Gold Price Per Pennyweight (DWT) Today
Gold value per pennyweight by karat
| Karat | Purity | Value per pennyweight |
|---|---|---|
| 24K | 99.90% | $206.06 |
| 22K | 91.67% | $189.09 |
| 21K | 87.50% | $180.49 |
| 20K | 83.33% | $171.88 |
| 18K | 75.00% | $154.70 |
| 16K | 66.67% | $137.52 |
| 14K | 58.33% | $120.32 |
| 12K | 50.00% | $103.13 |
| 10K | 41.67% | $85.95 |
| 9K | 37.50% | $77.35 |
The unit US gold buyers actually quote in
A pennyweight - abbreviated DWT - is 1.55517384 grams, or one twentieth of a troy ounce. It is largely obsolete everywhere except the American jewellery trade, where a great many buyers still quote at the counter in pennyweights.
This is worth understanding before you walk in, because a price quoted per pennyweight is roughly 1.56 times the same price per gram. A counter offering "$52 a pennyweight" and one offering "$33 a gram" are making almost identical offers, and the pennyweight figure sounds better only because the unit is bigger.
How to check a pennyweight offer
Ask for the offer per gram as well, or divide the pennyweight price by 1.555 yourself. If a buyer will not restate their price in grams, that is information about the buyer. The arithmetic is not the hard part of selling gold - knowing which number you are being shown is.
Questions people ask
- Why do gold buyers quote in pennyweights?
- It is the traditional unit of the American jewellery trade. One pennyweight is 1.55517384 grams, so a pennyweight price is about 1.56 times the gram price for the same gold - $206.27 per DWT against $132.63 per gram right now. The offer is not better, the unit is just bigger.
- How much is one pennyweight of gold worth today?
- One pennyweight of gold is worth $206.27 at the current spot price of $4,125.39 per troy ounce. Spot is quoted for 100% fine gold, so 24K jewellery at 99.9% comes out fractionally lower. Either way it is the metal value only, before any dealer margin.
- How much is 14K gold worth per pennyweight?
- 14K gold is 58.33% pure, so one pennyweight is worth $120.32 right now. 18K works out to $154.70 and 24K to $206.06. Multiply the pure-gold price by the karat fraction and you get the same answer.
- How do you convert the gold price to a pennyweight?
- Divide the price per troy ounce by 31.1034768 to get the price per gram, then multiply by the grams in your unit. One pennyweight is 1.555174 grams, so 4,125.39 / 31.1034768 x 1.555174 = $206.27.
- Will a gold buyer pay me this pennyweight price?
- No. This is the melt value of the metal at spot. Every buyer deducts refining costs, overheads and a margin, so the offer is a percentage of this number rather than the number itself. Treat it as the ceiling.
- Is the gold price up or down today?
- Gold is up $15.45 (0.38%) against the price 24 hours ago of $4,109.94 per troy ounce.
- What is the highest and lowest gold has traded today?
- Today's range is $4,100.77 to $4,143.14 per troy ounce, measured across 96 readings recorded on this site at 15-minute intervals. Over the past week the range is $4,072.64 to $4,227.11.
- Is this the spot price or the futures price?
- Spot. It is the price for immediate settlement of one troy ounce, quoted as XAU/USD. Many pages that rank for "gold price today" quote the futures contract instead, which trades at a different level - often tens of dollars apart - and rarely say which one they are showing.
- How often does this price update?
- The live figure refreshes continuously from the market feed. A snapshot is written to our own database every 15 minutes, and 55.3 days of that record now exists, which is what the chart and the daily change are measured against.