Either way, the main reason people sell their gold is because they need to liquidate their investment. It may be to close a house, to pay for your child's college tuition, or simply to want to splurge on yourself or your family. Receiving a check can take a few days, and you'll need to mail your gold to the dealer, unless it's local. The price of gold futures is determined by trying to predict changes in supply and demand and the estimated cost of transporting and storing gold.
When markets are out of control, the values of the gold brokers with whom they trade can change dramatically (some would say irrationally) without any real or justifiable link to the demand or production of gold. You might be wondering if there's a difference between selling scrap gold, gold-plated jewelry, or other forms of gold, rather than selling gold coins, ingots, or ingots. If you have to go this way, separate your gold jewelry by carats in advance and don't accept the “mixed bag” conditions. This is gold that is usually purchased at the spot price of gold, plus a small percentage of the cost incurred to refine and manufacture gold into ingots, wafers, cartridges or coins.
Therefore, gold ETFs are more liquid than physical gold and you can trade them from the comfort of your home. Pawn shops, local gold dealers and exchanges, jewelry stores, and a multitude of online gold and jewelry shopping sites offer you a huge variety of options. With all of this in mind, the best way to sell your gold is through a reputable and established online gold buyer who offers many advantages. Investing in gold isn't for everyone, and some investors continue to bet on companies with cash flow instead of relying on someone else to pay more for the shiny metal.
That's one of the reasons why legendary investors, such as Warren Buffett, warn against investing in gold and instead advocate buying companies with cash flow. This means that now you don't have to pay in full and that the seller doesn't have to hand over any gold now either. Keep in mind that gold prices can be volatile, so holding gold after it peaks could cost you money. If gold moves against you, you will be forced to contribute significant sums of money to maintain the contract (called margin) or the broker will close the position and you will suffer losses.
If you don't want to have the trouble of having physical gold or dealing with the fast pace and margin requirements of the futures market, a good alternative is to buy an exchange-traded fund (ETF) that tracks the commodity. Keep in mind that a dealer has overhead costs and will need to buy their gold at some type of discount before they can process what they buy and resell it to others in the gold market.
