When you take into consideration the actual condition of the world economy and the continuous increasing spike in gold and silver prices , it is apparent why people are taking out their old gold, silver and platinum jewelry and are getting rid of them to cash for gold brokers as a method to find some extra cash to pay off some debits and to make ends meet.  let’s say you are experiencing the same situation you will need to cautiously do your investigative work before unloading your precious metals to just any gold buyers in that there are an ever increasing amount of unscrupulous companies in the jewelry buying industry who will gladly prey on your desperate situation and reward you next to nothing for your gold and silver.  The fact that this practice may not be a scam, it is in my opinion, very wrong and I feel it necessary to inform those of you who are thinking of parting with your broken gold jewelry to be certain to avoid gold buyers that are acting as middle men and to conduct business only with metal refineries or cash 4 gold companies that utilize their own personal metal refineries You must realize, gold buyer are doing nothing more than acting as a go-between, between you and a metal refiner and because of that they will reward you in the neighborhood of 1/3 of the market price for your gold jewelry and quickly unload it directly to a gold refiner themselves thereby keeping the larger share and in turn you get a few measly bucks.  Recently, Fox news put together a sort of undercover operation, in that they delivered three exact same pieces of jewelry to three individual cash for gold dealers and waited for their payout and while 3 of the companies did in fact give them a payment for their old jewelry, only one of those gold buyers actually paid the true value while the other 2 gold buyers payed out  one third of today’s true value .  The two cash for gold companies that payed out such a small amount were acting as a middle man while the third cash for gold company that payed the most value did have their own on site refinery, so it is seller beware in this business and I highly recommend that you do your homework before parting with unneeded gold, silver or platinum jewelry