Knowing the weight of your gold is the single biggest step toward knowing what it is worth. You don’t need special equipment.
Use a digital scale
A kitchen or postal scale that reads to 0.1 gram is ideal. Switch it to grams, which is the most precise unit, and press tare with nothing on it.
Weigh by karat
Group pieces by their stamp and weigh each group separately. Our calculator lets you add a row for each group.
The ounce trap
Precious metals are priced in troy ounces of 31.1 grams. Kitchen scales show regular ounces of 28.35 grams. If you weigh in kitchen ounces and enter troy ounces, your estimate will be about 10% too high. In our calculator, pick “Ounces (kitchen scale)” and we convert it correctly.
Conversions
- 1 troy ounce = 31.1035 grams = 20 pennyweight
- 1 pennyweight (dwt) = 1.5552 grams
- 1 regular ounce = 28.3495 grams
Allow for non-gold parts
Stones, steel springs in clasps and watch movements add weight but no gold. We exclude them when we test, so your estimate will be a little high if they are included.