Scrap Gold Calculator

What this scrap gold calculator does

You have a drawer of broken chains, single earrings and a ring from a marriage that did not work out. Somebody will buy them, and you would rather walk in knowing roughly what they are worth than find out from whatever number the man behind the counter says first.

This works out the melt value. Give it the weight, the karat, and the current gold price per gram, and it returns how much pure gold you are actually holding and what that gold is worth.

Melt value is the honest starting point for a negotiation rather than the figure you will be handed. The gap between the two is real, predictable, and covered further down, because knowing it is the difference between a fair price and a bad one.

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How to use it

1. Weight of Scrap Gold. In grams. Kitchen scales are usually good enough to sanity check a dealer's figure, though jewellery scales measure to a hundredth of a gram.
2. Gold Purity. In karats, from 1 to 24. Look for a stamp inside a ring band or on a clasp. The common markings are below.
3. Gold Price Per Gram. Today's price. Note that this wants the price per gram, not per troy ounce, and mixing those up is the most expensive mistake on this page. The conversion is here.

Press Calculate. Press Reset to clear it.

Weigh each karat separately. A pile containing 9K and 18K pieces cannot be valued as one lump, because the purities differ by a factor of two. Sort first, then run each group.

The fields are labelled in PKR, but the arithmetic is currency blind. Enter a price per gram in whatever currency you are working in and the answer comes back in the same one.

What karat actually measures

Pure gold is too soft to make jewellery from, so it is alloyed with other metals. Karat tells you how many parts out of 24 are gold.

That third column is the number that matters, because you are only being paid for the gold. A 10 gram 9K chain contains 3.75 grams of gold. A 10 gram 22K chain contains 9.17 grams. Same weight in your hand, nearly two and a half times the value.

Which karat you meet depends on where you are. Nine carat is common in the UK, 14K in the United States, and 22K across South Asia and the Middle East where jewellery doubles as a store of value. If a piece carries a three digit number rather than a karat mark, that is the millesimal fineness, and dividing it by 1000 gives you the purity directly.

If there is no stamp at all, do not guess. A jeweller will test it, usually free, and the difference between assuming 18K and finding out it is 9K is half the money.

The two lines of arithmetic

First, how much of what you are holding is actually gold:

Pure gold weight = (karat ÷ 24) × total weight

Then what that gold is worth:

Melt value = pure gold weight × price per gram

That is all of it. The other metals in the alloy, usually copper, silver, nickel or zinc, are worth so little by comparison that scrap buyers ignore them entirely.

Worth noting what this deliberately does not value: the craftsmanship, the brand, the stones, or the fact that somebody once chose it carefully. Melt value treats a designer bracelet and a snapped chain identically if they weigh the same and share a karat. Which is exactly right if the piece is genuinely scrap, and exactly wrong if it is not. More on that below.

A worked example: an 18K ring

An 18 karat ring weighing 8.5 grams, with gold trading at 9,500 per gram.

Pure gold. 18 ÷ 24 = 0.75, so the ring is 75 percent gold. 0.75 × 8.5 = 6.38 grams of actual gold.

Melt value. 6.38 × 9,500 = 60,562.50.

Two and a bit grams of that ring are copper and silver, and they are worth essentially nothing. So a quarter of the weight you are carrying contributes nothing to the price, which is worth remembering when a buyer weighs the whole piece in front of you and quotes a number.

Now the part that matters. That 60,562 is the melt value. A typical high street offer sits between 70 and 90 percent of it, so realistically you are looking at somewhere between 42,394 and 54,506. That range is nearly twelve thousand wide, which is why it is worth getting more than one quote.

Troy ounces, grams and the conversion that costs people money

Gold is priced internationally in troy ounces. This calculator wants a price per gram. Get those mixed up and your answer is out by a factor of 31.

1 troy ounce = 31.1034768 grams

So to convert a headline gold price into what this tool wants:

Price per gram = price per troy ounce ÷ 31.1035

If the spot price is quoted at 300,000 per troy ounce, the price per gram is 300,000 ÷ 31.1035 = 9,645.22. Type the 300,000 in by mistake and the tool will tell you your ring is worth thirty one times what it is.

One further trap. A troy ounce is not the ounce you weigh food in. The ordinary avoirdupois ounce is 28.35 grams, so a troy ounce is about 9.7 percent heavier. They share a name and nothing else. Some dealers, particularly in the United States, also quote in pennyweights, where one dwt is 1.5552 grams and there are 20 to the troy ounce.

If a buyer quotes you a price in a unit you were not expecting, that is worth pausing over. It may be nothing. It may also be the whole negotiation.

Melt value is not the offer you will get

Nobody pays full melt for scrap, and they are not being dishonest about it. There are real costs between your drawer and a refinery: testing, transport, insurance, refining losses, and the fact that the buyer is carrying the price risk between paying you and selling on.

Roughly what to expect, as a share of melt value:

On our 60,562 ring, the difference between 90 percent and 60 percent is about eighteen thousand. That is not a rounding difference, it is most of a holiday, and it is decided entirely by which door you walk through.

So the number this calculator gives you is a ceiling and a reference point. Knowing it turns the conversation from "what will you give me" into "that is 62 percent of melt, can you do better", which is a completely different conversation and one buyers are used to having with people who have done their homework.

Worth checking before you sell

Is it actually scrap? The most expensive mistake here is melting something worth more intact. Antique pieces, hallmarked designer jewellery, anything by a recognised maker, and gold coins with numismatic value can be worth several times their metal content. If a piece is old, signed, or unusual, get it looked at by someone who values jewellery rather than someone who buys metal.

Take the stones out first, or account for them. Buyers weigh the whole piece and then deduct for stones, and you have no way of checking their deduction. Diamonds and coloured stones may be worth having removed and sold separately.

Get more than one quote. The range in that table above is wide enough that a second and third opinion is worth an afternoon. Quotes should be free.

Watch the weighing. Ask to see the scale, and ask what unit it is reading in. A reputable buyer will have no problem with either.

Check the price you are being quoted against today's. Gold moves daily and sometimes sharply. A quote based on last week's price is worth questioning.

None of that is about assuming bad faith. Most buyers are straightforward. It is about arriving with a number in your head, which is the only thing that reliably changes the outcome.

Questions people ask

How much is 10 grams of 18K gold worth?

It contains 7.5 grams of pure gold, since 18K is 75 percent. Multiply that by the current price per gram for the melt value, then expect an offer somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of it.

I only have a price per ounce. What do I do?

Divide it by 31.1035 to get the price per gram, assuming it is a troy ounce, which gold prices always are. See the conversion section.

My jewellery has no karat mark. What now?

Do not guess. A jeweller can acid test or use an XRF scanner, usually at no charge, and the answer changes the value by up to a factor of two.

Can I weigh everything together?

Only if it is all the same karat. Sort by purity first, then run each group separately, otherwise the mix is meaningless.

What does 750 or 585 stamped inside mean?

That is millesimal fineness, parts of gold per thousand. 750 is 18K, 585 is 14K, 375 is 9K, 916 is 22K. Divide by 1000 for the purity directly.

What about gold plated items?

Effectively nothing. Plating is a microscopic layer over a base metal, and marks like GP, GF, HGE or RGP mean plated, filled or electroplated rather than solid. This calculator will not give you a meaningful answer for those.

Why will nobody pay me full melt value?

Because refining, testing, transport, insurance and price risk all cost money, and the buyer needs a margin. Expect 70 to 90 percent from a reputable dealer and treat anything under 60 as worth walking away from.

References

A note on sourcing. The karat to purity relationship is definitional, karat being parts of gold in 24, and millesimal fineness marks express the same thing per thousand. The troy ounce to gram conversion of 31.1034768 is exact by definition. Gold prices move continuously, so the price per gram you enter should come from a live source on the day you are selling rather than from any figure quoted on a page like this one.

1. London Bullion Market Association, LBMA Precious Metal Prices. https://www.lbma.org.uk/prices-and-data/lbma-precious-metal-prices
2. National Institute of Standards and Technology, Special Publication 811, Guide for the Use of the International System of Units (SI). https://www.nist.gov/pml/special-publication-811
3. World Gold Council, Goldhub, Gold Price Performance and Data. https://www.gold.org/goldhub/data