24k gold price per gram

The trade treats 24k as 99.9% rather than a theoretical 100%, and marks it 999. Refined bullion often reaches 99.99% and is stamped 9999, sometimes called four nines. The difference between the two is real but small enough that it rarely changes a price quote outside the wholesale market.

Because it is effectively pure, the price per gram of 24k is simply the spot price per troy ounce divided by 31.1035. There is no purity fraction to apply, which is why this page's number tracks the headline gold price almost exactly.

Everywhere else on this site the realistic payout is 70 to 85% of melt, because scrap jewellery has to be assayed, refined and turned back into metal of known purity. Recognised bullion skips all of that. A one ounce Krugerrand, Maple Leaf or Eagle, or a stamped bar from a known refiner, is bought on a published spread: typically 95 to 98% of spot, and occasionally above spot for coins carrying a collector premium.

So if you are holding 24k, the first question is not what it weighs but what form it is in. Bullion goes to a coin dealer or bullion broker on the tight spread. Unmarked 24k, dental gold or granulate goes to a refiner and gets scrap treatment, because purity has to be proven before anyone will pay near spot for it.

Pure gold is too soft to hold a stone or survive being worn. A 24k ring deforms under normal hand pressure and a 24k chain stretches. Western jewellery therefore stops at 22k in practice and usually well below it.

It is a different story across much of Asia and the Gulf. In India, China and the UAE, high purity gold is bought as a store of value first and an ornament second, so 22k and 24k chains, bangles and coins are ordinary retail items. If you have inherited a piece from any of those markets, assume high karat until tested rather than assuming it matches western norms.

The counterfeit problem is worst at 24k, because the payoff is highest and pure gold's density is easy to imitate with tungsten, which is almost exactly as dense. Plated tungsten bars have circulated widely enough that most dealers now ultrasound or drill anything unmarked.

For your own purposes: a genuine 24k piece is soft enough to mark with a fingernail, and its weight and dimensions should match published specifications exactly if it is a standard coin or bar. Anything sold well below spot is not a bargain, it is a warning.