Metal Value Calculator
The one figure in jewellery that is arithmetic rather than judgement — and the floor under every offer you will be made.
Melt value is weight in grams × fineness ÷ 1000 × the spot price per gram. A 4 g 18k ring holds 3 g of fine gold; a 20 g sterling chain holds 18.5 g of fine silver. A refiner typically pays 90–97% of that, a dealer or jeweller 70–85%, and a pawn or high-street counter 40–65%. Plated pieces — GP, GF, HGE — have no melt value at all.
Enter a weight and today's spot price per gram.
Melt value is a floor, not a valuation. A piece by a recognised maker, or one with age or a good stone, is worth more sold as jewellery than as metal — often several times more, and melting it is irreversible. The payout bands are conventional trade margins rather than a published index; they move with quantity and with how much a buyer wants your business.
What the metal is worth, and what each kind of buyer keeps
This is the one figure in jewellery that is arithmetic rather than judgement, and knowing it changes a conversation. A counter offering you a number for an inherited chain is offering a fraction of a figure you can work out in your head, and the fraction is usually the part nobody mentions.
The spot price is something you enter rather than something this page states, deliberately. Metal moves by the minute, and a number printed here would be stale before you read it. Look up today's price for the pure metal in your own currency — divide a per-ounce quote by 31.1035 to get a per-gram one — and the arithmetic below stays correct indefinitely.
The arithmetic, in full
Fineness is parts per thousand, so it converts to a decimal by dividing by a thousand. An 18 karat ring stamped 750 is 0.750 pure; sterling stamped 925 is 0.925 pure; 9 carat stamped 375 is 0.375 pure — which is worth pausing on, because it means a 9 carat piece is more base metal than gold.
Multiply the piece's weight by that decimal to get the weight of pure metal, then multiply by the spot price per gram. That product is the melt value, and it is the ceiling on what anyone buying for metal will pay you.
- Weigh the whole piece in grams.
- Multiply by fineness ÷ 1000 — 750 becomes 0.750.
- Multiply by today's spot price for one gram of the pure metal.
- Deduct stones if they are substantial: a scale cannot tell gold from sapphire.
- Expect a buyer to pay under that figure, and know which kind of buyer you are talking to.
Why nobody pays the melt value
A refiner has to assay the lot, melt it, accept small losses in the process and fund the whole thing before selling the recovered metal. That work is the margin, and it typically leaves a seller with somewhere between ninety and ninety-seven percent of spot on a reasonable quantity.
A dealer or jeweller buying over the counter sits further back — commonly seventy to eighty-five percent — because they are aggregating small lots, carrying the price risk between purchase and refining, and paying for the shop you walked into. A pawn or high-street gold counter pays less again, often forty to sixty-five percent, because convenience is the product being sold.
None of those bands is a published index. They move with quantity, with the metal, and with how much a particular buyer wants your business, which is exactly why it is worth getting two offers.
When melting is the wrong answer
Melt value is a floor, not a valuation, and the gap between the two is where most of the loss happens. A signed piece — Cartier, Tiffany, Georg Jensen, a good Victorian or Art Deco setting — is worth several times its metal sold as jewellery, and melting it destroys that permanently.
Age alone often does it. Victorian and Edwardian 9 carat and 15 carat gold sells well above scrap for the period and the workmanship, while mass-produced late twentieth-century 9 carat frequently sits close to melt. Stones complicate it further: a good diamond in an ordinary mount is worth more than the mount, and a jeweller buying for metal will not pay you for it.
So the sequence is: work out the melt value first, because it tells you the floor and stops you accepting less. Then find out whether the piece is worth more than the floor before you let anybody melt it.
Read the mark before you weigh anything
A plated piece has no melt value whatsoever, and the marks that say so are easy to miss. GP, GEP, EP, HGE and RGP all mean an electroplated or thinly bonded layer over base metal. GF, and any fraction such as 1/20 or 1/10 before a karat figure, means gold filled — genuine karat gold bonded to a brass core, at five or ten percent of the weight, which is not economic to recover.
Those letters are usually smaller than the number and the first part of a stamp to wear away. Put a loupe on the mark and read the whole thing before you calculate anything, because the arithmetic on a plated piece produces a figure that does not exist.
| Mark | Metal | Pure content | Per 10 g of piece |
|---|---|---|---|
| 999 | Gold, 24k | 0.999 | 9.99 g fine gold |
| 916 | Gold, 22k | 0.916 | 9.16 g fine gold |
| 750 | Gold, 18k | 0.750 | 7.50 g fine gold |
| 585 | Gold, 14k | 0.585 | 5.85 g fine gold |
| 417 | Gold, 10k | 0.417 | 4.17 g fine gold |
| 375 | Gold, 9ct | 0.375 | 3.75 g fine gold |
| 999 | Silver, fine | 0.999 | 9.99 g fine silver |
| 925 | Silver, sterling | 0.925 | 9.25 g fine silver |
| 835 | Silver | 0.835 | 8.35 g fine silver |
| 800 | Silver | 0.800 | 8.00 g fine silver |
| 950 | Platinum, PT950 | 0.950 | 9.50 g fine platinum |
| 900 | Platinum, PLAT | 0.900 | 9.00 g fine platinum |
| GP · GF · HGE | Plated or filled | Nil, in practice | No recoverable value |
One troy ounce is 31.1035 grams, so a per-ounce spot quote divided by 31.1035 gives the per-gram figure this calculator wants.
Questions we are asked
- How do I work out what my gold ring is worth as scrap?
- Weight in grams multiplied by fineness divided by a thousand, multiplied by today's spot price per gram. A 4 gram 18 karat ring stamped 750 contains 3 grams of fine gold. Then expect a buyer to pay under that: a refiner around 90–97%, a dealer 70–85%, a high-street counter 40–65%.
- Why does a gold buyer pay less than the melt value?
- Because assaying, melting and process losses cost money, and because the buyer funds the metal before recovering it. A refiner's margin is the smallest; a dealer adds the cost of aggregating small lots and carrying the price risk; a pawn or high-street counter is selling convenience and pays least.
- How much is 9ct gold worth per gram?
- 37.5 percent of the gold spot price per gram, less the buyer's margin. Nine carat surprises people downwards because just over a third of the weight is gold — a 10 gram piece contains 3.75 grams.
- Does gold-plated jewellery have any scrap value?
- No. Electroplating is measured in microns and is not economic to recover, and gold filled — at five or ten percent of the weight — is not either. Any mark reading GP, GEP, EP, HGE, RGP or GF means the melt calculation does not apply.
- Should I sell my jewellery for scrap?
- Only after checking whether it is worth more as jewellery, because melting is irreversible. A signed piece, a good antique setting or anything with a decent stone is commonly worth several times its metal. Work out the melt value first so you know the floor, then find out whether the piece clears it.
- How do I convert a spot price per ounce to per gram?
- Divide by 31.1035, which is the number of grams in a troy ounce. Precious metals are quoted per troy ounce rather than per ordinary ounce, and the two differ by about ten percent.
Before You SellRead the whole piece
Melt value is the floor. Photograph the piece and the instrument reads the setting and the stones together, which is where anything above the floor comes from.