Is Gold Jewelry Worth Buying? How Gold Is Priced and Why It Holds Value
Gold is currently trading near all-time highs — around $4,800 per ounce as of early 2026, up over 55% from just a year ago. Whether you follow financial markets or not, that number matters if you're buying jewelry, because solid gold jewelry is priced directly against the live spot price of gold. The piece on your wrist has real, measurable metal value that moves with the market.
This post explains how that works, what it means when you're buying gold jewelry, why solid gold holds value while plated jewelry doesn't, and how a Miami Cuban link chain — or a piece of pure gold grain — fits into the broader picture of owning real gold.
How Gold Jewelry Is Priced
Unlike most consumer goods, solid gold jewelry isn't priced based on brand, trend, or retail markup alone. At its foundation, every solid gold piece has a melt value — the value of the raw gold it contains, calculated by weight against the current spot price.
The formula is straightforward:
Melt value = weight in grams × gold purity × current spot price per gram
For example, at today's gold price of roughly $155 per gram (Gold prices change daily — check the current spot price at JM Bullion or kitco for the latest figure.):
- A 14kt gold chain weighing 50 grams contains 58.3% gold = 29.15 grams of pure gold
- Melt value: 29.15 × $155 = approximately $4,518
That's the melt value of the piece — what the raw gold inside it is worth. It's an important number, but a caveat worth stating clearly: no jewelry store or pawn shop will buy your gold at 100% of melt value. That's not how the resale market works.
In practice, expect to receive 70–90% of melt value when selling gold jewelry. If someone offers you over 90%, that's genuinely good — take it. Under 70% is low, though if you're not in a major metro area like Florida or another gold-heavy market, 60–80% is realistic at many local shops. The reason is straightforward: jewelers can typically purchase pure 24kt gold directly from refineries for around 105% of melt price, so there's no incentive for them to pay you full melt for secondhand pieces when they can source raw gold more efficiently elsewhere.
What melt value gives you is a floor for understanding what you own — and a benchmark for spotting a bad deal. If a pawn shop is offering you 40% of melt, you know to walk away. A well-made solid gold piece purchased at a fair price will always have real, recoverable value even in a resale scenario.
This is fundamentally different from almost every other consumer purchase you'll ever make. A $500 piece of clothing is worth nothing in five years. A $500 solid gold chain contains real precious metal that retains value as long as gold does — and gold has been a reliable store of value for thousands of years.
What Is 925 Silver Worth? (And How It Compares to Gold)
One of the most common questions we get: how much is 925 sterling silver actually worth?
Sterling silver (925) is 92.5% pure silver. Silver also trades at a live spot price — currently around $79 per ounce or roughly $2.55 per gram as of April 2026. That's significantly less than gold per gram, which is why a silver Cuban link chain costs a fraction of the gold equivalent.
A 7mm sterling silver chain weighing 90 grams contains:
- 90 × 0.925 = 83.25 grams of pure silver
- At $2.55/gram = approximately $212 in silver melt value
The chain sells for $500–$600 because at that price point, the majority of what you're paying for is craftsmanship and labor — not metal. Silver is so inexpensive per gram that the raw material cost is a small fraction of the retail price. That's not a criticism of silver jewelry — the labor to make a well-constructed silver chain is real and worth paying for. But it does mean silver jewelry has minimal resale value compared to gold. If you bring that same silver chain to a pawn shop in five years, don't expect much — you're not getting back the labor cost, and the silver melt value alone won't add up to much.
Silver jewelry is excellent for people who want the look and feel of quality metal at an accessible price. It's not a store of value the way gold is.
Why Solid Gold Holds Value — And Plated Jewelry Doesn't
Here's the critical distinction that most jewelry marketing blurs deliberately: gold plated jewelry has virtually no gold value, regardless of what it looks like.
A "triple 18kt gold plated" chain contains a layer of gold measured in fractions of a micron. The base metal — usually stainless steel or brass — has no precious metal value. When you buy plated jewelry, you're buying the appearance of gold, not gold itself. The moment that plating wears off (and it will), you're left with a stainless steel chain worth a few dollars.
Solid gold is the opposite. A 10kt gold chain weighing 40 grams contains 16.7 grams of pure gold. At today's prices, that's over $2,500 in raw metal value — value that exists regardless of whether the chain is in style, in fashion, or in good condition. You can melt it down and sell it tomorrow for spot price.
This is why, when customers ask us whether they should buy silver or gold, our answer often depends on what they're trying to accomplish. If you want the look at the lowest price — silver is excellent. If you want a piece that functions as a store of value over time — only solid gold does that.
Gold in 2025–2026: Why the Timing Matters
Gold set dozens of new all-time highs throughout 2025, surpassing $4,000 per ounce for the first time in October and reaching nearly $5,600 in January 2026 before settling around the current $4,800 range. The drivers — inflation, economic uncertainty, dollar weakness, and strong central bank buying — have not gone away. J.P. Morgan's current forecast puts gold at $5,000+ per ounce by late 2026 with $6,000 possible longer term.
What this means practically: the solid gold pieces you buy today contain metal that has appreciated dramatically over the past few years and, according to most market forecasts, is positioned to continue doing so. A 14kt gold Cuban link chain purchased today at current gold prices has the same intrinsic value relationship it always has — it's real gold, priced honestly by weight.
We're not financial advisors and we're not telling you to buy gold jewelry instead of other investments. What we will say is that a solid gold piece purchased at a fair, weight-based price is a fundamentally different purchase than most consumer goods — it's one of the few things you can buy, wear daily for years, and still sell for meaningful value when you're done with it.
The Miami Cuban Link as a Store of Value
A handmade Miami Cuban link chain is one of the most gold-efficient pieces of jewelry you can buy, and that's not an accident.
The design is dense by nature — tightly interlocked, compressed links with maximum metal per inch. A well-made Cuban link has minimal hollow space, which means the gram weight is high relative to the visual size of the piece. You're getting a lot of gold for what you see, not air and thin walls dressed up with a thick chain profile.
This is the opposite of hollow chains, which are designed to look like heavy gold pieces while containing a fraction of the metal. A hollow 12mm chain might weigh 30 grams. A solid handmade 12mm chain of the same length might weigh 150 grams or more. The difference in melt value at today's gold prices is thousands of dollars.
Because of their dense, heavy construction and relatively straightforward design, handmade Miami Cuban link chains have some of the lowest labor costs per gram of any gold jewelry — which means more of what you pay goes toward actual metal rather than craftsmanship overhead. A pendant, ring, or filigree piece requires far more skilled labor per gram of gold used. A Cuban link is labor-intensive to make, but the high gram weight spreads that labor cost across a lot of metal.
That said — and this is worth saying plainly — you are always paying labor on any piece of jewelry, including Cuban links. Labor is never free. At Liry's, we make our chains in-house, which means our labor cost is our own. A retailer who buys Cuban links from us or another wholesaler will mark them up further — possibly less than they would a lighter piece given the weight, but still a markup. The point is not that Cuban links cost nothing above melt. The point is that relative to other jewelry categories, they give you the most gold for your dollar.
At Liry's, we publish the estimated weight of every chain configuration on the product page before you buy. You know exactly how many grams of gold you're purchasing. That transparency is deliberate — we want you to be able to verify the value yourself, not take our word for it. We also use an XRF (X-ray fluorescence) machine to verify the exact karat of our gold. When we say 14kt, it's 14kt.
Gold Grain / Gold Shot: Pure Gold You Can Hold
For customers who want maximum gold purity without the jewelry component, we also carry 9999 fine gold grain — small pellets of 99.99% pure gold sold by weight at a transparent price directly tied to the spot market.
Gold grain is how jewelers and manufacturers buy raw gold. It's the purest form of physical gold available — no alloy, no craftsmanship. It's as close to spot price as you can get in physical form.
One thing to be clear about: there is still a markup on gold grain. We are a business, not a refinery, and our pricing reflects a fair margin above spot. What you won't find is the 3–8x markup common on finished jewelry — you're paying for the gold itself plus a reasonable premium, not for branding or craftsmanship. If you're comparing our gold grain price to the raw spot price and finding a gap, that's normal and expected. If you're comparing it to finished jewelry and finding it's significantly closer to spot — that's the point.
We sell gold grain by the gram, priced transparently. If you're interested in physical gold as a store of value and want something closer to a pure investment vehicle than a piece of jewelry, this is worth looking at.
What Makes a Gold Jewelry Purchase Smart vs. Not
Not all gold jewelry is a good value purchase, even if it's real gold. A few things that matter:
Pay close to melt value. Major retail jewelry stores commonly mark up gold pieces 3–5x above melt value. Some luxury brands go 8–10x. At those prices, the piece would need gold to double or triple before you broke even on resale. We price our pieces at a fair markup above melt — enough to cover the craftsmanship and our costs, not enough to require gold to hit $10,000 for you to get your money back.
Verify the weight and karat before you buy. Any reputable jeweler should publish the weight and karat of what you're purchasing. If that information is hard to find or not available, that's a red flag.
Solid construction holds value better. Hollow links, thin walls, and lightweight construction all reduce the gram weight — and therefore the metal value — of a piece relative to its visual size. A solid, well-constructed piece retains its metal value regardless of wear.
Buy from someone with a verifiable history. We've been in business since 1989 in the same Tampa location. Our karat guarantee is lifetime. If a piece ever tests differently than what you paid for, we make it right. That kind of accountability matters when you're making a purchase with real precious metal value.
Shop Miami Cuban Link Chains → Shop Gold Grain / Gold Shot → Shop All Gold Chains →