Don’t rely on the buyer to tell you how much your gold is worth, that’s a ripe setup for getting a bad deal. Instead, know the melt value of your gold before you go into negotiations. To make that easier, GoldCalc is a two-step tool that lets you do exactly what its name sounds like.

Just enter in the weight of your gold (you’ll need a scale), and the purity, and press the button. The calculator spits out the melt value, which the value of the raw gold in the piece when melted down and extracted. The tool is connected to up-to-the minute gold prices so you’ll know how much your gold is worth right at the moment.

But f you trust your own math better or don’t happen to have internet access, here’s how you can figure the value of your gold by hand (you’ll still need to know the day’s spot price for gold, though).

GoldCalc

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