Scrap Gold Calculator
Estimate rings, chains, broken jewelry, and mixed-karat gold with multiple-item mode and dealer payout percentages.
What counts as scrap gold
Scrap gold is anything you are selling for its metal content rather than as an object: broken chains, single earrings, bent or crushed rings, mismatched fragments, class rings, dental gold and mixed lots. For these, melt value is the right frame and this calculator gives you the number. What is not scrap: signed designer pieces, antique and period jewelry with intact hallmarks, anything with a maker mark you recognise, pieces with significant or certified gemstones, matching pairs and suites, and recognisable gold coins. Those can be worth several times their melt value, and melting is irreversible. The test is simple. If a piece has a name, a date, a hallmark set you can look up, or an intact matching pair, get it valued as jewelry before you price it as metal. An hour of research is cheap insurance against destroying the thing that made it valuable.
Step 1: sort by karat before you weigh anything
This is the step that pays for itself. Hand over a bag containing 10K, 14K and 18K mixed together and a buyer has two honest options: test every piece individually, or price the whole lot at or near the lowest purity present. Under time pressure, plenty choose the second. Read the hallmark on each piece and build physical piles: 999 or 24K, 916 or 22K, 875 or 21K, 750 or 18K, 585 or 14K, 417 or 10K, 375 or 9K. Ring stamps are inside the shank; chain stamps are on the clasp or a small tag soldered beside it; pendant and earring stamps are on the back or the post. Put anything unmarked, and anything marked GP, GEP, HGE, RGP, GF or vermeil, into a separate pile. Do not mix unknowns into a marked pile hoping they get carried along - it hands the buyer a legitimate reason to discount the whole group.
Step 2: weigh each pile accurately
A jewelry scale with 0.01 gram resolution costs about as much as a takeaway meal and is the single best purchase you can make before selling gold. A 0.1 gram scale is fine for lots over 20 grams. A kitchen scale reading in 1 gram steps is not usable: on a 4 gram ring the rounding alone can be 12% of the value. Calibrate with the supplied weight, weigh on a hard level surface away from drafts, and weigh each karat pile separately. Record every figure - pile, karat, grams. Multiple-item mode below keeps that list for you and exports it to CSV, so you walk in with a document rather than a memory. Remember what a scale cannot tell you: it reads gross weight including stones and non-gold parts, it cannot verify purity, and it cannot detect a plated or filled piece.
Step 3: subtract what is not gold
Buyers pay for recoverable metal. Everything else is weight you should take out of your own estimate, or a fair offer will feel like a cheat. Common deductions: gemstones and their settings, glass and cubic zirconia, enamel and resin, pearls, steel spring bars and watch pins, quartz movements, magnetic clasps, base-metal earring backs, and the steel core inside some heavy bangles. A large centre stone plus setting is easily half a gram; a watch case is often the only gold part of a watch. Two categories deserve their own note. Hollow chains - rope, herringbone, some Figaro - contain far less metal than their bulk suggests. And dental gold ranges from 10K to 22K equivalents mixed with palladium and platinum, so a dealer will normally assay it rather than price it from a stamp.
Step 4: price the lot and set a realistic expectation
Run each pile through the formula - grams ÷ 31.1035 × karat decimal × spot price - then add them together. A worked example: 12.6 g of 14K, 7.1 g of 18K and 22.4 g of 10K at $4,060 spot gives $959 + $695 + $1,220 = $2,874 of melt value. Note that the 10K pile is worth more than the 18K pile despite being far lower purity - there is simply three times more of it. Gross weight alone tells you nothing; fine gold weight is the only figure that maps to money. Melt value is the ceiling. Refiners and specialist mail-in buyers commonly pay around 80-95% of melt for clean sorted material; jewelers and coin dealers around 70-90%; cash-for-gold storefronts lower; pawn shops frequently 40-60%, because they price for a retail case or a defaulted loan rather than a refinery run. Those bands are orientation, not quotes - they shift with lot size and local competition. On the $2,874 lot above, 85% is $2,443 and 50% is $1,437.
Comparing quotes without being played
Get three quotes on the same sorted lot. The spread between best and worst on identical material is routinely 30-40% of melt value, which is almost always worth two extra phone calls. Keep the lot sorted the same way for every quote, or you are no longer comparing like with like. Ask each buyer for the offer in currency for your specific weights, the spot price they used, and the purity they assigned to each group. Any buyer who will not answer all three has told you something. Ignore advertised percentages. "Up to 95%" is a ceiling on the best possible material, and "95% of the gold value" can quietly mean 95% of an internal base price already below spot. Warning signs: your gold taken to a back room, everything weighed as one pile at the lowest purity, a scale you cannot see, an offer that expires in ten minutes, or pressure applied after you mention a second quote.
Should I remove stones before weighing scrap gold?
Weigh only the gold where you safely can, but do not force stones out of settings. If you cannot separate them, note that they are there and estimate the stone weight conservatively so you are not surprised by the deduction. Buyers weigh and pay for recoverable metal only.
What payout percentage is fair for scrap gold?
It depends on the buyer type. Refiners and specialist mail-in buyers commonly pay around 80-95% of melt for clean sorted material, jewelers and coin dealers around 70-90%, and pawn shops often 40-60%. If an offer is below about 60% of melt for sorted, hallmarked gold, get a second quote.
Can I mix 10K and 18K in one calculation?
Use multiple-item mode so each item keeps its own karat purity. Never let a physical lot be weighed as one pile either - a mixed pile gets priced at or near the lowest purity present, which is the most expensive mistake in the whole process.
How accurate does my scale need to be?
A 0.01 gram jewelry scale is ideal and costs very little. A 0.1 gram scale is acceptable for lots over 20 grams. Avoid kitchen scales that read in 1 gram steps: on a small ring the rounding error alone can be over 10% of the value.
Is gold filled or gold plated jewelry worth anything as scrap?
Plated goods marked GP, GEP, HGE or RGP have essentially no melt value - the gold layer is measured in microns. Gold filled, marked GF or as a fraction like 1/20 12K GF, is around 5% gold by weight and is technically refinable, but most buyers decline it because the processing cost per gram recovered is high.
Do I need ID to sell scrap gold?
Almost certainly yes. Most jurisdictions require precious metal buyers to record seller identity and hold purchased material for a waiting period. That is a consumer protection against stolen goods rather than an imposition. Keep your receipt and your own weight list.