Note: This chart should be used as a basis only and may not reflect the actual value of your gold jewelry. The current gold price and karat weight of your jewelry only tells how much gold is actually in your jewelry, and how much that gold is worth. When buying or selling gold jewelry, other factors such as the maker, quality, and detail of the jewelry should also be taken into account as well as any stones the jewelry may contain.

In the tables below you will find the most popular gold coins along with their current melt values (updated in real time). We've included the American Eagle gold coins, Chinese Panda, Canadian Maple Leaf, South African Krugerrand, and even the Australian Kangaroo, and Austrian Philharmonic gold coins. Feel free to contact us if you want to see the melt values of any other gold coins here.

Please keep in mind this information is for reference and only calculates the current price of the physical gold in each coin. Due to the costs involved in minting coins and continued investor demand, these coins will typically sell for more than the values listed here. Think of this as a basis (or starting point) when calculating the current value of gold coins.

American Buffalo Gold Coins Purity: 99.99% Weight: 1 ounce The American Buffalo gold coin is America's response to investors demanding coins with a higher purity than the standard 22 karat gold Eagle.
Coin Weight	Denomination	Current Melt Value
1 Ounce	$50	$0.00

American Eagle Gold Coins Purity: 91.6% (22 Karat Gold) Weight: From 1/10th ounce up to 1 ounce The American Gold Eagle coin is one of the most popular and highly collected gold bullion coins of all time...
Coin Weight	Denomination	Current Melt Value
1/10 Ounce	$5	$0.00
1/4 Ounce	$10	$0.00
1/2 Ounce	$25	$0.00
1 Ounce	$50	$0.00

Australian Kangaroo Gold Coins Purity: 99.9% Weight: 1 ounce The Australian Kangaroo gold coins are designed and minted by the famous Australian Perth Mint and feature a redesigned reverse each year. They've offered a new design every year since 1990, which is when the Kangaroo coins first started. Not as many of these coins are minted annually as coins from other government owned mints, so they are partly made to encourage gold ownership and also as a numismatic (collectible) coin. These coins are legal tender from the Perth Mint in Australia. They contain at least .999 pure gold and usually come in a plastic holder from the Perth Mint.
Coin Weight	Denomination	Current Melt Value
1/10 Ounce	--	$0.00
1 Ounce	$100	$0.00

Austrian Philharmonic Gold Coins Purity: 99.9% Weight: 1/10th of an ounce or 1 ounce These coins are a beautiful example of gold bullion that is recognized all over the world. They are produced by the Austrian Mint in Vienna and were the best selling of all gold coins for several years in the early 1990's. It's not until recently that they have become a desired gold coin in the United States, although their popularity is growning fast. Older Austrian Philharmonic coins have a face value of 2000 schillings while the newer coins are marked 100 Euros. They contain .9999 pure gold.
Coin Weight	Denomination	Current Melt Value
1 Ounce	2000 Schillings/100 Euros	$0.00

Canadian Maple Leaf Gold Coins Purity: 99.99% Weight: From 1/20th of an ounce up to 1 ounce Canadian Maple Leaf gold coins are minted from gold mined in Canada and are highly collectible due to being the most pure gold coin available...
Coin Weight	Denomination	Current Melt Value
1/20 Ounce	--	$0.00
1/10 Ounce	$5	$0.00
1/4 Ounce	--	$0.00
1/2 Ounce	$20	$0.00
1 Ounce	$50	$0.00

Chinese Panda Gold Coins Purity: 99.9% Weight: From 1/20th of an ounce up to 1 ounce The design of the Chinese Panda gold coins has changed every year (except for 2001-2002), which has made them highly collectible among investors and coin collectors alike
Coin Weight	Denomination	Current Melt Value
1/20 Ounce	--	$0.00
1/10 Ounce	--	$0.00
1/4 Ounce	--	$0.00
1/2 Ounce	--	$0.00
1 Ounce	--	$0.00

South African Krugerrand Gold Coins Purity: 91.6% (22 Karat Gold) Weight: From 1/10th ounce up to 1 ounce This is one of the most popular and most recognized gold bullion coin.
Coin Weight	Denomination	Current Melt Value
1/10 Ounce	--	$0.00
1/4 Ounce	--	$0.00
1/2 Ounce	--	$0.00
1 Ounce	--	$0.00

Thanks for checking us out... Remember, this site is 100% free and we intend to keep it that way. Stay tuned as we add more gold related tools and info including more information about gold jewelry and a new section with melt values for popular US gold coins (like the St. Gaudens Double Eagle).

The short answer is that carat (with a “c”) is a measurement of weight and is usually associated with precious gemstones while karat (with a “k”) is a measure of the purity of gold, usually associated with gold jewelry. So now that you know, here's a more in-depth answer...

Carats
As mentioned above, Carat is a measurement of weight (and not a measurement of size, as one might have assumed). Although the size of an object contributes to it's weight, carats refer only to the weight of something regardless of size.
Carats are used in conjunction with precious gemstones (like sapphires, rubies, etc) and are most commonly associated with diamonds. If you're curious, 1 carat is equal to 0.2 grams... which means that saying you have a 5 carat ruby is the same as saying you have a 1 gram ruby.
So the next time you see a 1 carat diamond, remember that's referring to the weight of the diamond, not the size.

Karats
Karat describes the purity of gold and is most commonly used when describing gold jewelry. Because pure gold is very soft and not very durable (not to mention expensive!), jewelry made of pure gold isn't very practical. Instead, pure gold is mixed with other metals like copper, silver, and/or zinc to form a gold alloy that makes for a stronger, more durable piece of jewelry (and it is more affordable as well). So “karats” simply tells you how much pure gold was mixed with other metals to form the specific piece of jewelry in question.
Karats are defined on a number scale from 8 to 24 with 24 karat meaning pure gold and anything less meaning less than pure gold. In the United States, 10 karat is the lowest purity gold that jewelers can make and still call their jewelry “solid” gold. In Europe and other parts of the world, it's possible to find 8 or 9 karat gold.
To find out how much gold is in a piece of jewelry, simply take the number of karats and divide it by 24. This means that 12 karat gold contains 50% pure gold (it is ½ gold... 12 divided by 24). And 18 karat gold contains 75% pure gold (18 divided by 24) while 10 karat gold contains 41.67% pure gold (10 divided by 24). Remember... the higher the number of karats, the more pure gold is contained in the jewelry.

So there you have it... the differences between carats and karats. Carats means weight and karats means gold purity. Thanks for reading, I hope you found this article informative.

What do you do when you need to know how much a piece of gold jewelry weighs but don't have a scale to find the weight? Judging the weight of gold is a bit of an art form and can take time and practice to master. But once you've got it down, it is an invaluable tool when both buying and selling gold jewelry.

There are two main reasons why it's a good idea to quickly and accurately estimate the weight of gold jewelry.

The first reason is when you're selling gold jewelry and don't have a scale to verify the weight... You want to make sure whoever you're selling to isn't trying to line their pockets by pulling a fast one on you. So if you can estimate the weight of your gold jewelry, you can just as easily estimate the value (and thus, a price range to expect when selling your gold). This is one reason GoldJewelryPrices.com was set up in the first place. Our free online calculator allows you to quickly and easily calculate the current market value of your gold jewelry.

The second reason to learn how to accurately estimate the weight of gold jewelry is when you're buying gold. Being able to estimate the weight allows you to determine the market value of the physical gold contained in the jewelry. Keep in mind that other factors are involved (such as detail and workmanship) but knowing the gold value of your jewelry is a good starting point.

So... What does a gram of gold jewelry look like?

Since gold is such a heavy metal, it may be surprising how little of it is needed to equal a gram in weight. On the other hand, gold is malleable as well, which means it is easy to bend, stretch, and form the gold. This can make for extremely thin pieces of gold jewelry that don't weigh as much as you might think at first glance. But again, the thicker pieces of gold jewelry can weigh much more as you might expect.

To put this into perspective, I've taken several pictures of different pieces of gold jewelry to help give you an idea of how much a piece of gold might weigh. This is the way to calculate the weight of gold jewelry without a scale... You've pretty much got to guess! Of course, the guessing gets easier and your guesses will be more accurate with time and practice (and looking at how much lots of different gold pieces weigh).

Besides the thickness of the gold, another thing to keep in mind here is the purity of the gold jewelry. Pure gold is much more dense and heavier than say, 14k gold, since gold is heavier than the alloys used to “dilute” pure gold into 14k gold. To keep it simple, remember – The higher the karat weight (purity), the less gold it will take to equal 1 gram. Example: 1 gram of 22k gold will be smaller in size than 1 gram of 10k gold.

Enough mumbo jumbo, let's get on to the pictures of gold jewelry...

Take a look at the two 10k gold pendants in the picture below. Which one do you think weighs more? (To get an idea of scale, each piece of jewelry is approximately 1/2” wide)

Did you say the gold graduation pendant is heavier than the angel pendant? If you did, congrats... You've got a keen eye for gold! While the gold angel pendant may look bigger than the graduation pendant, the graduation pendant is thicker and actually weighs more. This is a good example of how gold can be formed to create thin jewelry that appears to contain more gold than it actually does.

Let's take a look at what each of these gold pendants weigh...

Together, they weigh just over 1 gram, with the graduation pendant weighing about 0.2 grams more than the angel pendant.

Let's look at another example. This time we'll use a 14k gold bracelet. The bracelet in the picture below is approximately 7” long and 1/16” wide. Can you guess how much it weighs?

While this bracelet is very thin and dainty, it may surprise you to find that it weighs just over 1 gram. Yup! Someone with enough time and the proper equipment could melt this bracelet down and make both the graduation and angel pendant pictured above. (They'd probably end up with a small amount of gold left over as well, since turning 14k gold into 10k gold would mean less gold metal and more alloy metals)

Here's a picture of the gold bracelet's weight:

And finally, we've got one last example showing what a gram of (nearly) pure gold looks like...

These are (almost laughably) tiny gold nuggets, probably between 22k-24k pure gold. It's amazing how it doesn't take much to equal a gram of gold.

So now you've hopefully got an idea of what to look for when estimating the weight of your gold jewelry. I used a target weight of 1 gram in the pictures since that is a good unit to mentally increase when estimating weights of larger pieces of gold.

I know this article doesn't make you an expert, but hopefully it gives you a good starting point and basis when determining the weight (and value!) of your gold jewelry. Thanks for reading!