There are hundreds of thousands of companies all over the planet that deal with precious metals and mostly all of them would have a business unit that offers the average person cash for gold.
These companies in general attempt to gain the most out of each transaction that they make with individuals selling gold to them, which is a necessity for them in order to survive in the extremely harsh industry.
However, this does not mean that sellers should allow these companies to take advantage of them and the only way they would be able to stop this from happening is by having knowledge of how much whatever it is that they are trying to sell is worth.
In most situations these items are most likely to be gold jewellery pieces and most legit jewellery pieces have a ‘karat’ mark which is an indicator of the jewellery piece’s purity.
The table presented below makes it easy for sellers to calculate the actual content of gold in weight by converting the gold karat value to a percentage that can be multiplied by the total weight of the jewellery piece and arrive at the actual total content of gold, silver, palladium or platinum in that jewellery piece.
24 Karat – 100 % pure gold – jewellery are rarely made out of pure gold due to gold’s softness, 24 K pieces are usually showcase pieces
22 Karats – 66 % very high precious metal content
20 Karats – 33 % high content of precious metal
18 Karats – 75 % high value jewellery piece
16 Karats – 66 % valuable
14 Karats – 33 % moderate value jewellery piece
12 Karats – 50 % general value
10 Karats – 66 % low value
Using the breakdown above, sellers would easily be able to calculate the gold content of their jewellery pieces by examining the jewellery piece that they want to sell by looking for the karat markings and multiply the corresponding percentage associated with the karat (for instance 18k = 75%) with the weight of the jewellery piece.
This would give the seller the exact weight of gold, silver or any other precious metal content in the jewellery which then he or she would have to multiply with the market value of gold per gram and the seller would have the actual value of the jewellery piece.
From this point on, it is up to the seller how much of the gold market value he or she is willing to lose before agreeing to sell. A good deal for a seller would be between 5 – 10 % below market value, meaning if the value of the jewellery piece was $10.00 and you manage to get $9.00 out of it, you would have managed to get yourself a good deal. 10 – 20 % below market value is standard and losing anything more than that can be considered a ‘rip off’.
For those who want an easier way to calculate the value of their gold, you can visit the Melbourne Gold Buyers website.