Walk into a mall jewelry store and a 10K Cuban link chain is priced at whatever the display case says. Walk into a pawn shop and the same chain is usually priced off what the metal is worth, plus a margin. A Spot Price Deal goes one step further: the price is the live gold market, calculated from the piece's exact weight and karat, plus a flat $1 per gram. That's the whole formula. This post explains how it's built, why the number moves during the day, and how you lock it.
What "spot price" actually means
Gold trades around the clock, and the "spot price" is what an ounce of pure gold is changing hands for right now. It is quoted per troy ounce (31.1 grams). Every gold buyer, refiner and pawnbroker starts from that number. When we buy gold from you, we pay a percentage of it. When we sell you a Spot Price Deal, we price the piece off it directly.
How a Spot Price Deal is priced
Every piece on the Spot Price Deals page is weighed on a calibrated jeweler's scale and its karat is verified in-store, on camera. From there the math is public:
- Weight × purity. A 10K piece is 10/24 pure gold (41.7%), 14K is 14/24 (58.3%), a pre-1933 U.S. gold coin is 90% or better. Grams of the piece times that fraction gives grams of pure gold.
- Times the live spot price per gram. Spot per troy ounce divided by 31.1035 gives spot per gram. Pure grams times spot per gram is the melt value, to the cent, at this minute.
- Plus $1 per gram. A flat dollar a gram covers our handling. On a 90-gram chain that is $90 over melt, not the hundreds or thousands a retail case adds.
- Tax and shipping are inside the locked price. When you lock a piece, 7% sales tax and $100 for fully insured, signature-required shipping are added once and shown on the breakdown. The total on the button is the total you pay. Nothing gets added at checkout.
You can see all of this on any deal card: tap the piece and the breakdown shows the weight, the karat fraction, today's spot per gram and the running total. If you can multiply, you can check our price.
Why the price is different at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.
Because gold moved. The Spot Price Deals page re-reads the gold market every 60 seconds and re-prices every piece from scratch, so the number you see is never a stale sticker. On a quiet day a big chain moves a few dollars. On a day when gold jumps 2%, a 400-gram chain can move by four figures between breakfast and lunch, in either direction. That is not a sale ending or starting. It is the market.
Two things follow from that. First, we never quote a Spot Price Deal in a post, an email or a text as a fixed dollar figure, because it will be wrong within the hour. We tell you the weight and karat, which do not change, and send you to the live page for the price. Second, if you like today's number, you lock it.
How to lock a price
Every live deal has a Lock Price & Buy Now button. Tapping it freezes the current price on our end and takes you to checkout at that exact total. The lock holds for 20 minutes, which is plenty of time to pay. If gold goes up while you're checking out, you still pay the locked price. If the lock expires, the piece goes back to live pricing and you can lock again.
Prefer to talk to a person first? Call or text and we will lock a quote for you the same way.
What's on the board right now
The lineup changes as pieces sell, and every piece is one of one. As we write this, the board includes a 10K Cuban link chain over 800 grams, a 10K Miami Cuban chain over 400 grams, a 10K Cuban link bracelet over 300 grams, a 10K mixed-link chain at 91.5 grams, a 14K Greek key diamond collar at 31.1 grams and an 1896 $20 Liberty Head Double Eagle. Whatever is live is on the Spot Price Deals page, priced to the minute.
Who this is for
- Buying gold as gold. If you want ounces of 10K or 14K in a form you can wear, a chain at spot plus a dollar a gram is about as close to bullion pricing as jewelry gets.
- Buying a big piece without the retail markup. A 300-gram bracelet from a jewelry store carries a five-figure markup. Here it carries $300.
- Coins. The Double Eagle prices off its gold content the same way, so you are paying for the metal, not a dealer's numismatic premium.
Three honest caveats
- Deals stay up until they sell. There is no countdown gimmick. When a piece sells, it comes off the board, and it will not be replaced with an identical one.
- Weight is the real weight. A chain with a lobster clasp or a coin with a bezel is weighed as the whole piece. We say what it is on the card.
- The price is the price. There is no coupon that stacks on a Spot Price Deal, because the margin is already a dollar a gram.
See what is live right now on the Spot Price Deals page, or browse the Spot Price Deals collection. Everything there was tested on camera at DD Pawn Loans, 2751 West Atlantic Blvd, Pompano Beach, FL, and ships insured nationwide.