The gold and jewelry scale that you are buying for 10 Dollars is very accurate, very reliable, and very easy to operate. We tested this little scale in our laboratory for many months - yes, for many months. The founder of 10DollarScale.com is a jewelry appraiser and he really knows everything when it comes to weighing gold jewelry. For many months, we challenged this little scale in direct competition with our high-end, very expensive laboratory scale. Our conclusion is impressive: for private use, you will not notice a difference between this scale and a 1,000 dollar unit. 

From Grams To Dollars: What Your Gold Is Really Worth

Your scale gives you the weight. But weight alone is only half the answer, because almost no jewelry is pure gold. The rest is alloy – copper, silver, zinc – added to make the metal hard enough to wear every day.

That is what the karat stamp tells you. Look for a tiny mark inside a ring band, on a chain clasp, or on the back of a pendant:

• 417 or 416 means 10K – 41.7% gold
• 585 or 583 means 14K – 58.5% gold
• 750 means 18K – 75% gold
• 916 means 22K – 91.7% gold
• 999 means 24K – 99.9% gold

So a 20 gram 14K chain does NOT contain 20 grams of gold. It contains about 11.7 grams. Everything else is alloy, and nobody pays you for alloy.

Do The Math Yourself

It is simpler than the pawn shops want you to believe. Three steps:

1. Find the gold price per gram. Gold is quoted per troy ounce, and one troy ounce is 31.1 grams. Divide. At $4,500 an ounce, that is about $144.70 per gram of pure gold.
2. Multiply by your purity. 14K is 58.5%, so $144.70 x 0.585 = about $84.65 per gram of 14K.
3. Multiply by your weight. 20 grams x $84.65 = roughly $1,690.

That figure is the melt value – the raw worth of the metal itself. Look up the current gold price before you run the numbers, because it moves every single day.

Watch The Unit

This is where a lot of money quietly goes missing. Three different weights are in play and they are not interchangeable:

• The troy ounce is 31.1 grams. This is what gold is priced in.
• The regular ounce on a kitchen or postal scale is 28.35 grams – nearly 10% lighter. Never price gold with it.
• The pennyweight, written dwt, is 1.555 grams. Twenty of them make one troy ounce.

Many American buyers quote per pennyweight rather than per gram. There is nothing wrong with that, but a price per pennyweight will always look bigger than a price per gram for the very same gold. If a buyer says $131 and you were expecting $84, check which unit is being used before you get excited. To convert, divide your gram weight by 1.555. That same 20 gram chain is 12.9 pennyweight.

Karat Is Not Carat

They sound identical and they measure completely different things. Karat, with a K, is the purity of gold. Carat, with a C, is the weight of a gemstone, where one carat is 0.2 grams. A 14K ring holding a one carat diamond uses both words at once. If you are weighing stones rather than metal, you want our digital diamond and gemstone scale instead.

Weigh It Right

An accurate number depends on a little care:

• Sort by karat first. Weigh your 10K in one pile and your 14K in another. Hand a buyer a mixed heap and it may all get valued at the lowest karat in it.
• Zero the scale. Press TARE with nothing on the platform, and again if you are weighing in a dish.
• Use a flat, solid surface. Not a rug, not your lap. A wobbling scale is a guessing scale.
• Take stones out of the equation. Weigh set pieces separately from plain metal.

What A Buyer Will Actually Pay

Now the honest part. Nobody pays 100% of melt value. A buyer has refining costs, shipping, and a business to run, so the offer will be a percentage of the melt figure you just calculated. How large a percentage is exactly what you are shopping for – and you cannot shop for it until you know the melt value yourself. That one number turns a vague negotiation into a comparison you control.

Three Things That Throw Your Number Off

• Stones and clasps. Diamonds, gemstones and steel spring rings all add weight that is not gold. Expect a buyer to deduct for them.
• Gold plated and gold filled. These weigh about the same as the real thing and carry stamps like GP, GF, or HGE. As scrap they are worth close to nothing. A mark reading 14K GF is not 14K.
• No stamp at all. Older and imported pieces often carry no mark. Your weight is still a starting point, but an unstamped item needs an acid or XRF test before anyone can price it honestly.