When it comes to selling gold online you have a lot of choices. There are hundreds of already established companies vying for your business – not to mention all the new ones that continue to pop up in this growing field. This of course makes it difficult to make any kind of decision on the matter. It is hard to figure out which companies are legitimate and which are just trying to screw you over. Your only real option for getting the best deal for your gold is to research all the different cash for gold companies individually. And to be honest that takes time – quite a lot of it. So being the nice guys that we are, we decided to do most of the hard work for you and have researched many of the top gold refiners and buyers. We normally deal in large quantities and contact the companies directly to handle our needs but we decide to approach this process like most individuals who want to sell gold for cash would, so we went to each companies website and filled out the contact form to request gold kits from each one. The following is our top five picks of the best gold refiners that we felt deserved mentioning:

Empire Gold Buyers

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Empire Gold Buyers has been in business for over 13 years and has one of the better reputations in gold buying field. They are BBB accredited with an A+ rating and no complaints.  We actually hadn’t used this company until recently and I can tell you we were pleasantly surprised.

First of all I need to mention their payout. They pay 96% of the current spot price of gold for most transactions but their pay scale goes up to 98.5% for larger volume customers. They have a chart right on the website that shows exactly how much they pay based on the karats of the gold. These prices just blow away most of the other gold refiners out there and is one of the reasons we highly recommend them.

One of the other reasons is that their customer service is great. We called them up using the number from their site and were able to get through fairly quickly and speak directly to an English speaking customer service agent who was able to answer the couple questions we had.

The final reason that you should try Empire Gold Buyers is that they have Federal Express overnight shipping with insurance available up to $25,000. That was the real selling point for us since most other refiners make you pay your own or only cover between $500 to $1,500.

My Gold Envelope

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My gold envelope, or dollars 4 gold, is a relatively new player in the gold buying field. They are BBB accredited with a B- rating and no outstanding complaints. With a quick visit to the site you can see that it is promoted by famous pitchman Anthony Sullivan.

One of the great things about dollars4gold is that they have a  “Double G Guarantee” which is (quoted from their site) “If you find a higher payout for the same pieces of gold submitted to us, just show us and we will pay you double.” Which means that they stand behind what they believe. They also have a 10 day money back guarantee.

Also like most cash for gold programs they offer insured shipping and tracking. The only thing I don’t like about the site is that they don’t list how much pay. They are pretty vague about it until you contact them directly but it is in line with what other refiners pay and they do have their “Double G Guarantee”. Mygoldevenlope is one of the few good gold refiners.

Midwest Refineries

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Midwest Refineries has been around for generations and is a well respected company. They have an A+ with the BBB.  Normally they would higher on this list but they have had some serious problems lately in shipping times. Also some of their customer service has been less than stellar.

But they do have some great payouts. At 96% they pay around the most you are going to get from a gold refiner. If you don’t need your money right this second and can wait (up to the 10-14 days it has taken for a few of ours) then you should defiantly try them. They pay right up there with Empire Gold Buyers.

Gold Fellow

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GoldFellow is a very new name to most seeing as they were established in 2007. But being new isn’t all that bad (it just means it harder to tell if the company is legitimate or not) and so we gave them an equal chance. What we found was surprising.

Much like Empire Gold Buyers, their prices are transparent on their site. They also pay between 96% and 98%. Apparently they pay more than most other gold refiners on amounts under one ounce but we can’t comment since we had more than that to sell. The only complaints we have with Gold Fellow is that they gave us the run around when we had a shipping problem. But the issue was resolved and overall we had a good experience with them.

Cash 4 Gold

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I think just about everyone has heard of Cash4Gold now with their aggressive advertising campaign. They have been around since 2001 and have been mentioned quite a bit in the media. There’s a good bit of bad press about them and we’ve heard some stuff from readers but we had to give them a fair shot just like all the others. To our surprise they weren’t nearly as bad as most people make them out to be.

We first decided to call them and see what their customer service was like while requesting a gold kit. We got through to a representative fairly quickly and she was very courteous and helpful. Besides not having their buying prices listed on their site, another thing that bugged us about Cash4Gold was that they only offer $500 in shipping insurance which is one of the lowest that we found. Also their first offer for our gold was pretty dang low. But after another quick call to their customer service line they doubled it which ended up being about 15% less than what the top refiners paid.

One of the good things though about Cash 4 Gold was their turn around time. Our transaction from start to finish only took three days which is pretty great.

A word of warning – don’t use the direct deposit option or you waive your right to reject their offer. All in all, the experience wasn’t bad but I would go with Cash 4 Gold only if I needed the money right now and couldn’t wait. A gold refiner like Empire Gold Buyers is a much better option if you can wait a day or two longer to get your check.

Conclusion

Overall we ended up trying about 20 different companies but felt that these top five were the only ones that we could recommend. As always we still encourage you to do your own research before you go through with anything. If any of you have any real personal experiences with the above companies feel free to share.