How Much Is My Gold Worth?

Almost everyone who walks into our Westland store asks the same first question: how much is this worth? The honest answer is that it takes about 60 seconds to work out, and you can do it yourself before you ever hand anything across a counter.

Gold value comes down to three numbers: how pure the item is, how much it weighs, and what gold is trading for right now.

Jewelry is not pure gold; it is an alloy mixed with copper, silver, nickel or zinc for strength. The karat tells you how much of the piece is actually gold.

Gold is weighed in grams, pennyweights (1 dwt = 1.555 g) or troy ounces (1 ozt = 31.1 g). A kitchen scale gets you close enough for an estimate. Remember to subtract anything that is not gold: stones, spring rings, watch movements.

Gold trades globally in US dollars per troy ounce and moves every minute the markets are open. Our gold price page shows the live spot price alongside what we pay per gram and per pennyweight for each karat.

Put it together: pure gold content = weight in grams × purity. Multiply that by what a buyer pays per gram of pure gold and you have your payout.

Say you have a 14K chain weighing 20 grams. Its pure gold content is 20 × 0.583 = 11.66 grams. Whatever a buyer pays per gram of pure gold, multiply by 11.66 — that is your number. No guesswork, no negotiation theatre.

Every buyer pays under spot, because scrap jewelry has to be refined back into pure metal and that costs money. The difference between a fair buyer and a bad one is how much under spot — and whether they show you the math. Ask any buyer for their per-gram rate for your karat. If they will not give you a number, walk out.

Sort your pieces by karat so a heavy 18K ring is not averaged in with 10K scrap. Weigh the lot at home. Run it through our calculator. Then bring it to any Michigan Gold Buyers location, where we test and weigh everything in front of you and pay cash on the spot.