How to Sell Gold: Get Full Melt Value, Not Scrap Rates

A 10 gram 14K chain contains 5.83 grams of pure gold. At a spot price of $131.14 per gram, that is $765 of metal sitting in your drawer. A pawn shop may offer $306 for it. A refiner may offer $704. Same chain, same day, a $398 gap that comes down entirely to who you walk up to and whether you did the arithmetic first with a scrap gold calculator.

What Your Gold Is Actually Worth: The Melt Value

Every scrap offer starts from one number: melt value. That is the weight of pure gold in the item multiplied by live spot, ignoring the design, the brand, the alloy metals and what you originally paid. Nothing else moves in your favour until you know it.

The maths is two steps. Multiply gross weight by the karat multiplier to get fine-gold weight, then multiply by spot. At $131.14 per gram of pure gold, that gives the values below, shown per gram and per pennyweight so you can answer either kind of quote.

Most Western jewellery is 14K or 18K, so those two rows do most of the work. A gram of 14K holds $76.49 of gold today; confirm the current figure on the 14K gold price per gram page before you go anywhere, because a stale number is the easiest thing to be argued out of.

The Payout Ladder: Who Pays What on the Same Chain

Work the 10 g 14K chain all the way through. 10 x 0.5833 = 5.833 grams of fine gold. 5.833 x $131.14 = $765 of melt value. Now watch what happens to that same $765 as you move up the ladder of buyers.

The spread between the top and the bottom of that ladder is $421 on a single chain, which is more than the pawn shop's entire offer. Scale it to a 100 g mixed lot and the same percentages decide several thousand dollars.

This is not simply a story about dishonest buyers. A pawn shop prices a loan-shaped risk on slow inventory. A refiner prices a supply chain, melting and hedging in volume, so a thin margin still works. You are choosing which business model pays you.

Here is the rule to run in ten seconds at the counter, once you have looked up a single number before leaving home.

1. 1.Know the melt value per gram for your karat: $76.49 for 14K, $98.36 for 18K, $120.21 for 22K at today's spot.
2. 2.Take 70% of it in your head: about $53 per gram for 14K, $69 for 18K, $84 for 22K.
3. 3.Divide any offer by the gross grams of that karat to get the offer per gram.
4. 4.Below the 70% line it is a scrap-tier offer and you should get a second quote before agreeing to anything.
5. 5.Above 90% of melt you are being paid close to refiner economics and there is very little left to negotiate.

The Pennyweight Trick: How $45 Becomes $28.93

In the United States, scrap gold prices are very often quoted per pennyweight rather than per gram. A pennyweight (dwt) is 1.55517 grams, so any per-dwt figure is automatically about 55% larger than the same price per gram. That is exactly why the unit survives on buying counters long after the rest of the trade moved to grams.

Suppose a counter offers $45 per pennyweight for 14K. Divide by 1.55517 and you get $28.93 per gram. Melt on 14K is $76.49 per gram, so that offer is 37.8% of melt, below even the pawn-shop band. Quoted as $45 it sounds generous. Quoted as $28.93 it plainly is not.

The defence is one division, and it works both ways. Quoted per dwt, divide by 1.55517 before you react. Going the other way, a fair 90% offer on 14K is $68.84 per gram, or $107.06 per pennyweight. Anything materially under that is not a fair per-dwt price, however large the headline looks. It is the same asymmetry covered in spot gold vs retail gold prices.

The Mixed-Karat Trap That Costs 35%

Almost nobody sells a single piece. You sell a bag: a broken 18K bangle, two 14K rings, a 10K bracelet. If the whole bag goes on the scale at once, the buyer has every incentive to pay the entire weight at the lowest karat in it.

Take 20 g of 18K plus 10 g of 10K. Weighed properly: 20 x 0.75 = 15 g fine, worth $1,967. Plus 10 x 0.4167 = 4.17 g fine, worth $546. Honest melt on the lot is $2,513.

Weighed as one 30 g pile at the 10K rate: 30 x 0.4167 = 12.5 g fine, worth $1,639. That shortcut costs $874, roughly 35% of the lot, before any percentage-of-melt haggling starts. It never looks like a bad price, only like a convenient weighing method.

So sort by hallmark yourself, ask for each purity to be weighed and written on the ticket as a separate line, and refuse a single blended number. A karat purity calculator will confirm what each pile is worth before you hand any of it over.

Never Sell a Recognised Coin as Scrap

Scrap logic applies to jewellery, dental gold and broken chain. It does not apply to bullion coins. A one-ounce Krugerrand holds exactly one troy ounce of fine gold, worth $4,079 at spot, but it also carries a premium because it is instantly recognisable and resells without assay.

Sell it as scrap at 88% of melt and you receive roughly $3,590. Sell it as a coin, where premiums of a few per cent over spot are typical, and you are closer to $4,200. That is around $600 lost on one coin, and the scrap buyer will usually just resell it as a coin. The same applies to Eagles, Maple Leafs, Sovereigns and mint bars with intact assay packaging.

Check what the coin itself trades for on the gold coin price page rather than assuming melt is the ceiling, and if you are unsure which of your holdings carry premiums, Krugerrand vs Eagle vs Maple Leaf covers the recognised one-ounce issues.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much is scrap gold worth per gram?

Scrap gold is worth its fine-gold weight times spot. At $131.14 per gram of pure gold, 24K is $131.14 per gram, 22K is $120.21, 18K is $98.36, 14K is $76.49 and 10K is $54.64. That is the melt value, not the offer. Expect a buyer to pay somewhere between 40% and 95% of it, depending entirely on which type of buyer it is.

What is the 14k scrap gold price per gram right now?

14K is 58.33% pure, so its melt value is 0.5833 x $131.14 = $76.49 per gram, or $118.96 per pennyweight. Real offers run from about $31 per gram at a pawn shop to around $70 per gram from a refiner. Any quote below roughly $53 per gram is under 70% of melt and worth a second opinion before you accept it.

Where can I sell gold for the best price?

Bullion dealers and refiners consistently pay the most, typically 90-95% of melt, because they buy metal for volume rather than for resale display. Independent jewellers and reputable mail-in buyers sit in the 60-80% band. Pawn shops and cash-for-gold counters pay the least, 40-60%, in exchange for cash in hand. Always get two written quotes on the same weighed lot before selling.

Do pawn shops give a fair gold price?

A pawn shop gold price is usually 40-60% of melt, which is a genuine price but not a good one. On a 10 g 14K chain worth $765 that means $306 to $459. Pawn shops are pricing instant cash, storage cost and slow turnover into the offer. Use them when you need money within the hour, not when you want the metal's value.

How do I calculate gold melt value myself?

Multiply gross weight in grams by the karat multiplier, then by the live gold price per gram. For 14K that is grams x 0.5833 x $131.14. Use 0.75 for 18K, 0.9167 for 22K and 0.4167 for 10K. If the buyer quotes per pennyweight, divide their figure by 1.55517 first so you are comparing per-gram against per-gram.

Should I sell gold coins as scrap?

No. Recognised bullion coins such as Krugerrands, Eagles, Maple Leafs and Sovereigns carry a premium over melt because buyers accept them without assay. Selling a one-ounce Krugerrand as scrap at 88% returns around $3,590 against roughly $4,200 as a coin. Take coins to a coin or bullion specialist instead, and keep any original capsules, tubes, certificates and assay cards intact.

Conclusion

Selling gold well is not about finding a secret buyer. It is about knowing the melt value before you walk in, insisting that each karat is weighed separately, converting every per-pennyweight quote into per-gram, and refusing anything under 70% of melt. Run your item through the scrap gold calculator first, confirm the underlying figure on live gold rates, and sanity-check the gold price per gram so that the only thing left to negotiate is the percentage, not the arithmetic. Two quotes and one division are routinely worth several hundred dollars. Selling silverware or 925 pieces instead? The same arithmetic applies at a different scale in is sterling silver worth anything — and if you are weighing up jewellery, gold making charges explained shows exactly which part of your original bill you will never get back.