When you take into consideration the live condition of the US economy and the ever increasing surge in precious metal prices , it is no wonder people are digging out their damaged gold, silver and platinum jewelry and are pawning them to cash 4 gold refineries as a method to make some extra money to get rid of some debts as a way to get out of debt.Assuming you are experiencing the same situation you will be wise to carefully do your research before unloading your precious metals to just any company because there is a large amount of unethical companies in the jewelry buying industry who will happily take advantage of your desperate situation and reward a small percentage for your precious jewelry.I realize that this practice may not be illegal, it is in any case, not in your best interest and I feel obligated to make it known to those of you who are thinking of parting with your defective gold, silver or platinum to be sure to refrain from dealing with companies that are posing as gold brokers and to deal only with gold refineries or cash 4 gold businesses that own their own gold refineriesYou must realize, gold brokers are being a go-between, between you and a gold refinery and because of that they will reward you in the neighborhood of one third of the market price for your fine jewelry and instantly unload it directly to a precious metal dealer themselves therefore keeping the largest share and you keep a few measly dollars.Recently, Fox news conducted a sort of undercover operation, where they submitted 3 identical amounts of gold jewelry to 3 individual gold buyers and waited for their check and while all of the gold buyers did in fact give them a pay out for the broken gold, only 1 of those companies actually gave the true value while the other cash for gold companies payed approximately one third of today’s real value.The 2 cash4gold companies that gave so little were acting as a middle man while the third cash for gold company that payed the most value did utilize their own precious metal refinery, so it is consumer beware in this industry and I highly recommend that you do your utmost before selling your unneeded family jewelry so that you shouldn’t become a victim of the cash for gold scam