About Mark & Melt

Mark & Melt is an independent reference site for people selling, valuing or sorting gold and silver: a pair of melt-value calculators, live price-per-gram tables, a library of hallmarks, and plain guides to selling. It is written and maintained by a small editorial desk. We are not a gold buyer, a pawn shop or a refiner, and we never see or handle your metal.

What we stand behind

• The numbers. Melt values come from live spot prices and a published formula. Every constant we use (grams per troy ounce, the purity behind each karat) is listed on How we calculate, so you can check any figure by hand.
• The hallmark facts. Each entry in our hallmark library lists the sources it was compiled from: assay office publications, trade standards and museum references. When sources disagree we say so rather than pick one quietly.
• Conservative estimates. Where a stamp could mean two purities, we value it at the lower one, so an estimate is never higher than the metal can support.

How we make money

The calculators and guides are free. Some pages list mail-in buyers or auction services; if you sell through one of those links we may earn a commission. Every such block says so, and a commission never changes the melt values, the offer ranges or the advice on our pages. We do not accept payment to rank or review a buyer.

Photo reading and your data

Reading a mark from a photo uses AI models to transcribe the stamps; our own tables decide the purity. Photos are read once and not stored. The details, including which providers process a photo, are in our privacy policy.

Corrections and contact

If a price, a hallmark entry or a guide is wrong, tell us and we will fix it and note the date on the page. Write to hello@markandmelt.org for corrections, questions or press.