Because of the latest state of the North American economy and the ever increasing upward rise in precious metal prices , it is no wonder people are bringing out their broken gold jewelry and are selling them to cash 4 gold industries as a way to make some extra money to pay down their extra financial woes in an effort to make their next mortgage payment.Assuming you are in the same situation you will want to cautiously do your research before distributing your unwanted jewelry to just any gold dealers because there is a large number of scam companies in the precious metal buying industry who will happily take advantage of your financial situation and pay you next to nothing for your gold or silver jewelry.Even though this practice may not be a scam, it is in any case, immoral and unethical and I want to warn those of you who may be considering trading your outdated gold, silver or platinum jewelry to be sure to stay away from businesses that are posing as middle men and to conduct business only with gold refineries or gold buyers that own their own gold refineriesYou see, cash4gold businesses are simply acting as brokers between you and a metal refiner and as a result they will pay you in the neighborhood of 30% of the value for your gold jewelry and easily sell it back to a gold buyer themselves and they will be obtaining the lions share and  you receive a few lousy bucks.Recently, Fox news conducted a kind of undercover operation, in that they sent in 3 of the same pieces of gold to 3 individual gold buyers and waited for their payout and while all three gold buyers did in fact send a check for the used gold, only one of those cash 4 gold companies actually paid the current market value while the other two companies payed approximately 30% of today’s real value.The 2 gold buying companies that payed out such a small amount were acting as a go-between while the 3rd cash 4 gold business that payed the most value did have their own in-house refinery, so it is seller beware in this business and I surely suggest that you do your homework before parting with broken gold, silver or platinum jewelry so that you can’t get sucked into the cash 4 gold scam