How to Calculate the True Value of Gold Jewellery You Own

Most people overestimate the value of their gold jewellery by 30-50%. The retail price you paid included craftsmanship, brand, margin, and VAT. The price you get back is almost entirely melt value — the weight of pure gold multiplied by the spot price minus the refiner's margin.

Step 1 — Identify the Purity

Look for the hallmark stamp. Common markings:

• 24K / 999 / 9999: 99.9-99.99% pure gold.
• 22K / 916: 91.6% pure.
• 18K / 750: 75% pure — most common in European fine jewellery.
• 14K / 585: 58.5% pure — most common in US jewellery.
• 10K / 417: 41.7% pure — cheap costume-grade gold.
• 9K / 375: 37.5% pure — UK and commonwealth common.

No hallmark doesn't mean no gold, but it does mean you need a professional acid test or XRF scan before trusting any calculation.

Step 2 — Weigh It Accurately

Use a jewellery scale accurate to 0.01 grams. Kitchen scales are not accurate enough. Weigh each piece separately — mixing purities ruins the calculation. Remove stones, clasps, and non-gold elements if possible (jewellers will deduct for these automatically when buying).

Step 3 — Calculate Pure Gold Content

Pure gold weight = total weight × purity fraction.

Example: a 15g 18K ring contains 15 × 0.750 = 11.25g of pure gold.

Step 4 — Convert Grams to Troy Ounces

Gold is priced in troy ounces. 1 troy oz = 31.1035 grams.

11.25g ÷ 31.1035 = 0.3617 troy oz.

Step 5 — Multiply by Spot Price

Use the current spot price — check our live gold calculator or any bullion site. Assume $2,300/oz for this example:

0.3617 × $2,300 = $832 — the melt value of that ring.

Step 6 — Apply Realistic Dealer Margin

Pawnbrokers typically offer 50-70% of melt value. Refiners offer 85-95%. Private buyers range 80-95%. For our example ring:

• Pawnbroker offer: ~$500
• Refiner offer: ~$750
• Realistic private sale: ~$700-$780

Step 7 — Consider Whether to Sell At All

If the jewellery has sentimental, design, or brand value (Cartier, Van Cleef, Bvlgari) the melt calculation understates its worth — auction or specialist resale recovers more. If the jewellery is generic, selling at melt value and rolling the proceeds into bullion at SilverGoldBull is usually the best use of the capital — bullion carries 3-5% spread vs 20-40% on jewellery.

Where the calculation goes wrong in practice

The arithmetic is easy. The inputs are where people lose money, and there are three recurring errors.

Troy ounces are not ounces. A troy ounce is heavier than the avoirdupois ounce a kitchen scale reports, by roughly ten per cent. Weighing gold on a standard scale and pricing the result against a spot quote overstates the value every time. Use a scale that reads grams and convert deliberately.

Stamped purity is a claim, not a measurement. A hallmark is evidence, and on a piece from a recognised assay office it is good evidence. On an unmarked or foreign-marked item it is a starting point. Purity can only be established by testing, and the cheap methods — magnets, scratch and acid — tell you what something is not far more reliably than what it is.

Total weight is not gold weight. Clasps, pins, springs and settings are frequently base metal even on a genuine gold piece, and stones weigh a great deal relative to their contribution. A dealer weighs the gold; a seller who weighed the whole item arrives expecting a number that was never available.

Why a dealer will not pay spot

Spot is a wholesale price for large, delivered, standardised lots. A dealer buying your item has to refine or resell it, carry the price risk in the meantime, and make a margin. The discount to spot is widest on scrap and mixed jewellery, narrower on recognised bullion coins and bars, and narrowest of all where the item can be resold as it stands without refining.

This is the practical reason recognised bullion products hold value better than jewellery of the same gold content: not because the gold is different, but because the exit is cheaper. Getting two or three quotes matters more here than anywhere else — the spread between dealers on scrap is far wider than on coins.

Related: bars vs coins, why physical gold in 2026, how much gold to own.