By Rocco Clayfield, trading as GoldPaid; the business incorporated as GOLDPAID LTD (company 17382540) on 5 August 2026 · Published · updated
Got the piece in front of you? Get a figure for it
Send a photo of the piece and any stamp on WhatsApp. We will reply with a rough estimate for it. No obligation, and nothing needs posting.
No WhatsApp? Call 07944 014111, 8am to 9pm.
Not sure what the mark says? Use the hallmark lookup. Final offers depend on inspection, item weight, purity, hallmarks, stones, non-gold components, condition and the live precious-metal market.
Why no honest buyer fixes a single £-per-gram figure
Gold is a globally traded commodity. The London Bullion Market Association publishes a reference price twice a day, set by electronic auction administered by ICE Benchmark Administration, and the live spot market moves continuously in between. A buyer who quotes the same £-per-gram figure on Monday morning and Friday afternoon is either ignoring the market or hedging against having to honour their own promise.
The offer is set against the live market at the moment of valuation, and nowhere else. The maths below shows exactly how that works.
Step 1: the LBMA spot price
The LBMA Gold Price benchmark is set twice each London business day, at 10:30 and 15:00, by electronic auction administered by ICE Benchmark Administration. It is published in US dollars per troy ounce. The old London Gold Fixing it replaced ended in March 2015. UK buyers convert this to GBP using the live exchange rate, or use the live spot price quoted directly in GBP by a market data feed.
For the rest of the calculation, the input is "live GBP per troy ounce of pure gold", which you can read from any market data feed.
Step 2: convert ounce to gram
This is the price per gram of 999 fine gold at the wholesale market. It is not the scrap offer. It is the input the rest of the calculation builds on.
Step 3: apply the carat decimal
Multiply the price per gram of pure gold by the carat decimal of the alloy you are valuing. 9ct (0.375), 14ct (0.585), 18ct (0.750), 22ct (0.916), 24ct (0.999).
A 1 gram 18ct ring contains 0.75 grams of pure gold. A 1 gram 9ct ring contains 0.375 grams. The recovered gold value scales linearly with the carat decimal.
Step 4: refining margin and dealer margin
The figure from step 3 is the raw value of the gold content. A buyer’s offer sits below it, because refining and the buyer’s operating cost and profit come out of the gap. GoldPaid builds those into the figure it offers, and the written offer shows the weight and purity behind it.
Some buyers set a wider margin on 9ct than on 18ct or 22ct, because there is more base metal to refine out per gram of gold, and a narrower one on bullion-grade 999. GoldPaid applies the same approach to every carat, so no carat is quietly singled out for a wider cut.
Worked steps you can do yourself
- Find the gold price in GBP per troy ounce: the LBMA Gold Price (lbma.org.uk), or a live spot price from a market data feed such as kitco.com.
- Divide by 31.1035 to get GBP per gram of pure gold.
- Multiply by the carat decimal (0.375 for 9ct, 0.585 for 14ct, 0.750 for 18ct, 0.916 for 22ct, 0.999 for 24ct) to get the GBP per gram of raw alloy.
- Allow for refining and the buyer’s costs, which come out of that raw figure, for an indicative scrap value per gram.
- Multiply by the weight of your piece in grams to get an indicative recovered value.
Why your final offer can differ from the back-of-envelope figure
A back-of-envelope calculation gives you a sensible indicative figure but it does not account for the inspection. Stones add weight to the piece that is not gold. Solder joints, clasps, watch parts, magnets, springs and other non-gold components are excluded. Hallmarks may not match the actual alloy. The XRF test confirms the real metal content, and the offer is built on the test, not on the stamped mark.
Final offers depend on inspection, item weight, purity, hallmarks, stones, non-gold components, condition and the live precious-metal market.
Why we do not publish a fixed £-per-gram on this guide
Anyone publishing a fixed £-per-gram on a guide is either dating that guide minute by minute or quietly out of date. The maths is the durable answer: it works the same way every day, at any market level. The live figure changes constantly, so the honest way to price a specific item is to apply that market to the tested weight and purity at the moment of valuation, which is what a written offer does. How a tested weight and purity become a written offer works the method through step by step.
Check the sum against the offer
Gold pricing is not a black box. The inputs are public, the maths is one division and two multiplications, and the margins are honest figures a buyer can explain. If you do the back-of-envelope sum and post a parcel, you will arrive at a written valuation that lines up with what you calculated, plus or minus the inspection details. That is what an honest buyer commits to, and that is the test for any UK gold buyer worth posting to.