Gold is beginning to enter the mainstream vocabulary.  Over the years, the multimedia hitmen have done quite a job on the immortal gold.  Most fractional reserve bankers, who are all liars and frauds, would have you believe that the world will end if sound money is re-instituted.  Sure, their world may end; but nothing could be further from the truth for the average honest person.

CASH4GOLD

Cash4Gold.com purchased a 30 second Superbowl Ad using Ed McMahon and MC Hammer in the humorous commercial.  It was actually Lenin who thought gold should be used to make toilets and Lam Sai-wing, who died in September 2008, actually had a $5.8M gold toilet made.  I wonder if it helps.

Usually, the gold business has extremely low margins so it begs the question of how such expensive advertising is viable for them.  A very informative piece appeared on the LA Times blog.  Here are a few key excerpts:

"Cash4gold said it saw traffic to its website multiply by a factor of 10 in the wake of the ad. ... The Florida attorney general’s office is examining nearly 60 complaints about Cash4Gold ... The Better Business Bureau has processed 269 complaints nationwide about Cash4Gold in the previous 36 months. ... On the matter of the BBB complaints, Aronson pointed out: “There were 260 complaints out of 700,000 [customer] transactions. Tell me one company in the world that wouldn’t die for that ratio.”

(After about three minutes of searching on the BBB’s web database, I found that Disneyland, which attracts more than 10 million visitors a year, had 30 complaints to Cash4Gold’s 269.

Two minutes later I found Southwest Airlines had 212 complaints. And it serves more than 100 million passengers a year.)"

Perhaps the most humorous is that Cash4Gold hired Joe Laratro to run a 'Reputation Management campaign' in cyberspace.  With a negative article in the Google search results he offered the author cash compensation to remove it which was declined and Mr. Laratro's email posted.

Well, now there is another article that will show up in the Google search results.  Perhaps Mr. Laratro will offer me some money to take it down?  This could get fun ...

ADVICE

Should someone desire to sell their gold I would recommend doing your due diligence.  Scrap gold companies, like Cash4Gold, usually do not offer the market price right off the bat.  While I would be leery of calling Cash4Gold a scam; dealing with them is like dealing with used car salesmen it is best if you are well prepared with market information.  

After you have a good idea what the piece is worth consider shopping bids from several local coin or pawn shops.  Then you could sell it via Ebay or Craigslist.

If your gold is in a particular format then Apmex may purchase it.  I have dealt with them in the past and have no problem recommending them.  If you are purchasing then GoldSilver is another good source.  The BBB rating of Apmex is A+ and the BBB rating of GoldSilver is B+.

In conclusion, do your own research, due diligence and be a wise seller or buyer.