 14K | 58.3% | $76.63 | $2,383.31 |
| 10K | 41.7% | $54.74 | $1,702.59 |
| 9K | 37.5% | $49.26 | $1,532.21 |
Prices in this table reflect the live spot price and refresh every 10 minutes. For deeper dives into specific karats — including how to verify markings and what jewelry typically uses each purity — see the karat guides linked in the menu and in the guide grid further down this page.
Melt Value vs. What You’ll Actually Be Paid
Here is the part most gold calculators leave out, because most gold calculators are owned by gold buyers. Nobody pays full melt value. Buyers must cover refining costs, overhead, and profit, so every offer is melt value minus a margin — and that margin varies enormously by buyer type. The honest ranges, compiled from published buy rates and consumer-test results:
| Buyer type | Typical % of melt value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Online gold refiner | 70–90% | Best rates for scrap; mail-in with insured shipping. Compare published per-gram buy prices before sending. |
| Local coin / bullion dealer | 65–85% | Good for coins and recognizable bullion; scrap rates vary widely by shop. |
| Jewelry store | 50–75% | Convenient, but most stores resell to refiners and keep a second margin. |
| Pawn shop | 40–60% | Fastest cash, lowest payout. Quotes assume you won't comparison-shop. |
| Mail-in 'cash for gold' TV services | 20–50% | Historically the lowest offers in consumer tests. Get other quotes first. |
The practical takeaway: on a $1,000 melt-value lot, the difference between a strong refiner offer (85%) and a weak pawn offer (45%) is $400 — on the same gold, the same day. No market timing decision you make will ever matter as much as which buyer you walk into. This is why we built the payout table directly into the calculator above, and why our selling guides focus on quote comparison before anything else.
Weighing Your Gold Accurately
Your melt value is only as good as your scale. Three things matter. First, use a scale with 0.1-gram resolution — pocket jewelry scales cost $15–25 and pay for themselves on the first transaction; a kitchen scale that rounds to whole grams can miss 5–10% of a small item’s value. Second, know your units: gold prices are quoted per troy ounce (31.103 g), which is about 10% heavier than the standard ounce (28.350 g) your kitchen scale reports. Confusing the two is the most common math error in gold selling, and it always works against you. Third, weigh each karat separately — a mixed pile of 10K and 18K weighed together can only be valued at the lowest karat by a buyer.
Pennyweight (dwt) deserves a mention because many US buyers quote in it, sometimes precisely because sellers don’t know the conversion: 1 dwt = 1.555 g, so 20 dwt = 1 troy ounce. A per-dwt offer can sound generous while being weak per gram. Our calculator accepts dwt directly so you can convert any quote into honest terms.
Reading Karat Marks — and When Not to Trust Them
Most gold jewelry carries a hallmark: 24K, 18K, 14K, 10K in the US, or millesimal numbers — 999, 750, 583/585, 417 — common on European and Asian pieces (750 means 75.0% pure, identical to 18K). Look on clasps, inner ring bands, and earring posts, with a loupe if you have one. Marks like “GF” (gold-filled), “GP” (gold-plated), “HGE” (heavy gold electroplate), or “1/20 12K” mean the item is not solid gold — plated pieces contain so little gold that they have essentially no melt value.
Hallmarks can be worn, missing on older pieces, or — rarely — faked. Buyers verify with acid testing or XRF scanners, and you can buy a basic acid kit for about $20 if you have a large lot to confirm. For single items, it’s usually fine to value by the hallmark and let the buyer’s test confirm it; just be present while they test, and never let your gold leave your sight.
Scrap Gold, Jewelry, or Coins — Value Them Differently
Scrap gold — broken chains, single earrings, dental gold, worn rings — is worth exactly its melt value, and the calculator above is the right tool. Intact jewelry may be worth more than melt: designer signatures (Cartier, Tiffany), antique craftsmanship, and gemstones can multiply the price, which means a resale platform or estate buyer can beat any refiner. Calculate the melt value first as your floor, then ask whether the piece might clear that floor as jewelry. Coins sit in between: bullion coins like Eagles, Krugerrands, and Maple Leafs trade near melt plus a small premium, while numismatic (collectible) coins can be worth far more — check dates and mint marks against a coin guide before treating any coin as mere metal.
One rule covers all three: know your floor before anyone makes you an offer. The floor is melt value, it takes under a minute to calculate, and every guide on this site builds on it.
Avoiding the Classic Lowball Tactics
The gold-buying industry has a small playbook of tactics that work only on sellers who don’t know their melt value. The flat lot offer (“$300 for everything”) bundles your 18K in with your 10K and prices it all like the cheapest piece. The unit shuffle quotes pennyweight when you expected grams. The “today only” price pressures you to skip comparison quotes — a legitimate buyer’s rate moves with the market, not with your willingness to walk. Scale games (weighing with stones included, then “deducting” an arbitrary percentage) and karat games (“this tests low, I’ll pay 10K rate” on hallmarked 14K) round out the list. The FTC’s guidance on selling gold jewelry echoes the same defenses we recommend: know your karats and weights before shopping, get multiple offers in writing, and understand that “cash for gold” convenience always has a price.
None of this means gold buyers are villains — refiners and dealers provide a real service and deserve a margin. It means the margin should be negotiated in daylight. When you open a negotiation with “the melt value is $612, what percentage are you offering?”, the entire dynamic changes.
Why Gold Prices Are Where They Are
Gold has spent the past two years setting records, driven by central-bank buying, geopolitical hedging, and rate-cut expectations — the spot price sits near $4,085.90 per troy ounce as of the latest update. For sellers, elevated prices are an unambiguous tailwind: jewelry bought decades ago at a few hundred dollars per ounce now carries multiples of its purchase-era metal value. For buyers of bullion, high prices cut both ways, and timing arguments belong to licensed advisors, not calculators. What the price level changes for everyone is stakes: at $131.36 per gram, a kitchen-scale rounding error or a weak quote costs real money. Precision pays.
