Selling Your Gold to Refineries

 

Where can you fetch the best price for the gold you find? Refineries are probably the best answer for most prospectors. Since refineries melt your gold and resell it by weight, they do not care about the size or shape of your original gold, they only care about the purity. So, you can mix your fine and flake gold (12 mesh and smaller; goes through 1/12-inch by 1/12-inch screen) with pickers (12 mesh to 6 mesh; bigger than 1/12-inch but smaller than 1/6-inch) and small nuggets (6 mesh to 12 mesh; bigger than 1/6-inch but smaller than half inch) and larger nuggets (over half inch in size) and it's all the same to the refinery.

Refineries pay around 95% of assay (gold purity test). That means you get 95% of whatever purity is determined (85% pure is pretty common), minus a refining fee. Using $1,400 an ounce as an example price, if you sent in an ounce of gold and it was determined to be 85% pure, you would get about $1,130.50 for your ounce, minus a refining fee. Not too bad considering you can live anywhere and send your gold to the refinery of your choice! 

Keep in mind that to keep the refining fees down, you need to send in a minimum of two ounces, so be sure you know exactly how much you have before you send it in. Every ounce of gold equates to 480 grains or 20 pennyweight or 31.104 grams. Since gold has gotten so valuable, being able to weigh it down to a fraction of a grain just adds money in your pocket. Every grain counts and every grain is valuable, so before you sell your gold to a refinery or any other buyer, weigh it carefully on a sensitive scale that can register to at least one-tenth of a gram.

You also might consider smelting your own gold in a Tabletop Furnace or with a Microwave Gold Processing Kiln & Kit.