RAW GOLD BUYERS

Goldwasher

Gold Member
May 26, 2009
6,077
13,225
Sailor Flat, Ca.
🥇 Banner finds
1
Detector(s) used
SDC2300, Gold Bug 2 Burlap, fish oil, .35 gallons of water per minute.
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Agreed, dore bars are different grade from top to bottom. A reasonable way to determine overall karat is to drill. On a small bar taking an average from six or eight small holes on top and bottom and averaging out the karat is a good practice. When using gold to finance a mining company, turning raw gold into dollars is the necessity of selling gold. Unless you can use debt to run your equipment and make payroll. Once an acceptable karat is agreed upon it doesn't make sense to pay to refine it and then sell it. Just sell it at the quality it averages out to, to the refiner.
Take your nuggets that have a specimen added value to them and market them to collectors or jewellers. Diesel, pump parts and employees don't wait for marketing to become sales. The difference between getting paid for 85 percent purity and 84 percent purity isn't worth the wait. You're splitting hairs to save a few bucks.

Thats now how working with a refiner works. You get paid for a percentage of pure gold after refining. You don't sell the dore based on its purity.

Once it is refined there is no guess work.

Kind of the point of refining.

You don't average out the Karats of a bar.

This is getting silly.\
 

Last edited:

XtreasureX

Full Member
Mar 1, 2015
138
253
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Deep breath. Let's use my real life scenario. Last week I dug 10 ounces of gold out of my mine. I want to turn my gold into dollars.
1. I melt my unknown quality of dust and nuggets into a bar. I now have a 10 ounce bar.
2. I take my 10 ounce bar to my refiner.
3. My refiner and myself, with technology available to us, determine that my 10 ounce bar is .85 (85 percent) pure.
4. The market price, at the exact time I want to sell my gold, is $1300 (rounded up to simplify the math).
5. Using a calculator, my 10 ounce bar is valued by the following equation. $1300 (price of gold per ounce) x 10 (ounce weight of my bar) x .85 (percentage of PURE gold) 1300x10 = 13000 13000x.85 = 11050
6. My 10 ounce bar, according to my refiner is worth $11050.
7. I want my money, which my refiner is willing to pay me for, deposited into my bank account. My refiner, however, wants a cut. He wants 1 percent and $1 per ounce.
8. I am willing to pay the amount he wants. $11,050 x .01 = $110.5. (1 percent) $11050- 110.50 = $10939.50 minus $10 = $10,929.50
9. My refiner gives me a check for $10,929.50.
10. I deposit my check in my account

I just sold my gold.
Am I missing something here?
 

delnorter

Hero Member
Oct 28, 2008
907
2,300
Northern California
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
That is really neat you melt your own gold into bars XtreasureX. I've always wanted to try that. What process do you use for melting the dust and nuggets? Do you have photos?

Thanks,
Mike
 

Goldwasher

Gold Member
May 26, 2009
6,077
13,225
Sailor Flat, Ca.
🥇 Banner finds
1
Detector(s) used
SDC2300, Gold Bug 2 Burlap, fish oil, .35 gallons of water per minute.
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
Deep breath. Let's use my real life scenario. Last week I dug 10 ounces of gold out of my mine. I want to turn my gold into dollars.
1. I melt my unknown quality of dust and nuggets into a bar. I now have a 10 ounce bar.
2. I take my 10 ounce bar to my refiner.
3. My refiner and myself, with technology available to us, determine that my 10 ounce bar is .85 (85 percent) pure.
4. The market price, at the exact time I want to sell my gold, is $1300 (rounded up to simplify the math).
5. Using a calculator, my 10 ounce bar is valued by the following equation. $1300 (price of gold per ounce) x 10 (ounce weight of my bar) x .85 (percentage of PURE gold) 1300x10 = 13000 13000x.85 = 11050
6. My 10 ounce bar, according to my refiner is worth $11050.
7. I want my money, which my refiner is willing to pay me for, deposited into my bank account. My refiner, however, wants a cut. He wants 1 percent and $1 per ounce.
8. I am willing to pay the amount he wants. $11,050 x .01 = $110.5. (1 percent) $11050- 110.50 = $10939.50 minus $10 = $10,929.50
9. My refiner gives me a check for $10,929.50.
10. I deposit my check in my account

I just sold my gold.
Am I missing something here?

Money
 

XtreasureX

Full Member
Mar 1, 2015
138
253
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
I was using 10 ounce bars as an example to keep my point simplified. I use a jelenko furnace to melt my gold. I usually melt about 100 grams at a time. It's pretty nerve racking to handle that much metal at once, especially in primitive conditions . I've made mistakes in the past using oxy/propane. Broken crucibles, molten metal and bare skin can cause lasting memories. Preheat your molds and keep everything dry. Water, cold steel molds and hot crucibles are not friends. Getting you flux right is important too.
 

OP
OP
G

ghostminer

Guest
This thread developed a life of it's own LOL.
 

IMAUDIGGER

Silver Member
Mar 16, 2016
3,400
5,194
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
XtreasureX, when dealing with larger quantities of gold (10 ounces a week)...why would you melt down nuggets, when you can easily get 100% spot price (or more) vs. 84% spot price when selling to a refiner?

Seems like a no-brainer to screen the gold and pay bills with the minus nugget screen?

I would like to know, just in case I encounter a situation where I have larger quantities of gold I need to sell.
 

XtreasureX

Full Member
Mar 1, 2015
138
253
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
I do sell my nuggets separately. I'm working from Mexico so I don't always have access to the US market. Some nuggets are ugly and harder to sell. If I get the chance I will always sell at spot. Other times I just need cash.
 

XtreasureX

Full Member
Mar 1, 2015
138
253
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
1512526223907426376106.jpg
Here is some of my nuggets I haven't sold yet. Two of them have quartz in them. These will be melted sooner or later. The nuggets, by weight, tend to be my profit from the total weight and sometimes I want a paycheck.
 

IMAUDIGGER

Silver Member
Mar 16, 2016
3,400
5,194
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
That gold looks like it has some silver and copper in it, or is that just the photo? If you sell to a refiner, you probably have a good handle on the make-up?

I have always thought that Mexico probably has massive untapped mineral resources.
 

arizau

Bronze Member
May 2, 2014
2,485
3,871
AZ
Detector(s) used
Beach High Banker, Sweep Jig, Whippet Dry Washer, Lobo ST, 1/2 width 2 tray Gold Cube, numerous pans, rocker box, and home made fluid bed and stream sluices.
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
At 0.85 pure the impurities are likely to be mostly silver and/or copper with other trace elements. Some times the impurities are of payable value but usually only when they are of high percentage of the total weight. Also when dealing with very large quantities such as copper concentrates that contain gold and silver and their values are based on their ounces per ton in the concentrate.
 

Last edited:

XtreasureX

Full Member
Mar 1, 2015
138
253
Primary Interest:
All Treasure Hunting
The photo was lit pretty badly. I used my brooder light. The impurities are mostly silver. I figure they can have whatever value they can get out of it for the price they pay me. There are a lot of other minerals in the ore. The whole place sparkles in the mornings. There are some neat little opaque, dark red rocks that always show up in heavies. I've wondered what the are.
 

infotraker

Full Member
Dec 20, 2013
193
282
Ca
Detector(s) used
Whites mxt
Primary Interest:
Prospecting
Baysavers near Folsom ca buys for 90 percent of spot at times
 

Top Member Reactions

Users who are viewing this thread

Top