QuestionHello, I know almost nothing about gold, but my daughter has a small bag of gold she panned while in vacationing Colorado. Most of the pieces are like the size of a pencil lead and there are about 15-20 of them, plus some black sand full of gold flecks. She wants to sell it someone and put the money in her college fund. Is it realistic to try to sell so small amount of gold? Thank you, Erik
AnswerErik, even with gold prices high for the last year and actually going over $1000 per troy ounce spot price for pure gold, I believe your daughter will be better served keeping her gold as a memory of the Colorado trip.
Gold closed this previous week at $749 per troy ounce. What this means is that on the gold market, pure gold(refined 0.999pure gold) is priced at $749. This price base determines what pure gold and items containing gold (such as jewelry) will cost purchasers and in turn consumers.
To be sold, I believe anyone willing to purchase the gold will do so at a greatly discounted rate and she will likely get no more than half of the value of the same weight of gold on the market. The other option is to send the native gold to a refiner but there simply is not enough to justify refining costs.
For your information, a troy ounce is 31.1 grams or 1.09 ounce avoirdupois, the normal pounds and ounce system we normally use. Troy is a measurement used for precious metals, along with more universally understood grams and pennyweight(dwt).
Certainly, the gold does have value. Yet, there might be less than an ounce in the first place and certainly any offer to purchase will be much less than that value. This is a matter of quantity available for sale as much as anything else.
I do wish her well on the college fund! That is certainly important. In this case, however, I suggest keeping the gold. Not many folks overall have raw gold, much less gold panned by their hands.
God Bless and Peace. Thomas.
