How to Calculate Gold Scrap Price Per Gram Without a Calculator

Recovery of precious metal items in circulation has long been a popular way to recycle gold. If you're going through your old jewelry, electronics, craft scrap, or even tooth fillings with the idea of selling gold to refiners or pawn shops, then you'll want to get a general ballpark figure of their value. Here you will learn how to use simple math to calculate the price per gram of gold scrap. Your tools are minimal - a calculator, a gram scale, and of course you need to know the karat weight (10K, 14K, 18K, or 24) of the gold items, which may require a magnifying glass.

Note: You'll only be estimating how much cash those who buy your precious metal will offer you. Most scrap gold dealers make their profits by offering a fixed percentage less than the current market value.

Step 1 - Find the Current Price of Gold

The first step is simply to write down the dollar amount of the current price of gold. This can be found online. Websites such as Goldprice.org, Kitco.com, and Monex.com track the metal markets, and so do some unexpected sites. For example, when I was selling my handcrafted jewelry, I would check gold and silver markets right at the store from which I bought my precious metals.

So if today the price of gold happens to be $1,000 per troy ounce, then write down $1,000. (On the date of this revision, in December 2011, the number is much higher - over $1,700.)

Note: The value of gold, which is traded in all time zones 24 hours a day, changes constantly, with its price set in London twice daily. This means if you decide to sell the gold one day and actually conduct the transaction on another day, its value will have changed.

Step 2 - Find the Price of Gold Per Gram

Divide $1,000 (in this example only - when you do it, use the real gold price) by 31 grams. The result is the price of gold per gram - in this example, approximately $32.26.

Why 31 grams? The price of gold is conventionally measured in troy ounces. One troy ounce is 31.10348 grams. Here, to make things easy, I rounded this number to 31 grams. If you are not too math-challenged, then feel free to use all the decimal places.

Step 3 - Sort Your Gold Scrap into Piles of Fineness

Now you're ready to sort your gold into piles by its purity - that is, by how much actual precious metal versus base metal is in the scrap. You will calculate the value of each pile separately.

Use a magnifying glass if necessary to determine the fineness of the gold, then sort it into piles by fineness (10K, 14K, 18K, or 24K, where K means karat.)

Note: Gold plated scrap cannot be weighed this way and should be excluded from this calculation.

Step 4 - Weigh the Scrap Gold

Weigh each pile of gold scrap using a gram scale. Write down how much each pile weighs in grams.

Alternatively, you can use an accurate scale that uses standard avoirdupois ounces or troy ounces as a unit and then manually convert to grams. If you do this, then note that for every avoirdupois ounce of scrap gold you have, you have approximately 28.35 grams of gold. (So if you had 3.2 ounces of gold, you'd have 3.2 times 28.35 or 90.72 grams. If your scale measures in troy ounces, you'd have 3.2 times 31.10348, which would be 99.53 grams. This example is just for use in explaining this step - don't use it in the calculations below.)

Step 5 - Calculate the Gold Price According to the Amount of Pure Gold in the Alloy

Do the simple calculation below for each pile. Multiply as described using the number from Step 2 (the price of gold per gram):

The result you end up with is the scrap gold price per gram of that karat weight of gold.

Step 6 - Calculate the Current Market Price of Gold Scrap

Now the final step: Multiply the number you figured from Step 5 times the weight of gold in grams from Step 4.

Example: If you had 50 grams of 10 karat gold, and if the gold price per gram of 10K gold was $12, then you would have scrap gold with an estimated $600 current market value.

Back to Top

Need to know the value of scrap gold jewelery in pennyweight?

Check out my article with step-by-step instructions.