Do you own gold jewelry and want to know how much gold it contains? Two measures are used by jewelers to determine this — karat and pennyweight. If you have a piece of jewelry and would like to determine the pennyweight of gold, follow this guide.
Defining The Pennyweight Of Gold And Karats
It’s not surprising that many types of jewelry contain gold. This precious metal is valuable and aesthetically pleasing to the eye. However, gold is also a soft metal. It’s not as durable as other metals when used by itself. To remedy this, jewelers combine gold with other metals when creating jewelry. Jewelers understand that you want to know the proportion of gold and use karats to signify this amount. If jewelry has 24 karats of gold, no other metals are present. Typically, most jewelry will contain between 10 to 18 karats of gold. The other measurement used to measure gold is pennyweight. One pennyweight is equivalent to 1/20 of an ounce.
Find The Amount Of Karats
When gold jewelry is created, a jeweler will mark it with the number of karats of gold that it contains. This jeweler’s mark is often hidden in an inconspicuous place. To locate the amount of karats in your piece of gold jewelry, you will need to look in every nook and crevice. If you don’t spot the unique maker’s mark on your first try, you may need to use a magnifying glass.
Utilize A Digital Jewelry Scale
After you have found out how many karats of gold your jewelry contains, you need to weigh your jewelry. To ensure that your reading is accurate, it’s best to use a scale that is made for weighing smaller units. You can find this type of scale at a hobby store, craft shop or online. When you conduct your search, look for a digital jewelry scale that has the ability to weigh gemstones, lapidary materials and jewelry. It should have the ability to weigh items with a weight of 0.01 grams or more.
Figure The Pennyweight
When you figure the pennyweight, you need to divide the number of karats by 24. As an example, if your jewelry ways 18 karats, you would divide 18 by 24 (18/24 = .75) to come up with .75. You now know that your jewelry contain 75 percent gold. Next, multiply that number by the weight of your jewelry that you’ve determined by using a digital jewelry scale. If you’re piece of jewelry weighs 0.6 ounces, this would give you a (0.6 x .75 = 0.45) a weight of gold in ounces that is equal to 0.45. Multiply that number by 20 (0.45 x 20 = 9) to determine the pennyweight of 9.
Calculating Gold Value
If you’d like to calculate the gold value as well, check the current price of spot gold in ounces and divide that by 20. This gives you the current pennyweight value of gold. If gold is at $1200 per ounce, a pennyweight of gold would be equivalent to ($1200/20 = $60) $60. At $60 per pennyweight, the piece of jewelry you have in the previous example would have a gold value ($60 x 9 = $540) equal to $540.
Jim Treebold is a North Carolina based writer. He lives by the mantra of “Learn 1 new thing each day”! Jim loves to write, read, pedal around on his electric bike and dream of big things. Drop him a line if you like his writing, he loves hearing from his readers!