Finding the Market Value of Gold Filled Items With the value of gold reaching historically high prices and the demand for gold continuing to soar, even gold filled items have a reasonably worthwhile market value! Luckily for you, finding the market value of gold filled items is actually quite simple. All you need to know is a few simple mathematics equations and you can find the exact dollar value of these items. Gold filled items are composed of a single layer of gold (typically a gold alloy, i.e. 12k, 14k, 18k, etc.) which is then bonded to a base metal (typically brass) using heat and pressure. The amount of pure gold contained in the layer of gold which is bonded to the base metal is measured in two ways. To find the value of your gold filled items you will need to identify these two pieces of information. The first is the karat rating of gold which the layer is made up of. The second is the thickness of the layer which is bonded to the base metal. The thickness of the layer is actually measured by its weight in relation to the total weight of the item. The layer of gold's weight is expressed in the form of a fraction (i.e. 1/10, 1/20, 1/40, etc.). Both of these pieces of information should be found hallmarked or "stamped" somewhere on the item. For example, you should find a hallmark that looks something like "1/20 14k GF" somewhere on your item. Once you have found and identified this hallmark, all you will need to do now to find your items gold market value is simply find the items total weight (in grams) using a scale, and then complete a simple mathematics calculation. Let's say for example that you have a gold filled pendant that is hallmarked "1/20 14k GF" and after weighing your pendant you find that it had a total weight of 4.5 grams. To find the total amount of pure gold that your pendant contains, first divide the karat value of the item by 24 which will give you the percent of pure gold contained in that specific karat value, which in this example is 14 and would equal .58333 (14/24= .58333). Then multiply that number by the percentage of gold filled weight contained in the item (referring to the fraction portion of the hallmark which in this example would be 1/20 which equals 0.05). That will give you the total amount of pure gold contained in your gold filled item per gram which, in this example would be 0.0291665 (0.58333 x 0.05 = 0.0291665). Now all you have to do is multiply this number by the total weight of the item which will then give you the total amount of pure gold contained in
Finding the Market Value of Gold Filled Items the item! In this example, the pendant would contain exactly 0.1312492 grams of pure gold (0.0291665 x 4.5 = 0.1312492). Now, to find the current market value for the gold content of your item, all you have to do is take the current market price of gold per gram and multiply it by how many grams of gold your item contains. In this example, the pendant contains 0.1312492 grams of gold and we'll say that the current market value of gold per gram is $54.66 ($1,700 per ounce / 31.1 = $54.66 per gram) which would be $54.66 x 0.1312492 = $7.17. So the total gold value of the pendant would be $7.17. That is the "long form" of calculating the value of gold filled items which enables you to find the exact amount of pure gold that your items contain. If you simply want to find the value of your items quickly you can use a gold calculator (which can be found on many websites online). For the example above, all you would have to do is enter in the total weight of the pendant (4.5 grams) into the calculator (under its 14k gold value column) which would give you a value of $143.47. Then simply multiply that number by 0.05 (1/20 which is the total weight of gold fill contained in the pendant) which equals $7.17 ($143.47 x 0.05 = $7.17). As you can see, this is a much quicker and easier way to find the value of your gold filled items, but will not show you the actual amount of pure gold that your items contain. More information about Value of gold