The viral pandemic has affected all sectors of society, including gold buying and selling. If you need to sell gold for cash, you can still do so, but you should take current conditions into account and change what you'd do. Instead of walking into a gold-buying company with some loose gold jewelry, you'll need to take distancing and disinfection into account.
Try to Get It Appraised First
Chances are that when you sell the gold, it will be sold for the scrap price, meaning that you're selling the actual gold and not the piece of jewelry and its design and craftsmanship. However, if you can, get that gold appraised before you sell it. If the appraisal price isn't too far off from the scrap price, you may as well go for that scrap price as it will be a lot easier to sell the gold. But if you find that the piece you have is worth a lot more as a piece of estate jewelry, rather than as scrap gold, then you might want to hang onto it for a longer time and look for a collector who might pay you much more for that gold. That can take a while, though, so if you really need cash now, selling for scrap value is still an option.
Look for Mail-in Buyers That Have Good Reputations
While it's better to keep your hands on the gold until you actually sell it and get that cash, it's currently safer to do as much distancing as possible, and that means looking for gold-buying companies where you mail in the gold to a central office. This can be risky because it's so easy for a shady company to cheat you. However, there are reputable companies out there. Ask local coin and jewelry shops if they know of gold buyers who may be able to do this; otherwise, call local gold buyers and ask about how they're handling physical distancing.
Wrap It Well so the Package Is Easy to Clean
This does sound a bit strange at first, but there's a reason why you should package the gold in a way that makes the package easy to clean. While the current information regarding viral transmission shows that you don't really need to disinfect packaging unless it was just handled by another person, some places are taking disinfection further. If you can package the gold in a small plastic zippered bag, for example, then whoever receives it can clean off the plastic without damaging the gold. They can let the packaged gold sit for a while after that to allow any other viral particles to die out. Why worry about the plastic if they're just going to let the package sit anyway? Initially, it was thought that the virus could live for a longer time on plastic, so some people still try to disinfect those surfaces.
The pandemic won't go on forever, and eventually ability to buy and sell gold jewelry will go back to its old procedures. For the time being, however, being more careful is essential.
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