Gold Melt Calculator: Melt Value by Karat and Weight

What "Melt Value" Technically Means

Melt value is the market value of the fine gold an item would yield after refining — not the value of the item, and not what anyone will hand you for it. Three words in that definition carry weight.

*Fine* gold means refined, essentially pure metal — the industry standard is 99.9% purity or better, the stuff of bullion bars. Your 14K bracelet is a mixture: 58.33% gold, the rest copper, silver, zinc, and nickel. Refining separates that mixture, and only the gold fraction has meaningful value; the base metals recovered from a bracelet are worth pennies.

*Would yield* matters because melt value is a valuation, not a transaction. And *market value* ties it to the live spot price, so the figure drifts a little through the day — far less, as we'll see, than the gap between buyers.

"Melt value," intrinsic value, metal value, scrap value — all loose synonyms for the same idea: strip away everything except the atoms, and price the atoms.

The Formula, With Two Worked Examples

The entire calculation is one line:

Melt value = weight in grams × karat purity × price per gram of pure gold

For the price per gram, divide the spot price by 31.103 (grams per troy ounce). For purity, use the real percentages: 24K = 99.9%, 22K = 91.67%, 18K = 75%, 14K = 58.33%, 10K = 41.67%.

Example one — an 18K chain. Assume gold at $4,400 per troy ounce, so $141.46 per pure gram ($4,400 ÷ 31.103). A 20 gram 18K chain contains 20 × 0.75 = 15 grams of fine gold. Melt value: 15 × $141.46 = $2,122.

Example two — a 10K class ring. Same price assumption. A 7.5 gram 10K ring contains 7.5 × 0.4167 = 3.125 grams of fine gold. Melt value: 3.125 × $141.46 = $442.

Notice the karat leverage: the chain weighs under three times the ring but carries nearly five times the value, because each 18K gram holds 80% more gold than a 10K gram. This is why sorting mixed lots by karat before weighing — the discipline our scrap gold calculator page drills into — changes outcomes so much. The gold calculator on the homepage runs this identical formula with the live price, any karat, any unit.

Refining Losses, and Why Buyers Pay Less Than Melt

If your chain's melt value is $2,122, why does the best offer top out around $1,900? Because turning jewelry into sellable fine gold has real costs, and every hand the metal passes through takes a share. The gap between melt value and your payout covers, roughly in order of size:

• The buyer's margin — the profit that keeps the lights on, by far the largest slice at retail-facing buyers
• Refining fees — refineries charge processing fees or keep a percentage of recovered metal
• Assay costs — verifying actual purity, since stamps are claims rather than guarantees
• Small physical losses — trace metal lost to slag and processing, typically a percent or so
• Price risk — the buyer holds your metal while the market moves before they can sell it on

Stack those up and the familiar payout ranges emerge: online refiners pay 70–90% of melt because few hands touch the metal; local coin and bullion dealers run 65–85%; jewelry stores 50–75%; pawn shops 40–60%; and mail-in TV services as little as 20–50%, their advertising budgets being the most expensive hand of all.

The takeaway isn't outrage — margins are how commerce works — it's that the *percentage* is the entire game. Moving from a 50% buyer to an 85% buyer raises your payout 70%. Our gold value calculator guide goes deeper on reading offers against the melt floor.

Coins vs. Jewelry: Same Formula, Different Market

Melt math works identically on coins — but selling coins at melt is often a mistake in both directions.

Bullion coins typically trade *above* melt. An American Gold Eagle contains exactly one troy ounce of fine gold in a 22K alloy (the whole coin weighs 33.93 grams; the extra is strengthening copper and silver), so its melt value simply equals spot. Yet Eagles routinely change hands at a few percent over spot, because the US Mint's guarantee of weight and purity is itself worth money — a coin needs no assay. Krugerrands and Canadian Maple Leafs behave the same way. Selling a recognized bullion coin to a scrap buyer at 80% of melt torches that premium plus the discount; coins should go to coin dealers.

Numismatic coins can trade *far* above melt — a common-date pre-1933 double eagle carries collector value well beyond its 0.9675 troy ounces of gold. The iron rule: identify any coin before treating it as metal.

Jewelry runs the opposite way, almost always transacting *below* melt for the refining-cost reasons above, with rare exceptions (designer signatures, true antiques) worth setting aside from the scrap pile. Melt value is the ceiling for ordinary jewelry and the floor for recognized coins; knowing which side of that line an item sits on is half of selling well.

Five Melt-Math Errors That Cost Real Money

After years of watching people compute (and miscompute) melt values, the same handful of errors account for nearly all the damage:

• Using standard ounces instead of troy ounces. Spot is quoted per troy ounce (31.103 g), but kitchen and postal scales read standard ounces (28.350 g) — a 9% gap, always in the direction of disappointment. Weigh in grams, full stop; troy ounce vs ounce covers the carnage this one causes.
• Treating karat stamps as gospel. Stamps are claims. Most are honest; some are worn, wrong, or fraudulent, and unmarked pieces are pure guesses. Buyers will test — see how to test gold at home if you'd rather know first.
• Calling 24K "100% pure." Fine gold is 99.9%. On small lots the 0.1% is trivia, but quoting yourself a perfect 100% on larger weights builds in a small systematic overestimate — and makes buyers wonder what else you rounded in your favor.
• Weighing stones, springs, and solder as gold. A 6 gram ring with a 1.5 carat stone holds about 5.7 grams of metal (one carat = 0.2 g). Clasps hide steel springs; repairs add lower-karat solder. Estimate deductions before the buyer does it for you.
• Applying a retail per-gram price to melt math. Jewelry-store prices per gram include fabrication and markup. Melt value uses the raw spot conversion only — at $4,400/oz, that's $141.46 per *pure* gram and $82.51 per 14K gram, however much the mall charges.

Every one of these is avoidable with a gram scale and thirty seconds of care. The gold melt calculator never lies; it just obeys whatever numbers you feed it.

Frequently Asked Questions