How Much Is Your 14k or Scrap Gold Worth?

Your gold is worth its weight times its purity times the price of gold. Karat is simply that purity written as a fraction: 14k is 58.3% gold, 10k is 41.7%, 18k is 75%. So a 5-gram 14k ring holds about 2.9 grams of actual gold, and its melt value is that gold content times today's gold price, roughly $375 at an illustrative $4,000-an-ounce spot. Below is the exact math, a worked example, and the honest part most sellers miss: what a buyer hands you is less than melt, by design.

If you have a drawer of old rings, a broken chain, or a single ring you're thinking of selling, the question is always the same. What is the gold actually worth? The good news is the math is short and the same every time. The part that trips people up is not the math, it's mistaking the metal value for the check you'll get. We'll do both.

The formula, in plain words

Three terms, defined once so nothing below is a mystery.

Spot is the live, per-ounce market price of gold, the number you see quoted on any finance site. Gold is priced in troy ounces, and a troy ounce is about 31.1 grams, a touch heavier than the kitchen ounce.

Purity (also called fineness, and shown as karat on jewelry) is how much of the piece is actually gold versus other metals mixed in for strength. Pure gold is too soft to wear, so jewelry is alloyed down.

Melt value is what the real gold inside your piece is worth, nothing more. It is the metal content times spot. Melt ignores the brand, the craftsmanship, and any stones. It is pure metal.

Put together, the formula is:

melt value = weight in grams × purity fraction × spot price per gram

Spot is quoted per ounce, so to get the per-gram price you divide by 31.1035. At an illustrative $4,000 per ounce, that's about $128.60 per gram of pure gold. (Prices move constantly, so treat every dollar figure here as an example, not a quote. New to any of these words? The glossary lays them out.)

Karat is just a purity fraction

The karat stamp on a piece (10k, 14k, 18k, and so on) is that purity fraction in disguise. Here is the whole conversion:

24-karat is "pure" gold, though even that is about 99.9%, not a perfect 100%, because refining leaves a trace of everything else. Most jewelry sold in North America is 10k or 14k, which is why a "gold" ring can be a little over half gold by weight and the rest cheaper alloy, and if yours is high-karat 22k or 24k, what it is worth in Canada runs the same way.

A worked example: a 5-gram 14k ring

Say you weigh a plain 14k gold ring and it comes to 5 grams.

1. Purity: 14k is .5833, so the ring is 58.3% gold.
2. Actual gold content: 5 grams × .5833 = about 2.92 grams of pure gold.
3. Per-gram spot: at $4,000 per ounce, that's $4,000 ÷ 31.1035 = about $128.60 per gram.
4. Melt: 2.92 grams × $128.60 = about $375.

So this ring has roughly $375 of gold in it. That is the number to anchor everything else to. If gold were instead near $4,300 an ounce, you'd rerun step 3 with the live price and the melt would rise with it. The method never changes, only the spot number does.

The same formula works for silver jewelry. Sterling silver is stamped .925, meaning 92.5% silver, so you'd use .925 as the fraction and the silver spot price per gram instead.

What each karat is worth per gram

Here is the per-gram melt for each karat at that same illustrative $4,000-an-ounce gold price. Read it as "if gold is $4,000, a gram of 14k gold is metal-worth about this," and rescale when spot moves.

These are melt figures, the raw metal only. Keep reading, because melt is not what you'll be paid.

The honest part: melt is your floor, not your payout

This is the piece the ads leave out. A scrap-gold buyer, a jeweler, or a pawn shop does not pay you the melt value. They pay a percentage of it, below melt, and that is normal, not a scam. They have to refine your mixed-alloy jewelry back into pure gold, which costs money, and they take a margin so the business works. That gap is the same spread every metal buyer lives on.

So melt is your floor, the number you judge an offer against, not the number you receive. If your ring holds $375 of gold and a buyer offers you $260, that's about 70% of melt, and now you can decide whether that's fair for the convenience or whether to shop the offer around. Without the melt figure, you have nothing to compare the offer to, which is precisely the position a lowball counts on. (The value tool computes that floor for you.) How much each kind of buyer typically pays, from a good gold buyer down to a pawn counter, is broken down here.

A worthwhile note for the other direction: when you buy gold, you pay a premium over melt, and gold's premiums are pleasantly low. Here's what a fair one looks like. Selling, you take a haircut under melt. Buying, you pay a markup over it. Melt sits in the middle as the honest reference for both.

Three things the melt number can't tell you

Whether the stamp is telling the truth. A karat stamp can be wrong, and a plated piece can be base metal with a thin gold skin and a stamp that lies. Melt math assumes the stamp is honest. Before selling anything of real value, a genuine test (an acid test, an electronic tester, or a jeweler's XRF reading) settles what the piece actually is. Weigh it in grams too, and know whether stones are adding to that weight.

What the craftsmanship or brand is worth. The formula values metal, full stop. A signed designer piece, an antique, or something with real collector or artistic value can be worth well more than its melt, and that is a separate market with separate expertise. Don't melt something that's worth more intact.

What the stones are worth. Diamonds and gemstones are valued entirely apart from the gold, and their weight can inflate a "gold" weight if you don't account for them. Melt is the metal floor under the piece. Stones sit on top as a bonus, judged on their own.

And to be plain about scope: this is metal math, not tax advice. What you owe when you sell, if anything, is a question for a qualified professional.

Common questions

How much is 14k gold worth per gram? Take the gold spot price per ounce, divide by 31.1035 to get the per-gram price, and multiply by .5833. At an illustrative $4,000-an-ounce gold price that's about $75 of metal per gram of 14k. That's the melt, before any buyer's margin comes off.

What's my gold ring worth? Its melt is weight in grams times the karat fraction times the per-gram gold price, so a 5-gram 14k ring is about $375 of gold at $4,000-an-ounce spot. What a buyer pays you is a percentage of that, and anything unusual about the piece itself, a designer name, stones, age, is valued separately.

Can I trust the karat stamp? Mostly, but not blindly. Stamps can be wrong, and plated items can carry a misleading mark. For anything worth real money, get it tested before you sell.

Check the floor before you sell

That first step, turning a weight and a karat stamp into a real melt figure at live prices, is exactly what the value tool is built to do. Enter your jewelry or scrap, and the app computes the current melt value and shows you the floor to measure any buyer's offer against, so you walk in knowing the number instead of taking their word for it. It won't grade a designer piece or price a diamond, that's a separate job, but for the metal it hands you a straight answer in seconds.

The short version

Your gold's metal value is weight times purity times spot, where karat is just the purity fraction (14k is 58.3% gold) and spot per gram is the per-ounce price divided by 31.1035. Run the number and a 5-gram 14k ring is about $375 of gold at an illustrative $4,000-an-ounce price. Then remember the honest part: a buyer pays a percentage of melt, never the full melt, because they refine and take a margin, so melt is your floor, not your payout. Test anything that might be plated, keep stones and craftsmanship in their own bucket, and check the floor before you sell. No hype, no hot tips, just the real number under the metal.