What Is My Gold Worth? A UK Owner's Guide

Almost everybody starts in the same place: they look up the gold price, multiply it by something, and get a number that turns out to be wrong. The price is real. The multiplication is the problem.

Working out what your gold is worth is arithmetic, not opinion, and the arithmetic is the same this year as it was ten years ago. Three numbers go into it. Only one of them changes daily, and it is not the one most people get wrong.

Five things worth knowing before you start

• The headline gold price is a wholesale benchmark. It is set in US dollars per troy ounce for large bars delivered in London, which is not what you are holding.
• Gross weight is not gold content. A gold Sovereign weighs 7.98 g and holds about 7.31 g of gold. On a hallmarked chain the gap is far wider.
• The fineness number is the useful mark. 375, 585, 750, 916.6, 990 and 999 are the UK legal gold standards, and they are what the sum actually uses.
• An unmarked item is not automatically suspect. Gold articles under one gram are exempt from hallmarking altogether.
• If it might be collectable, stop. A rare coin sold for its metal is the single most expensive mistake on this page.

Start With the Number That Is Not Your Answer

The figure everyone quotes is the LBMA Gold Price. It is set twice a day, at 10:30 and 15:00 London time, in US dollars per troy ounce, and it is the internationally recognised benchmark for gold delivered in London. Silver has its own benchmark, set once a day at 12:00, on the same basis.

Three things sit between that number and your kitchen table, and each one moves the answer.

• Currency. The benchmark is in dollars. You are thinking in pounds, so the exchange rate is already in the calculation whether you noticed it or not.
• Unit. It is priced per troy ounce, which is 31.1035 g. That is heavier than the ounce used for post and groceries, so a price per ounce read casually is a price per gram calculated wrongly.
• Purity. The benchmark prices pure gold. Unless you are holding a 999 bar, you own less gold than you own metal.

None of this makes the benchmark useless. It is the anchor for every offer anybody will make you. It is simply not, on its own, a valuation of your property.

Step One: Weigh It Properly

Gross weight is what a scale reads with everything on it. That includes the clasp, the solder at every joint, the mount, and any stone. A stone weighs, and a stone is not gold. On a set ring the difference between gross weight and gold content can be dramatic, which is why a buyer weighs and tests rather than taking a description at face value.

Most kitchen scales read to the nearest gram. On a single Sovereign that is a possible error of more than one part in eight, which is real money on a holding of any size. A jeweller's or dealer's scale reads to 0.01 g and is calibrated. If you want a figure you can rely on, that is the scale you need, and you are entitled to watch your items weighed.

One thing not to do: do not dismantle anything to find out. Prising stones, cutting a chain or filing an edge destroys value and answers nothing that a proper test would not answer without damage.

Step Two: Establish the Purity

A UK hallmark carries a fineness number, and that number is the one the sum uses. 375 is nine carat, 585 is fourteen, 750 is eighteen and 916.6 is twenty-two. The word on the label is a convention; the three-figure mark is the legal statement.

The gap between them matters more than people expect. Nine carat is 375 parts gold in a thousand, so a nine carat chain is well under half gold by weight. Eighteen carat is exactly twice as good. Two chains of identical weight can differ by a factor of two in what they contain, and nothing about handling them tells you which is which.

An unmarked item is not automatically a problem

UK hallmarking has exemption weights, published in Assay Office London's guidance: gold articles under 1.0 g, silver under 7.78 g, platinum under 0.5 g and palladium under 1.0 g need not be hallmarked at all. A light unmarked earring is entirely ordinary. So is a foreign item made where hallmarking is not compulsory.

What it does mean is that the purity has to be established rather than assumed. X-ray fluorescence testing is quick and does no damage, but it reads the surface, so a plated item can flatter itself on a surface reading. A touchstone and acid test cuts through that at the cost of a tiny scratch in an inconspicuous place. A buyer will want one or the other, and frankly you should want them to: a buyer who does not test is a buyer pricing in the risk that you are wrong.

Bullion coins answer the question themselves

This is the quiet advantage of buying recognised coins in the first place. A gold Britannia carries its own fineness and weight on its face, and a UK dealer identifies one in seconds. If you want the longer comparison of the two British options, we set them against each other in gold Britannia versus gold Sovereign, and the case for and against bars is in buying gold bars in the UK.

If coins are what you actually hold and selling is the next step, selling gold coins in the UK picks up where this page leaves off: the four checks a dealer runs, which coins move fastest here, and which of yours to part with first.

Step Three: Do the Arithmetic

Gross weight multiplied by fineness, divided by a thousand, gives fine gold content in grams. Divide that by 31.1035 and you have it in troy ounces, which is the unit every price you will be quoted uses.

Take the coin most British households actually have. The Royal Mint publishes the Sovereign at 7.98 g with a fineness of 916.7. That works out at about 7.31 g of fine gold, or about 0.235 troy ounces. Not a quarter of an ounce. Four Sovereigns come to roughly 0.94 oz, so four will not match a one-ounce coin, and on a jar of twenty the shortfall against a quarter-ounce assumption is worth about one and a quarter Sovereigns.

The same sum works on anything once you know the two inputs. A 20 g eighteen carat bracelet holds 15 g of gold. A 20 g nine carat bracelet holds 7.5 g. They look similar on a scale and they are not similar at all.

What a Published Buy Rate Tells You, and What It Does Not

Most of the frustration in this process comes from not being able to check anything until you have committed to a conversation. That is why our sell gold, silver and Goldbacks page now publishes indicative buying rates per gram and per troy ounce, recalculated automatically from our own vaulted product pricing rather than quoted only on request. You can do the multiplication yourself, at your kitchen table, before you speak to anybody.

Two honest limits on that, because a published rate that is misunderstood is worse than none.

• It is a rate for investment grade bullion. It is derived from vaulted bullion pricing, so a hallmarked article at a lower fineness is a different calculation and will not reach it.
• It is an anchor, not a settlement. Form, condition, quantity and what verification your items need all move the final number. The rate tells you the order of magnitude honestly. The quote is the answer.

And the plainest limit of all, because it saves people a wasted parcel: Yard Mint buys bullion only. Coins and bars. We do not buy jewellery or scrap. Everything on this page still tells you what a hallmarked piece contains, and that figure is worth having before you talk to anybody, but the buyer for it will be a jeweller, a pawnbroker or a scrap refiner rather than us.

Used properly, though, it does the thing that matters: it lets you work out roughly where you stand before anyone has your property, and it gives you a figure to compare other offers against.

Why Your Figure Is a Ceiling

No buyer pays full metal value, and one who appears to is recovering it somewhere you are not looking. Four things live in the gap, and they are all real costs rather than a mark-up dressed up.

• Verification. Testing, weighing and recording take time and equipment, and the buyer carries the risk of being wrong.
• Carriage, both ways. Insured, tracked delivery costs money in each direction, including the direction where you decline the offer.
• Price risk. The buyer holds the metal until it resells, and the price moves in the meantime.
• Margin. The business has to make something, and a buyer who claims otherwise is not being straight with you.

How an offer is actually assembled, and where the widest and narrowest spreads sit in the UK market, is set out in selling gold and silver in the UK. If you are earlier in the process and still deciding what to own, our wider guide to gold investment in the UK and gold versus silver are the better starting points.

When Weight Is the Floor Rather Than the Value

Everything above tells you what your gold is worth as metal. For some items that is the whole story, and for a few it is badly wrong.

A scarce date, an early proof in its original box, a coin in exceptional condition or a piece by a named maker can be worth a multiple of its gold content, and that value disappears permanently the moment it goes into a melt. It cannot be recovered afterwards. If there is any chance an item is collectable, the metal figure is your floor and the right next step is a valuation rather than a weight.

The signals worth pausing on are unremarkable: original packaging or a certificate, a date or mint mark you cannot find elsewhere, a proof finish, obvious hand work, or simply an item that somebody in the family always said was special. Any one of them is a reason to ask before you post.

Gold in less familiar formats has its own logic. If what you hold is a Goldback, the arithmetic on this page does not apply in the same way and we cover it separately in how much is a Goldback worth and selling Goldbacks in the UK.

Seven Mistakes That Cost People Money

• Using the headline price as expected proceeds. It is a wholesale benchmark for large bars in London. Nobody is offering it to you for a chain.
• Weighing gross and calling it gold. Clasps, solder, mounts and stones all register on the scale and none of them is gold.
• Reading the carat word and ignoring the fineness. The three-figure mark is the legal statement and the one the sum uses.
• Treating a Sovereign as a quarter ounce. It is about 0.235 oz. The difference compounds across a holding.
• Assuming an unmarked item is fake. Gold under one gram is exempt from hallmarking, and plenty of genuine foreign work carries no UK mark.
• Scrapping something collectable. The only mistake here that cannot be undone.
• Posting before the terms are agreed. Establish in writing who pays return carriage, and how quickly items come back, if you decline the offer. Send insured and tracked, always.

What to Do Next, by What You Hold

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I work out what my gold is worth?

Weigh it in grams, find its fineness, and multiply the two together, then divide by a thousand. That gives fine gold content. Multiply that by the price per gram on the day for a metal value, and treat the result as a ceiling rather than an offer, because a buyer's costs come out of it.

Is the gold price the same as what I will be paid?

No. The published benchmark is set in US dollars per troy ounce for large bars delivered in London. Your figure has to be converted into pounds and grams, adjusted for purity, and then reduced by what it costs a buyer to verify, carry and resell your items.

What does 750 mean on my jewellery?

It is the fineness: 750 parts gold in every thousand, which is eighteen carat. The UK legal standards for gold are 375, 585, 750, 916.6, 990 and 999, and the three-figure mark is the statement the calculation uses.

How much gold is in a gold Sovereign?

The Royal Mint publishes the Sovereign at 7.98 g with a fineness of 916.7, which works out at about 7.31 g of fine gold, or roughly 0.235 troy ounces. It is a little less than a quarter of an ounce, and the gap adds up across a holding.

Do I need my gold hallmarked to sell it?

No. Hallmarking has exemption weights, and gold articles under one gram do not need a mark at all. An unmarked item simply has to be tested rather than taken on trust, which a buyer will do as a matter of routine.

Can I weigh my gold at home?

You can get close. Most kitchen scales read to the nearest gram, which is enough for a rough figure and not enough for a settlement, since on a single Sovereign that is an error of more than one part in eight. A calibrated scale reading to 0.01 g is what a buyer will use.

Does Yard Mint buy gold jewellery or scrap?

No. We buy bullion only, meaning coins and bars. The arithmetic on this page works just as well on a hallmarked piece, and it is worth doing before you approach anyone, but the buyer will be a jeweller, a pawnbroker or a scrap refiner rather than us.

Should I sell a collectable coin for its gold value?

Usually not, and it is worth finding out first. Scarce dates, proofs, exceptional condition and original packaging can all carry value well above metal content, and melting removes that permanently. If there is any doubt, treat the metal figure as a floor and ask for a collector view.