Gold Price per Gram for 10K, 14K, 18K and 22K

Most sellers believe the gold price per gram they see quoted is what they will be paid for their scrap gold. That is not how it works. The price you see on a financial site is the spot price for one troy ounce of pure 24-karat gold, and it is the starting point for a calculation, not the offer you receive. The actual value of your piece depends on three things you control: its weight in grams, its karat, and the day's spot price. What a buyer pays you is a percentage of that calculated melt value, because the buyer must cover refining costs, assay testing and their own profit margin. The exact arithmetic, a method for comparing a buyer's per-gram quote against the melt value you calculate yourself, and the failure modes that cost you money are explained.

From Per Ounce to Per Gram

The first step is converting the spot price from its standard unit, the troy ounce, to the gram. A troy ounce is not the same as the avoirdupois ounce you use for food. One troy ounce equals 31.1034768 grams, a conversion constant published by NIST in SP 811, Appendix B.8 (2008 edition). To get the gold price per gram, divide the spot price by 31.1035 (the rounded constant most dealers use). For example, if spot is $2,000 per troy ounce, the pure-gold value is $64.30 per gram.0%, which is the difference between a fair deal and a bad one. Always confirm which ounce the buyer's quote uses before you accept a per-gram figure.

Per-Gram Value by Karat

Karat measures purity in parts per 24. Pure gold is 24K. A 14-karat piece is 14/24 pure gold, which is 58.3%. The remaining 41.7% is alloy metal such as copper, silver or zinc, and that alloy has no melt value of its own. To find the gold content per gram, multiply the spot price per gram by the karat fraction. The table below shows the multiplier for each common karat, based on the spot price per troy ounce. You do not need to memorise the constants; you need to know they exist and that a buyer who quotes a per-gram price must be using them.

The formula is always: spot price per troy ounce ÷ 31.1035 × (karat ÷ 24) = melt value per gram. For 10K gold, the multiplier is 0.4167; for 14K, 0.5833; for 18K, 0.7500; for 22K, 0.9167. These are not negotiable. They are the same fractions a refiner uses to assay your lot. If a buyer offers you a per-gram price for 14k gold price per gram that is higher than your calculated melt value, they are either making a loss leader offer to get you in the door or they have misread the karat stamp. Both happen.

Comparing a Buyer's Per-Gram Quote to Melt Value

You have weighed your piece in grams, identified the karat stamp, and looked up the daily spot price. Now calculate the melt value yourself. Then divide the buyer's quoted per-gram price by your melt value per gram. The result is the payout percentage. A fair offer for common karats is 60-80% of melt value, according to industry practice and consumer guidance from the US Federal Trade Commission, which requires cash-for-gold buyers to disclose the total price and terms in writing before the transaction (16 CFR Part 23, 2024 edition). If a quote comes in below 60%, you are being underpaid. If it is above 80%, be suspicious: the buyer may be applying a lower spot price or a lighter weight than your own scale shows.

The failure mode here is trusting the buyer's weight. A seller's kitchen scale can be off by half a gram, but a buyer's scale is calibrated and tested. Weigh your piece at home, then ask the buyer to weigh it in front of you and write down the number. If the buyer refuses, walk out. The 60-80% range is not a legal guarantee; it is a market norm. The range narrows for high-karat pieces because the refining loss is proportionally smaller, and it widens for low-karat pieces because the alloy metals cost money to remove. A 10k gold price per gram quote at 50% of melt might be normal for a buyer who has to process a large volume of low-purity scrap. Know your piece before you judge the offer.

Scrap Gold Price per Gram: The Seller's Checklist

When you sell scrap gold, the price per gram is the headline, but the arithmetic behind it is what matters. Start with the spot price for that day, published by the LBMA as the Gold Price benchmark. Do not use a retail price from a coin dealer or a jewellery store; those include premiums you will not see. Convert to grams by dividing by 31.1035. Multiply by your karat fraction. That is the melt value per gram. The buyer's offer is a percentage of that number. You can do this on a phone calculator in under a minute.

Do not sell to the first buyer who quotes a high per-gram figure without checking their assumptions. Ask what spot price they used. Ask what karat they assigned to your piece. Ask what weight they recorded. If their numbers do not match yours, you have a right to walk away. The FTC rule requiring written disclosure exists precisely because verbal quotes are unverifiable. Get the offer in writing, take it home, and compare it against your own calculation before you hand over the gold. That written document is your proof if the buyer later claims a different number.

Not everyone should sell to a gold buyer. The seller who benefits is the one with broken, unfashionable or inherited jewellery who wants cash quickly and accepts that they will not get the retail replacement value. The seller who should not sell is the investor holding bullion coins or bars, where the numismatic or collectible premium exceeds the melt value, and the professional jeweller or refiner who buys scrap in volume and needs a different margin structure. For the small-scale seller, the ones who lose are those who confuse spot price with payout, who accept a verbal quote without verifying the weight, or who sell a piece stamped 14K without realising the FTC allows a tolerance of ±0.5 karat, so a 14K stamp can legally be 13.5K and still pass. That tolerance is why an independent assay is worth the money on a large lot.

A common error is assuming all dental gold is high-karat. Most dental alloys are 10K to 18K, and many are classified as 'noble' (25-60% gold) or 'high-noble' (60%+ gold) by the American Dental Association. A crown that looks yellow may be 40% gold, not 90%.Do not assume a dental piece is 24K just because it is in your mouth. The alloy metals, palladium and silver, affect the refining cost and therefore the payout percentage.

Another failure mode is misreading the fineness mark. A stamp of '585' means 58.5% gold, which is 14K. A stamp of '916' means 91.6% gold, which is 22K. These are not decimals to be misread; they are exact ratios. If you read '585' as 58.5% and think it is low, you have correctly identified 14K. If you read it as 5.85% and think it is nearly worthless, you have made a costly error. The fineness mark is your friend when you know what it means. The same logic applies to gold-filled items stamped '1/20 14K', which means the gold layer is one-twentieth of the total weight, not the whole piece.

When you are selling, the buyer's scale is the one that counts. A gram is a gram, but a troy ounce is 31.1035 grams, and a dealer's quote is per troy ounce. If a buyer quotes a per-gram price that seems too high, check whether they are using the spot price for that day or a delayed quote. The LBMA Gold Price is set twice daily in London, and the morning fix is the one most scrap buyers use. If you are selling on a weekend or a holiday, the market is closed and the spot price is Friday's fix. No buyer can give you a current price when the market is shut; they can only quote the last available fix.

Bring your own scale to the comparison. A postal scale that reads to 0.1 gram is accurate enough for jewellery up to a few ounces. Calibrate it with a known weight, such as a U.S. coin, before you weigh your pieces. Then weigh each piece separately, not in a pile, and write down the weight and the karat. This takes ten minutes and turns you from a passive seller into an informed one. When the buyer quotes a per-gram price, you can compute the payout percentage on the spot and decide whether to accept, negotiate, or leave.

The most expensive mistake a scrap gold seller makes is selling to a buyer who does not disclose the karat, weight, or spot price used in the calculation. The FTC rule requires written disclosure, but it does not require the buyer to offer a fair price, only to be transparent about the terms. A buyer can legally offer 30% of melt value and tell you it is 50%. Your defence is your own arithmetic. Calculate the melt value before you walk in. Know the 60-80% range. Ask the three questions: what spot, what karat, what weight. If the answer does not match your own numbers, you have caught the error before it costs you money.

There is one more failure mode that has nothing to do with the buyer: your own scale. If you weigh a 14K chain and get 5.0 grams, but the buyer's scale says 4.8 grams, the difference is 0.2 grams of gold, which at 58.3% purity is about $7.50 per gram at a $2,000 spot.Not worth arguing over. But if the buyer's scale is off by 0.00 on a 5-gram piece. That is worth checking. Ask to see the weight on the scale before the buyer writes the ticket.