April 14, 2008
While you may not be able to look at a piece of gold jewelry and estimate its selling price, you can approach the sale of your gold with an idea of how valuable your gold is. Most gold jewelry has information about its gold content marked on it somewhere. The inscription is usually rather small. It could be on the inside of a ring or on the clasp of a gold chain.
It is not the size of the gold piece that really matters, but the amount of gold in it. So, it is possible that a very large piece of jewelry that contains gold mixed with a lot of other metals will not sell at the same price point as a small piece of gold jewelry that is pure gold. Gold jewelry is not priced based on its size. It is priced according to the amount of gold it contains.
The inscription you see on your gold jewelry will let you know if a piece is pure gold or how close that piece of jewelry is to being pure gold. Twenty-four karat (24K) gold is pure gold. Similar gold pieces of lesser karat content (14K or 9K, for instance) will not be worth as much as a piece of gold jewelry that is 24K. Gold pieces are labeled so that it is clear just how much gold they actually contain.
People who buy gold are looking for gold only and are willing to pay for that metal alone. When a piece of gold is not solid gold, other metals are present.
If you consider gold content in terms of percentages:
24K gold is 100% gold;
18K gold is 75% gold; and
14K gold is about 58% gold.