I inherited a few gold items from my grandmother last year and had no idea what they were worth. The stamps said 14K and 18K but that didn’t help much. I ended up selling to the first buyer I found. Later I realized I’d probably undersold.
Melt value is the baseline—what the raw metal is worth if you melted it down. Buyers usually pay 60–90% of that, depending on who they are. Pawn shops tend to offer less. Online refiners and some jewelers pay more. If you don’t know the baseline number, it’s hard to judge an offer.
You need two things: weight and purity. A kitchen scale works for weight. Purity is the karat stamp—10K, 14K, 18K, whatever’s on the piece. The rest is just math and the current spot price. But spot price changes all the time and I’m not great at doing it in my head.
I started using an online calculator. Enter weight, pick the karat, get a number. No signup. I use mygoldcalc.com when I need a quick check before selling or talking to a buyer. Nothing fancy, but it does the job.
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