Raw gold sellers - BEWARE - DO YOUR HOMEWORK! Everywhere you go you can find gold buyers, but most are middle men rip off artists. TO SELL SIZABLE QUANTITIES OF RAW GOLD, YOU NEED TO FIND A REPUTABLE GOLD REFINERY THAT CAN ARRANGE FOR INSURED TRANSPORT AND KNOWS THE TAX RULES (not easy). Even then, it can be difficult to find a refinery that will assay the gold with real accuracy. They all use fancy equipment, spectrometers, etc., but those readings can be off by 1-5%. That may not sound like much, but if you are selling +50 kilos then you know it is huge. (For novices: obviously unrefined gold sells below the gold spot price, but to get a rough sense of what a difference 5% can make, search for the current gold spot price and multiply that by 32.15 troy ounces per kilogram and you will realize quickly that finding a refinery without a 1-5% margin of error in their assay is crucial.)
NEARLY ALL REFINERIES USE ASSAY TECHNIQUES WITH A MARGIN OF ERROR THAT DO NOT GIVE SELLERS THE FULL VALUE. I sell raw gold dust and gold ingots from Africa and I have worked with lots of refineries across the globe (in the U.S., Dubai, Europe…). The most precise assay I have found is done by an international gold refinery buyer in Belgium called OrBrut.com (French for “raw gold” dot com). They have been especially helpful since they work with me to coordinate insured transportation and they work with Customs to make sure that taxes are not an issue. (That is another area where I have learned the hard way that filling out a form one way vs. another can cost more than 20% in taxes!)