How much is your 14k gold worth by weight

A kitchen scale reading in whole grams is not good enough. Gold is worth roughly the price of a coffee per tenth of a gram at current prices, so rounding 4.7 grams to 5 changes the answer by real money. A jeweller's scale reading to 0.01 g costs very little and pays for itself on the first sale.

Weigh each piece separately if the karats differ. A 10k chain and a 14k pendant weighed together give you a number that is wrong for both.

You are paid for metal, not for what is set into it. A 6 gram ring with a decent stone might only be 4 grams of gold. Buyers deduct stone weight and they are right to, so estimate it yourself before you walk in, or you will think you are being cheated when you are not.

Clasps, spring bars and pins are usually gold and do count. Watch movements, leather and elastic do not.

Most people have no intuition for this, and it is the fastest way to sanity check a number. A plain wedding band runs 3 to 7 grams depending on width and size. A light chain is 2 to 5 grams, a heavy curb chain 20 to 50. Stud earrings are often under a gram for the pair. A substantial signet ring is 8 to 15 grams.

So a typical jewellery box holds far less gold than people expect, and the total is usually in the tens of grams rather than the hundreds. If an online calculator has told you that a drawer of odds and ends is worth several thousand, weigh it before you get attached to the figure.

14k is 58.33% gold. Multiply your weight in grams by 0.5833 to get the grams of fine gold, then multiply that by the spot price per gram. The spot price per gram is the headline price per troy ounce divided by 31.1035.

Worked through: 10 grams of 14k holds 5.833 grams of fine gold. At a spot price of $4,350 per troy ounce, that is $139.86 per gram of fine gold, so the melt value is about $816. A high street buyer offering 70 to 85% would pay somewhere between $571 and $694.

Nothing about this changes with the weight. The value is exactly linear, which is why the table is a straight multiplication and why any calculator quoting you a better rate for more weight is talking about their margin, not about the metal.

The melt column is what the gold in your piece is worth as metal. The payout column is what a gold buyer realistically hands over, at 70 to 85% of melt. A pawn shop pays less again, 50 to 70%, and a refiner pays more, 90 to 95%, but usually only for bulk lots.

Compare any quote you get against the payout column rather than the melt column. Quotes inside that range are ordinary. It is quotes well below it, or a refusal to weigh your gold in front of you, that should send you to another buyer.