What Happens to Gold After You Sell It

Read on to learn about two key steps your precious metal goes through once you sell it to a gold buyer in Brisbane. 

Have you ever wondered what happens to your gold after you sell it? When you sell your precious metal, whether it’s an antique piece, a broken chain, or a ring, what happens to it later isn’t always clear. Knowing what happens to your precious metal after you sell it reassures you that the buyer is handling it correctly (which benefits you) and helps you understand where value comes from.

Let us guide you through the two primary paths your gold takes after you sell it: refining and reselling.

What happens to Your Precious Metals? 

Once gold is acquired by a reputable buyer (gold exchange, refinery, etc.), it typically goes in one of two directions:

• Refining gold in Brisbane involves melting, cleaning, and purifying gold into bullion, bars, or raw refined metal.
• Reselling occurs when the gold is worth more than its metal value, taking into account factors such as design, antique value, name recognition, and gemstones.

Both routes have their own processes, timings, and destinations. A piece can sometimes go through a combination of both.

What Happens in Gold Refining

Gold refining is a process of turning your precious metal into raw, pure gold. It starts with checking your items, testing their gold content, and melting them at high temperatures. Once the purities are removed, the raw gold is cast into bars, ingots, or forms suitable for jewellery, bullion, or industrial use.

Here’s a detailed breakdown of the gold refining process in Brisbane.

Your precious metals are received and categorized based on their purity and type (jewellery, scrap, alluvial gold, nuggets, etc.). Stones, clasps, and non-gold pieces are removed. This initial step sets the foundation for accurate refining and ensures your items are safe throughout the process.

Your gold is weighed on a scale, and its purity is tested before it is melted (e.g., using XRF machines or fire assays). This step determines the amount of real gold present in relation to other metals.

• • X-ray Fluorescence (XRF): A fast, non-destructive technique that analyses the metal composition to give quick purity results.
  • Fire Assay: The most precise method, it involves melting a sample and chemically isolating precious metals to measure their purity accurately. Assay is a critical stage as it defines the exact value of your metals, ensuring a fair and transparent process.
    

After being tested for purity, the gold is melted. The impurities are removed. The melted product is purified gold — generally with a purity of 99.9% or better, based on the standard purity levels.

After purification, gold is molded into bars or ingots or processed into pure gold for industrial purposes. It may be later dispatched to jewellery manufacturers, bullion dealers, or other industries that require pure gold.

• Reintroduction to Supply Chain

Refined gold flows into wholesale markets, the bullion trade, or back to producers of jewellery, coins, electronics, and other products. This ensures liquidity in gold markets.

Refiners in Brisbane work with trade customers (jewellers, scrap traders, prospectors). Due to larger volumes, the process can involve more formal assays (fire assay), and payment is made after refining the gold.

• Expenses & Losses Incurred in the Process

Refining the gold involves costs. Melting, removing alloy metals, labor, assay charges, etc. These reduce the amount that ultimately gets paid out. Even with a high-purity piece, after refining, your net value is slightly less than “purity × spot price” due to these overhead costs. 

At Cash Your Gold, we employ techniques such as the Miller Process, which uses chlorine gas to remove impurities, and the Wohlwill Process, an electrolytic refining method that achieves purity up to 99.99%. Our process ensures you receive metals of the highest quality while reducing overhead costs.

What Happens in Gold Reselling

Sometimes, not all the gold that you sell goes into refining. When your gold buyer sees value in their present form, they prefer reselling. If you are selling gold items like coins, bars, or good-condition jewellery, gold buyers will check the item’s purity, weight, and overall condition, and then resell it directly to other buyers or collectors. Gold buyers in Brisbane prefer this route for items that are collectible, rare, or already high quality.