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As with any investment, assets all have varying worth and if you’re going to take the time to explore your storage areas and attic, you’ll need to know what you’re looking for.

24 karat gold is considered absolutely pure or in the least, 99.99% pure, free of other metals. This is the most flexible gold, easy to test, and will earn you the highest return.

At the end of the day, scrap gold prices in Australia are pretty competitive although it might be a good idea to visit a “gold calculator” website to have some sort of expectation of what your gold is worth before visiting a buyer.

Do a little research and investigate current gold prices, too, especially in case you plan to get a cash for gold exchange and make good money from all those old pieces of jewellery stored in your attic.

First, let’s look at how to discern the value of any gold items you may come across. Each method you use will certainly need to be verified by another method, as no single method one can do on their own is 100% guaranteed for accuracy.

How to Tell What Gold is Worth

1. The first and most obvious way to gauge the worth of your gold is to look for the karat or fineness of your gold by way of an official marking. You can also approach a dealer, who can help differentiate between fools gold vs real gold.

2. Look for discolourations in your gold to discern whether your gold is gold, or merely gold plated. Any discolouration or rub-off in heavily worn areas is a key indicator that your gold is only gold plated.

3. An old-school bite test is probably the most common and “famous” way to check for gold, as illustrated by Olympic Gold Medal winners and old black and white television shows and movies. Gold is a soft metal and bends easily, so the softer the gold, the more likely it will leave behind indents from your teeth. But! Lead can be even softer, so that soft piece of gold that you think has a high value could be more likely to give you lead poisoning than a high value return.

4. Magnet tests are simple; get a powerful magnet and try to pick up your gold with it. If it is picked up, it ain’t gold! However, fake gold can also be made with other metals that aren’t necessarily magnetic (aluminium, anyone?) so as with all the other gold testing methods, you’ll need to verify this one with another method.

5. A density test is a little more complicated; however, it is an effective way to test your gold value. Density equals mass divided by volume displacement. In the case of gold, a density result in the neighborhood of 19 g/ml means you’ve got gold.

6. Rubbing gold along the surface of a ceramic plate is another great way to indicate if your gold is real. A gold streak means, well, you’ve got gold. A black streak, however, means that you’ve been duped with fool’s gold.

7. Most people don’t exactly have nitric acid laying around the house, but if you do, applying it to your item to reveal whether it is gold or not is a smart and effective way to do so.

A green colour reaction means your “gold” is probably a base metal, or in the least, gold plated. If the water turns milky, you’ve got a gold plated sterling silver item, and if there’s no reaction – ding ding ding! We have a winner, folks.