You generally cannot exchange gold for cash at a bank. U.S. retail banks are built for deposits, loans, and digital transactions, not for authenticating and pricing physical metal, so almost none of them will buy a bar, coin, or piece of jewelry that walks in the door. To turn physical gold into cash, you’ll deal with a bullion dealer, a jeweler, a pawn shop, or an established online buyer. Where you go, and how prepared you are when you get there, drives the price.
Why Banks Don’t Take Physical Gold
Verifying gold on the spot requires acid testing kits or X-ray fluorescence analyzers, trained appraisers, and secure handling. Branch banks don’t maintain any of that. The liability and logistics don’t fit a business built around checking accounts and mortgages.
Banks do handle gold in paper form. Gold exchange-traded funds, gold-backed securities, and gold futures move through standard brokerage accounts, and liquidating them happens on a trading platform. If what you own is a physical bar, a bag of coins, or an old chain, that route isn’t available to you.
Where to Sell Physical Gold
Each type of buyer serves a different niche, and the share of spot price they’ll pay reflects their overhead, expertise, and clientele.
Bullion Dealers
Specialized bullion dealers are the strongest option for investment-grade bars and coins. They work the precious metals market every day, they own professional testing equipment, and they resell directly into the wholesale or retail bullion market, so their margins are thinner. For standard bullion products in good condition, expect offers roughly in the range of 90% to 97% of spot, depending on market conditions and the specific product.
Local Jewelers
Reputable jewelry stores are the right choice for scrap gold, broken chains, and outdated pieces measured by karat weight rather than traded as a bullion product. Jewelers price in their refining costs and the effort of melting and repurposing metal, so offers run below what a bullion dealer pays for investment-grade items. A jeweler with an established local reputation has a strong incentive to price fairly to keep customers coming back.
Pawn Shops
Pawn shops give you the fastest path to cash and are licensed in every state to buy secondhand goods. That speed shows up in the price. Pawn shops largely serve customers who need money immediately, and offers reflect that leverage. Expect significantly less than spot. The trade is pure convenience: walk in, walk out with cash, no appointment.
Online Gold Buyers
Mail-in services are a legitimate alternative if you don’t live near a reputable dealer. The buyer sends an insured shipping kit with a prepaid label, you mail your items, they appraise the gold and email an offer. Accept and payment arrives within a day or two by direct deposit or check. Decline and reputable services return your items at no charge. Your gold leaves your hands before you see an offer, so stick with established companies that provide full insurance on shipments and a clear return policy in writing.
How to Tell a Reputable Buyer from a Bad One
For coin and bullion dealers, membership in the Professional Numismatists Guild is one of the stronger credibility markers in the industry. PNG members agree to a binding code of ethics that includes grading coins accurately, refusing high-pressure sales tactics, paying promptly, and submitting to binding arbitration if a dispute arises. Violations can result in suspension or expulsion.1Professional Numismatists Guild. PNG Code of Ethics
Beyond industry membership, look for buyers who explain their pricing openly, show you the scale reading and purity test result, and give you a written breakdown of how they got to the offer. Pressure to decide on the spot, or refusal to let you watch the testing, is a red flag. Getting quotes from two or three buyers before committing gives you a realistic sense of the market and makes a lowball offer easy to see.
What to Bring to the Sale
- Government-issued ID. Precious metals dealers operate under federal anti-money laundering rules that require them to maintain programs for identifying suspicious activity and verifying who they buy from. State laws separately require dealers to collect seller identification and keep records of each purchase. A valid driver’s license or passport works.2eCFR. 31 CFR Part 1027 – Rules for Dealers in Precious Metals, Subpart D
- Certificates and receipts. Original purchase documentation, certificates of authenticity, and assay cards help verify provenance and can speed testing. For graded coins in sealed holders, the certification itself carries weight.
- The current spot price. The global benchmark for gold is the LBMA Gold Price, administered by ICE Benchmark Administration, and it updates twice a day. Check it before you leave. Any reputable offer is a percentage of that number, and knowing it lets you judge an offer in seconds.3London Bullion Market Association. LBMA Gold Price
- Karat markings and weight. Jewelry carries karat purity stamps like 10k, 14k, 18k, or 24k, usually on clasps or inner bands. Weigh items on a gram scale at home if you can. You won’t hold a dealer to your kitchen measurement, but it’s a sanity check against theirs.
How Appraisal and Payment Work
The appraisal starts with a purity test. Most reputable dealers use X-ray fluorescence analyzers, which read gold content without damaging the item. Smaller shops and pawn brokers still use the older acid scratch method, which is more subjective and can leave a small mark. Once the buyer confirms purity and weight, the offer is weight times purity times spot price, minus the dealer’s margin. That margin covers testing, overhead, regulatory compliance, and profit. Thin for investment-grade bullion, wider for jewelry the dealer will need to refine.
If you accept, you’ll sign a transaction receipt recording your identity, a description of the items, the weight and purity, and the price paid. Dealers keep these records; keep your copy. Smaller sales are usually paid in cash. Larger sales may be paid by business check or bank wire, partly because of federal reporting rules that kick in at $10,000 in cash.
Federal Reporting on Large Cash Sales
Two federal reporting requirements come into play when significant cash changes hands. Neither creates a tax bill on its own, but both generate records that the IRS and law enforcement can review.
Any business that receives more than $10,000 in cash in a single transaction or a series of related transactions must file IRS Form 8300 within 15 days.4Internal Revenue Service. Form 8300 and Reporting Cash Payments of Over $10,000 Precious metals dealers are also required to maintain anti-money laundering programs under the Bank Secrecy Act, as implemented through FinCEN regulations.5Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. Frequently Asked Questions If the cash portion flows through a bank, the bank must also file a Currency Transaction Report for any currency exchange over $10,000. Deliberately splitting a sale to stay under the threshold is called structuring and is a federal crime, even if the money is entirely legitimate. The practical advice is straightforward: transact normally and let the paperwork happen.
Taxes on the Sale
This is where gold sellers most often trip up. The IRS treats physical gold as a collectible, which puts it in a higher tax bracket than stocks or real estate when you sell at a profit.
If you held the gold for more than a year, any profit is a long-term capital gain on a collectible, taxed at a maximum federal rate of 28%.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1 – Tax Imposed That’s above the 15% or 20% rate that applies to long-term gains on stocks. Held for a year or less, the gain is short-term and taxed at your ordinary income rate, which can run higher than 28% depending on your bracket.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1222 – Other Terms Relating to Capital Gains and Losses
Your taxable gain is the sale price minus your cost basis, typically what you originally paid plus transaction costs. For inherited gold, the basis is generally the fair market value on the date the previous owner died, not what they paid for it.8Internal Revenue Service. Gifts and Inheritances That stepped-up basis can significantly reduce or eliminate the taxable gain on inherited pieces.
If you can’t prove what you paid, the IRS can treat the entire sale price as gain. Keep original purchase receipts, credit card statements, dealer invoices, and any appraisals. For inherited gold, document the date of death and the spot price on that date, or get a formal appraisal dated around that time. Your transaction receipt from the sale becomes the other half of the record.
Dealers are required to file Form 1099-B for certain gold sales, but the rules turn on the product and quantity, not the dollar amount. Large bullion bar transactions and bulk sales of specific coin types trigger reporting. Sales of American Gold Eagles, fractional coins, and most jewelry do not. A 1099-B or not, you still owe tax on any gain, and the absence of a reporting form doesn’t mean the IRS won’t see the sale, particularly if the dealer already filed a Form 8300 on it.
Getting the Best Price
Get multiple quotes. Prices vary meaningfully from one buyer to the next, and five minutes on the phone with a second dealer is often worth hundreds of dollars on a real sale. Timing matters too: gold prices move throughout the day on global trading, so paying attention beats ignoring it.
Separate your holdings before you go. Investment-grade bullion in recognized formats commands better prices than mixed scrap, and putting a one-ounce Gold Buffalo in the same bag as broken 10k chains almost guarantees the whole lot gets priced at the lowest common denominator. Let the bullion dealer price the bullion and the jeweler price the jewelry. And never accept the first offer without asking how the number was calculated. A buyer who can’t walk you through the math is a buyer you should walk away from.