Because of the current state of the North American economy and the forever increasing rise in gold and silver prices , it is apparent why people are digging out their broken gold and platinum jewelry and are unloading them to cash 4 gold industries as a way to acquire some more dollars to reduce their debts and to meet their next payments.Assuming you are experiencing the same situation you will want to cautiously do your homework before unloading your gold,silver or platinum to just any company in that there are an ever increasing number of unethical cash for gold companies in the jewelry buying industry who won’t hesitate to prey on your desperation and reward a small percentage for your precious metal.I realize that this behavior may not be a scam, it is in my opinion, wrong and I want to warn those of you who may be thinking of trading your used gold jewelry to be certain to refrain from dealing with companies that are acting as gold brokers and to conduct business only with metal refineries or cash for gold businesses that utilize their own metal refineriesThe fact is, cash for gold companies are simply acting as middle men between you and a gold refinery and therefore they will reward you approximately 1/3 of the true value for your gold or silver jewelry and quickly trade it directly to a gold buyer themselves thereby obtaining the lions share and  you get a couple measly bucks.Recently, Fox news conducted a sort of undercover sting, in that they sent in 3 identical amounts of gold jewelry to 3 different cash for gold businesses and waited for the payment and while all three businesses did in fact send a check for the used jewelry, only 1 of those cash for gold buyers actually submitted the true value while the other 2 gold buyers payed out 1/3 of today’s current value.The 2 cash4gold companies that gave so little were acting as brokers while the third cash 4 gold business that payed the real value did have their own precious metal refinery, so it is customer beware in this business and I absolutely recommend that you do your homework before parting with broken gold or silver jewelry so that you don’t get sucked into the cash for gold scam