How much is 14K gold worth per gram?

14K gold is 58.33 percent pure gold. Divide the spot price per troy ounce by 31.1035 to get the price per gram of pure gold, then multiply by 0.5833. If gold is at 2,400 dollars per ounce, that is 77.16 dollars per gram of pure gold, so 14K is worth about 45.01 dollars per gram in melt value.

What percentage of spot should a gold buyer pay?

Most gold buyers pay between 70 and 90 percent of melt value. The gap covers refining fees, shipping and insurance, assay losses and the margin the business needs to operate. Higher volume buyers with better refinery terms can pay closer to 90 percent.

What is a pennyweight?

A pennyweight, abbreviated dwt, is a traditional jewelry unit equal to 1.55517 grams. There are 20 pennyweight in a troy ounce. Many jewelry scales in the United States are set to pennyweight rather than grams.

Does the stamp on the jewelry always tell the truth?

No. Stamps can be worn, incorrect or deliberately faked, and plated items are often stamped as if they were solid. Always confirm purity with an acid test, an electronic tester or XRF before paying, and weigh the item without stones, clasps or other non gold parts.

Gold Manager Pro

Scrap Gold Calculator: How Much to Pay for 10K, 14K and 18K Gold

The formula every gold buyer uses, and a calculator that runs it for you.

Written for gold buyers, pawn shops and jewelry stores.

Gold spot price (USD per troy ounce)

Karat

Weight

Unit

You pay (% of melt value)

$0.00

The formula

Every scrap gold offer, at every shop in the country, comes from the same four numbers:

Payout = (Spot ÷ 31.1035) × Purity × Grams × Your %

Spot is the world market price of pure gold, quoted in dollars per troy ounce. A troy ounce is 31.1035 grams, so dividing gives you the value of one gram of pure gold. Purity scales that down to the actual gold content of the item, because 14K jewelry is only 58.33 percent gold and the rest is copper, silver or nickel. Then you multiply by the weight, and finally by the share of that value you are willing to pay.

Purity by karat

Stamp	Purity	Value per gram at $2,400 spot
9K	37.5%	$28.94
10K	41.67%	$32.15
14K	58.33%	$45.01
18K	75.0%	$57.87
21K	87.5%	$67.52
22K	91.67%	$70.73
24K	99.9%	$77.08

Those figures are the full melt value, before your buy percentage. They move every time the spot price moves, which is why a printed price chart on the counter goes stale within hours.

A worked example

A customer brings in a 14K chain weighing 18.4 grams. Gold is trading at $2,400 an ounce and you pay 80 percent of melt.

$2,400 ÷ 31.1035 = $77.16 per gram of pure gold
$77.16 × 0.5833 = $45.01 per gram of 14K
$45.01 × 18.4 g = $828.16 melt value
$828.16 × 0.80 = $662.52 to offer the customer

What percentage should you pay?

Most buyers land somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of melt. That spread is not pure profit. It absorbs the refinery's fee, insured shipping both ways, the loss between your scale weight and the assayed yield, the cash tied up until the refinery settles, and the fact that some of what you buy will turn out to be plated.

Volume changes the maths. A shop sending a kilo a month gets better refinery terms than one sending fifty grams, so it can pay closer to 90 percent and still earn more per transaction.

Mistakes that cost real money

Trusting the stamp

Stamps wear off, get faked, and appear on plated items that contain almost no gold. Test every piece with acid, an electronic tester or XRF before you weigh it. Paying 14K money for plated brass is the single most expensive error in this business.

Weighing the whole item

Stones, clasps, spring bars, watch movements and cores are not gold, and you are not buying them. Remove what you can and estimate what you cannot. On a stone-set ring the difference between gross and gold weight can be a third of the total.

Mixing up units

Many US jewelry scales read in pennyweight, not grams, and one pennyweight is 1.55517 grams. If your scale is set to pennyweight and you enter the number as grams, you pay only 64 percent of what the item is really worth and the customer walks out shortchanged. Make the mistake the other way, entering grams as pennyweight, and you overpay by 55 percent. Check what the scale is set to before the first transaction of the day.

Using yesterday's spot price

Gold routinely moves one or two percent in a day. On a $5,000 buy that is a hundred dollars in either direction. If your price comes off a note written this morning, you are guessing.

Test before you pay, not after. Once cash leaves the drawer, a plated item is your loss. Thirty seconds with a tester is the cheapest insurance in the shop.

Silver and platinum

The same formula works for other metals, with different purity figures. Sterling silver is 92.5 percent, coin silver is 90 percent, and platinum jewelry is usually 95 percent, stamped PLAT or 950. Substitute the purity and the matching spot price and the arithmetic is identical.

Stop doing this by hand

Gold Manager Pro pulls the live spot price every minute and applies your own percentage per karat, so the offer appears the moment you enter the weight. It also prints the receipt, tracks the item into inventory and files the police report.

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