Is this gold jewelry worth the price?

Every price on a jewelry ticket is three numbers added together. The first is the gold itself, which is not negotiable and not a matter of opinion: it is the weight of the piece, multiplied by its purity, multiplied by today's gold price. The second is the making charge — what the shop bills for turning that gold into a ring or a chain. The third is whatever tax the country applies, which in some markets falls on the whole sale and in others only on the workmanship.

Only the first of those three is fixed. Two shops in the same street, quoting the same weight of the same karat on the same day, are working from an identical gold value — so any difference between their prices is making charge, margin and tax. That is why comparing tickets tells you very little and comparing making charges tells you almost everything.

The checker works in both directions. Given a price, it removes the tax and the gold value and shows you what is left, which is the making charge you are being asked to pay. Given no price, it shows what the piece would cost at a making charge in the range shops in your market typically quote.

Karat is parts of pure gold out of twenty-four. 22K is 22 parts gold and 2 parts other metal, so 91.7% of its weight is gold; 21K is 87.5%; 18K is 75%. The rest is alloy — usually copper, silver or zinc — added because pure gold is too soft to hold a setting or survive daily wear.

Different markets settled on different standards, and the piece in your hand reflects where it was made rather than what it is worth. 21K dominates the Gulf, 22K is the norm across India and much of South Asia, and 14K and 18K are far more common in Türkiye and Europe. None is better than another; they simply contain different amounts of gold, which is why weight alone never tells you what a piece is worth.

The number stamped on a piece is usually the millesimal fineness rather than the karat — 916 for 22K, 875 for 21K, 750 for 18K. If a piece carries no stamp at all, that is worth asking about before anything else on this page matters.

A jewelry piece has two weights and mixing them up is the most expensive mistake a buyer makes. The gross weight is what the shop's scale reads — gold plus alloy, the whole object. The pure gold content is the fraction of that which is actually gold: gross weight multiplied by the karat over 24.

You pay for gold on the pure content. You pay for workmanship on the gross weight, because the jeweler worked the whole piece, alloy included — which is why a shop quoting labour "per gram" means per gram of the piece, not per gram of gold in it. An 18.4 gram 21K piece contains 16.1 grams of gold, and both figures appear in every result here, each labelled with which one it is.

Markets also weigh gold in units other than grams. A tola is 11.664 grams and is still quoted across South Asia and the Gulf; a troy ounce is 31.103 grams. The checker converts whichever unit you enter before anything else happens, so a tola price and a gram price can be compared directly.

The making charge — ujrah in the Gulf, işçilik in Türkiye, making or wastage charges in South Asia — covers design, labour, the gold lost in manufacturing, and the shop's margin. It is the only part of the price a shop genuinely controls, and it is the part worth asking about.

It is quoted three different ways and shops rarely tell you which one they are using. Gulf souqs typically quote a flat rate per gram of the piece. Indian and Pakistani shops usually quote a percentage of the gold value. Branded and mall retail often gives one lump sum for the item. The three are not comparable until you convert them, which the checker does — it reports the making charge your price implies both as a percentage of the gold value and as an amount per gram, so you can carry either figure to the next shop.

There is no single correct making charge, and any tool that claims one is wrong. A plain chain and an intricate hand-set bangle of identical weight are not the same amount of work, and a designer piece is priced partly on the design. What can be said is what shops in a market typically charge for standard pieces, and that is what Serafa publishes: a range, labelled as an estimate, with the market it applies to and the date it was reviewed.

Tax on gold jewelry varies more than most buyers expect, and it changes what a ticket price means. Qatar and Kuwait have no VAT at all. The UAE and Oman apply 5%, Bahrain 10%, and Saudi Arabia 15% — the same piece can cost meaningfully more across a border for tax reasons alone.

Türkiye is the case that catches people out. Its headline KDV rate is 20%, but the gold content of jewelry is exempt and the tax falls only on the workmanship. Treating 20% as a tax on the whole ticket would overstate a Turkish jewelry price by roughly a fifth, so the checker models what a rate is charged on, not just what the rate is.

India taxes jewelry at 3% GST when it is billed as a single composite supply, which is how most retail bills are written. Making charges invoiced as a separate line attract 5% instead, so whether your bill is itemised changes the tax on it — worth checking on a large purchase, and worth entering as a custom rate here if yours was billed the other way.

Whichever market you are in, the price on the ticket almost always already contains the tax. That matters when you work backwards: subtracting the gold value from a tax-inclusive price and calling the remainder "making charge" charges you the tax on your own gold a second time. The checker removes the tax first, which is why the making charge it reports is lower — and correct.

The premium is the whole gap between what you pay and what the gold in the piece is worth, expressed as a percentage — workmanship, retail margin and tax in one figure. Unlike price per gram, it compares fairly across pieces of different weights and different karats, which is exactly the comparison you cannot do in your head at a counter.

It is also the honest way to read the compare view. The cheapest ticket is regularly not the best value: a lighter piece at a lower karat can carry a much higher premium than a heavier one that costs more. Ranking by premium picks the piece where the most of your money is buying gold.

When you sell jewelry back, a dealer is buying metal. The design, the labour and the tax you paid are not part of what they are purchasing, because the piece will be melted — so none of that comes back. This is the single biggest surprise at a buy-back counter, and it is a reason to care about the making charge when you buy, not when you sell.

What a dealer offers is the gold value less their own margin and refining cost. The checker's sell view shows that band, and shows it against what you would pay for the same piece today, so the gap is visible before you are standing at the counter rather than after.

Take an 18.4 gram 21K piece quoted at 9,800 in a market with no VAT, on a day when gold is 500 per pure gram. Its pure gold content is 18.4 × 21/24 = 16.1 grams, so the gold in it is worth 16.1 × 500 = 8,050. The remaining 1,750 is the making charge — 21.7% of the gold value, or about 95 per gram of the piece.

If shops in that market typically quote 6% to 15%, the same piece would be expected to sell for somewhere between 8,533 and 9,258. The asking price sits above that, by roughly 540 to 1,270 — which is not proof of anything, but it is the question to put to the shop: what is the making charge on this piece, and why is it what it is?

In a market that applies VAT, the tax is removed before any of this. At 5% on the full sale, the same 9,800 ticket contains 467 of tax, leaving 9,333 pre-tax and an implied making charge of 1,283 rather than 1,750. Skipping that step would overstate the workmanship by more than a third.