I just checked with my husband as to whether he weighed his customers' gold jewelry (which they brought to him for cash) in grams, ounces, or penny weights........????

He just told me that he could weigh it all three ways but he preferred to use penny weights.

The final calculation would be based on the price of gold that particular day plus the Karat weight of the gold.....(carat and karat still confuse me and its early....I'll refine this later........ha ha, no pun intended).

Selling gold jewelry for cash
 

When you bring your jewelry to whomever you choose........remember this:

1. The amount that you will be paid is based on the market price of pure gold TODAY.

2. What you are selling is NOT pure gold. More than likely it is going to be 14-K gold; possibly 10-K gold and some 18-K.

3. When calculating the sale, it is going to be based on the Karat of gold, the market price and what percentage of the market price that they are actually paying you.......multiplied by the actual weight of the item.

4. Gold is normally weighed in a Troy Oz.

5. When weighing your gold, they can weigh it in a troy oz, in pennyweight or in grams...........

6. Years ago, most people would calculate it in pennyweight (D.W.T. is an abbreviation for pennyweight).

7. There are 20 pennyweight in a troy ounce.......

8. Nowadays, a lot of jewelers or gold buyers will weigh it in GRAMS.........there are 31.104 grams in a troy oz.

For example: I will show you a calculation of the market price for a 14-K gold item when the market price of gold is $600.00 an ounce.

We know it is MUCH HIGHER than that now, but this is just “an example”.

Pure gold per ounce = $600.00 X .5833 = $349.98 DIVIDED BY 20 = $17.49 actual value per pennyweight for 14-K gold.

Because this is the actual value of the gold, no one is going to give you that.....because there are expenses, rent, wages, overhead
and a thousand other things to operate any business.........so more than likely, the buyer of your gold, will probably offer you 50 to 70%
of the $17.49 actual value for your gold............for one pennyweight, thus this would be multiplied PLUS THE WEIGHT OF YOUR GOLD TO DETERMINE YOUR CASH VALUE............

When you go to cash for gold or some other place they will give you immediate cash whereby listing it on eBay you have the expense of listing the item with no guarantee of the sale; whereby it might sell today or it might sell six months from now or NEVER.......

No one will ever give you the full actual worth of the gold item due to their own expenses as it is not a charity, but a business..

But you will have immediate cash in your hands...................

A comparable example would be your new car that you paid $40,000 for.

The actual value of the steel ,and plastic is not $3,000.

All the rest of the cost was for manufacturing, labor, taxes, profit and a million other things that can go into this statement.........

Twenty years later, when you go to sell this car, you might get $1,000. .....for scrap value of its steel and plastic.

Re the jewelry, you could sell it two ways...............one for its SCRAP VALUE.........equals Cash for Gold.

Or, you can sell it on your own...........for a higher value because of the labor and materials to make it , or for its beauty and intrinsic/historic value.
But that would NOT be immediate cash. Sentimental value of an item does not come into play.

Now, on antique items, there would be a little higher value if it is desirable..........but not all jewelry is desirable as there is a glut of such in the world.

Another story is the remaining small diamonds in an item which are too labor intensive to remove......and generally speaking, no one will pay you for them.

Desirability would be considered if the piece is absolutely beautiful, but generally speaking only one out of every 500 pieces would fall into that category, where everyone that looks at it truly desires it, thus it is more saleable, as compared to the average item of jewelry........it is only with those rare pieces that one can be paid over and above the actual market price of the gold and labor. Ditto for maker’s NAME..such as Cartier, etc.

I "picked" my personal jeweler's brain very early in the morning.......
Hope this helps.