When determining a price for precious metals, one of the first things that will have to be determined will be how pure or fine that metal is. When precious metal is used in jewelry and other applications, it is often combined with other metals to either keep the cost down or to achieve a certain look. The more pure the metal, the more it will be worth. Below is some information and charts that will help you to determine the purity of popular precious metals
Gold purity (and purity of other precious metals like silver, platinum, and palladium) is expressed in fineness and refers to the gold content in 1,000 parts of a bar. For example, a bar designated with 995 fineness is 995 parts gold and 5 parts of other metals, impurities, etc. The purest type of gold in the market is 999.9, also known as four nines or 24 karat (k) gold. Nines are an informal, yet common method of grading the purity of very fine precious metals. A metal is said to be one nine or one nine fine if it is 900 fine, or 90% pure.
While the United States commonly expresses gold purity in karat weight, in Europe, gold jewelry is marked with three numbers (fineness) corresponding to the percentage of gold (silver, platinum, or palladium).
Here are some handy charts to match up karat weight with fineness.
Gold
Silver
Platinum
Palladium
Manhattan Gold and Silver has assay machines on site that allow us to test your lot of precious metals and then give a same-day payout by either check or wire transfer. With prices set daily to the London Gold & Silver Fix and the LPPM you are sure to get a fair payout for your lot. Call us today for a price quote, 212-398-1554.
