How to Tell If a Gold Buyer's Offer Is Fair

The buyer behind the counter does a little arithmetic every day. You can do the same arithmetic with the calculator on your phone, and once you can, the mystery goes out of a gold offer.

In this guide I'll show you the three numbers that make up your gold's melt value, the unit mix-ups that cost sellers money, and how to turn any offer into a simple percentage. This is general information, not financial advice, and gold prices change by the minute.

Three numbers: weight, purity and spot price

Weight, in grams. The gram is the unit to trust.

Purity. 10K is 0.4167 pure gold, 14K is 0.5833 (use 0.585 for pieces stamped 585), 18K is 0.750 and 22K is 0.9167.

Spot price. This is the price of one troy ounce of pure gold that you see on the news and on dealer websites. Twice every business day in London, an electronic auction sets a benchmark called the LBMA Gold Price, and live prices move all day in between. Check the price on the day you sell, and write it down with the time.

How much can one day matter? The jewelry trade journal JCK reported that gold reached a record $5,594.82 an ounce on January 29, 2026, then fell 9.5 percent in a single session.

Put the three together, and you have the formula:

Melt value = grams × purity × (spot price ÷ 31.1035)

Grams, troy ounces and pennyweights

Precious metals don't use the kitchen ounce. According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST):

• 1 troy ounce = 31.1035 grams = 20 pennyweights
• 1 pennyweight (dwt) = about 1.555 grams
• The ordinary kitchen ounce is only 28.35 grams, about 10 percent lighter than a troy ounce.

NIST's model rules for the states say precious metals sold by weight should be weighed in troy or metric units, with a conversion chart displayed when metric is used.

Watch for the pennyweight trap. A 10-gram chain weighs about 6.43 pennyweights. If a buyer weighs in pennyweights and then pays a price per gram, you've just been paid for 6.43 grams instead of 10: about 36 percent less.

A worked example

HYPOTHETICAL. Gold spot price used: $4,000 per troy ounce. Check today's real price before you sell.

Price of one gram of pure gold: $4,000 ÷ 31.1035 = $128.60

• 14K bracelet, 15.00 g: 15.00 × 0.5833 = 8.750 g pure gold × $128.60 = $1,125.19
• 10K class ring, 8.00 g: 8.00 × 0.4167 = 3.334 g pure gold × $128.60 = $428.70
• Total melt value: $1,553.89

A buyer offers $900 for both. $900 ÷ $1,553.89 = about 58 percent of melt.

Now suppose the buyer had put both pieces on the scale together and priced all 23 grams as 10K. That would come to about $1,232.52 of melt, or $321 less, before any offer was even made.

That last line isn't far-fetched. In 2011, New York City's Department of Consumer Affairs sent inspectors to gold buyers with three pieces of jewelry appraised at $590. Offers ranged from $175 to $450, and close to 70 percent of the time the pieces were not separated by karat before weighing.

So what share is fair?

No buyer pays 100 percent of melt; a buyer who resells has costs. For a sense of the range: JCK reported in February 2026 that large refiners typically pay 97 to 99 percent of spot for the gold content of scrap, which is the ceiling local buyers work under. At the other end, Consumer Reports warned in 2014: "You'll rarely get more than 50 percent of your jewelry's melt value." An offer far below half deserves hard questions, and a second written offer elsewhere.

Questions worth asking at any counter:

• "Is your scale showing grams or pennyweights? May I see the display?"
• "Is your price per gram of pure gold, or per gram of 14K?"
• "Will you weigh each karat separately?"
• "What spot price are you using, and when did you take it?"
• "Can you write the weight, the unit and the price per unit on the offer?"

Ask for a scale that reads to 0.01 gram. Minnesota, for one, requires that for precious-metal scales.

Melt is the floor, not always the ceiling. Signed or designer pieces, antique work, collector coins and good stones can be worth more than their metal. Set those aside before anything goes on a scale.

Volume III, Sell It Right, shows you what each kind of buyer usually pays, from refiners and jewelers to pawnshops, mail-in and hotel buyers, how to check a scale and a license, how to compare offers side by side, and how to plan a calm, fair sale as a family.