What your scrap gold is really worth
Melt value is what the metal is worth. Nobody pays it. Weigh your lot, see the melt figure and what a refiner, a mail-in buyer, a local jeweler and a pawn shop each pay against it — then put any offer you have been given through the checker, because a price quoted per pennyweight is not what it looks like.
What you are selling
Weigh only the metal. Stones, clasps of a different metal and spring bars are not paid for, and a buyer will deduct them.
Someone quoted you a price. Is it any good?
Enter the number you were given exactly as they said it — including the unit. This converts it back into a share of melt, which is the only figure that lets you compare two offers.
The pennyweight trap
A pennyweight is 1.55517 grams. Twenty of them make a troy ounce. It is the traditional unit of the US jewelry trade, and it is still how a lot of gold buyers quote — which matters, because the same money expressed per pennyweight looks about 55% larger than it does per gram.
Nothing requires a buyer to quote in a unit you understand. A shop can weigh in pennyweights, price in pennyweights and post per-pennyweight rates in the window, entirely legally. If you are mentally comparing that against a per-gram number from somewhere else, you are not comparing anything.
Shop A offers $60 per gram. That is 20 × $60 = $1,200.
Shop B offers $85 per pennyweight, which sounds far better. But 20 g is 12.86 dwt, so the check is 12.86 × $85 = $1,093.
The offer that sounded about 40% richer pays $107 less. Same necklace, same day.
So before anything else: ask whether the quote is per gram, per pennyweight or per troy ounce, and watch the scale with the unit indicator visible. Then put both numbers through the checker above.
| Unit | In grams | Also |
|---|---|---|
| 1 pennyweight (dwt) | 1.55517 g | 1/20 troy ounce |
| 1 troy ounce (ozt) | 31.1035 g | 20 dwt |
| 1 gram | 0.643 dwt | 0.0322 ozt |
| 1 ordinary ounce (avoirdupois) | 28.3495 g | Not what gold is priced in |
What each kind of buyer pays
Melt value is what the metal in your jewelry is worth at today's spot price. Nobody pays it. Everyone in the chain takes a cut for testing, refining, holding stock and the risk that your 14K is not 14K. The size of that cut is the whole decision.
| Who you sell to | Share of melt | What you are trading away |
|---|---|---|
| Refiner, direct | 85–95% | Best rate, and the one most sellers never try. Refiners want volume, so small lots may be refused or charged a lot fee. Worth it once you are into several ounces. |
| Reputable mail-in buyer | 75–88% | Low overhead, so rates beat the high street. You post the gold and wait a few days. Use one that shows you the assay and returns the lot free if you decline. |
| Local gold buyer or jeweler | 60–80% | Instant money and you watch the scale. The spread pays for the shopfront. This is where the pennyweight quote below is most likely to appear. |
| Pawn shop | 40–70% | The fastest and the lowest. A pawn shop prices for the risk that you never come back for it. Take this only if you need the money today. |
The spot price every figure here is built from is published, with history, on our jewelry price index — free to reuse if you need it elsewhere. A class ring is the most common single item people bring to a scrap buyer, and has its own page.
The single most valuable thing you can do is get three quotes. The spread between the best and worst offer on the same lot is routinely 30 percentage points of melt, which on a few hundred dollars of gold is real money for an afternoon's work.
Dental gold
Dental alloys are not one thing. Most yellow crowns land near 16 karat, about 67% gold; ADA Type III crown-and-inlay alloy runs 75–78%, and Type IV bridge alloy 60–70%. Across everything that turns up, the long-run average is nearer 11.5 karat. A single crown usually weighs about 3 g, so a typical one carries roughly $150 of recoverable metal at current prices.
The mistake that costs money: dental alloy also contains palladium and platinum, and a general cash-for-gold buyer assays for gold only. Those metals can be 20–30% of the total precious value of a crown, and a buyer who does not test for them will not pay for them. Sell dental scrap to a refiner who handles dental specifically — they assay the whole alloy and typically pay around 85% of spot after refining costs of 15–18%.
Porcelain fused to the metal is normal and is burned off in refining; you do not need to remove it, and you should not try. Nor does it need cleaning beyond the obvious.
Gold-filled and gold-plated
These two get confused constantly and they are not remotely the same thing.
Gold-filled is stamped GF, usually as a fraction: 1/20 14K means a bonded 14K layer making up one twentieth — 5% — of the total weight. So the piece is 5% × 58.5% = 2.9% pure gold. That is real and recoverable, but it is low-grade scrap. Most counter buyers refuse gold-filled outright because processing it is not worth their time; refiners take it in quantity, usually with a lot fee. Do not expect the percentages in the table above to hold on a small lot.
Gold-plated — stamped GP, GEP, HGE or nothing at all — is microns of gold over base metal. There is no recoverable value at jewelry scale. Nobody will weigh it, and no refiner will take it. If it still looks good, it is worth more worn than sold.
Not sure which you have? The hallmark lookup decodes every one of those marks, and a class ring is its own special case — half of them are base metal under a trade name.
Before you hand anything over
Know the melt value first. Walking in with a number is the difference between negotiating and accepting. That is what the calculator at the top is for.
Watch the weighing. The scale should face you, with the unit — g or dwt — visible next to the number. Ask them to weigh each karat separately; mixing 10K in with 18K and paying the whole lot at the low rate is the oldest deduction there is.
Separate the karats yourself. Sort by stamp before you go. If a piece is unstamped, expect it to be tested and priced conservatively, or set it aside.
Do not scrap what is worth more whole. A signed piece, a period item, or anything with a decent stone in it is usually worth more as jewelry than as metal. Melt is the floor, not the price. If it might be the former, value it as a piece first.
Keep the stones. Ask for them back in writing before you leave the item. A scrap buyer values the metal; any diamond in the setting is upside they are not paying you for.