People check the gold price, see a number per ounce, do some quick mental math on their chain, and arrive expecting that figure. Then the offer is lower and it feels like a trick.
It usually is not. The gap between the headline price and your payout is made of specific, explainable things. Here they are.
The spot price is the current market price for immediate delivery of one troy ounce of pure gold. Two words in that sentence do most of the work.
Troy ounce. Not a regular ounce. A troy ounce is 31.103 grams; a standard ounce is 28.349. Anyone converting with the wrong one is off by about 10% before they start.
Pure. Spot refers to 24K, 99.9% gold. Your 14K chain is 58.5% gold. The rest is copper, silver, nickel or zinc, and none of that is worth much.
Spot moves continuously while markets are open, driven by interest rates, the dollar, central bank buying and general anxiety about everything else. It is not a fixed daily figure.
Four numbers:
(Spot ÷ 31.103) × purity × net weight in grams × payout rate
Step by step:
Steps 1 through 3 give you melt value. Step 4 gives you the offer.
Because melt value is not what the gold is worth to the buyer — it is what it is worth after it has been refined, which has not happened yet.
Between the counter and a refined bar there is testing, sorting, secure transport, refining fees, an assay, and the market risk of holding metal whose price moves while it is in transit. That spread is where a gold buyer makes a living.
What varies between buyers is how wide that spread is, and whether they are honest about it.
Lot size. The single biggest factor. Testing, processing and shipping a kilo of scrap costs barely more than doing the same for twenty grams. That efficiency gets shared, so larger lots earn better rates.
Form. Bullion is the tightest spread anywhere, because a sealed one-ounce bar needs authentication and nothing else. Mixed scrap needs sorting and testing piece by piece.
Purity. High-karat gold refines more cleanly and predictably than low-karat alloy.
Stones. Removed or estimated and deducted. Gold is paid on net weight. Diamonds above roughly half a carat and quality colored stones should be appraised and quoted separately — if a buyer treats a real diamond as dead weight, that is a problem.
Clasps, springs and pins. Frequently steel even on a solid gold chain.
Watch movements. A gold case gets weighed after the movement comes out.
None of these are tricks. The question is whether the buyer shows you the deduction or just quotes a lower number and stays quiet.
Honest answer: nobody knows where gold goes next, including us. Anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something.
What we can say is narrower and more useful. If you are selling a chain you have not worn in a decade, timing the market is not really the exercise — you are converting a dormant asset into money, and a few percent either way is unlikely to change your life. If you are sitting on a substantial bullion position, that is a genuine investment decision and worth discussing with someone who advises on that professionally. We buy metal; we do not give investment advice.
We show you the spot price, the test result, the scale and the arithmetic before you decide anything. 30 West 47th Street, 9th Floor. Call 646-846-0401 or send us the details.
Free testing, live spot pricing, cash the same visit.