Buying Gold Over the Counter: The Two Tests Every Buy Needs

Every gold buy over the counter needs two tests, and page one only teaches you one. The first is the metal: is the piece what the stamp says it is? The second is the seller: is it theirs to sell, and does your ticket prove you checked? In 2026 both got harder at once. A gold price this high made a convincing fake worth the trouble of making, and it made gold the easiest way to turn a scam into cash. In February, federal and state agents raided jewelers in Texas, Georgia and Florida who are alleged to have bought gold from the couriers of an elder-fraud scheme, and recovered more than $50 million of it.

This is written for the jeweler with a buy counter, not the customer standing at it. It covers what each test can and cannot catch, what the law says a legitimate stamp means, what your ticket has to record, and what the scam looks like when it walks through your door.

Why the buy counter is riskier this year than it was

The price did two things at the same time. It made a fake worth building properly, and it made gold the asset a criminal would rather hold than anything else in your store. Scott Guginsky of the Jewelers’ Security Alliance put the second point plainly in April: “It’s easier to fence gold than trying to fence diamonds or watches.”

The trade is talking about the first problem. The most-discussed thread on r/jewelers in the past week was titled “Laser testing revealed gold scam”, forty comments deep, two days after another asked “Are you still buying solid gold jewelry?” That is conversation, not data, but it is the right conversation.

The second problem is the one with the paper trail. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center described the courier scheme in a January 2024 alert: someone posing as tech support or a government official convinces a victim, usually a senior, that their money is in danger, tells them to liquidate it into gold, and sends a courier to collect it. Losses topped $55 million in the eight months the FBI counted. CBS News Texas reported in February that Texans alone had lost $74.5 million to it.

The courier’s problem is turning bars into money, and a buy counter solves it. On 25 February agents raided Malani Jewelers in Richardson, Texas and Decatur, Georgia, and Orlando Gold Refinery in Altamonte Springs, Florida, a month after raids on two other jewelers in Irving and Frisco. Three people were arrested. Investigators allege that portions of the victims’ gold were processed, melted or otherwise handled through those businesses; authorities in Texas allege some of it was melted into jewelry, mostly bracelets. Whether the charges hold is for the courts. The exposure is the point, and it is yours the moment a bargain crosses your counter.

What does a “14K” stamp actually prove?

A stamp is a claim about the piece, made by whoever was holding the stamp. Federal law sets what an honest maker may put on it: under the National Gold and Silver Stamping Act an article may run no more than three parts per thousand under its marked fineness, or seven where solder is involved. That law binds the honest. It does nothing to the piece in your hand, and a 14K stamp costs a few dollars.

The same rulebook tells you what legitimate plating is, and the numbers matter in the next section. Under the FTC’s Jewelry Guides, “gold electroplate” means a minimum of 0.175 microns of fine gold. “Heavy gold electroplate” means two and a half microns. “Gold filled” means the gold layer is at least one twentieth of the weight of the metal in the article. Those are the thicknesses an honest product carries, and each one is supposed to be marked for what it is.

Sealed packaging is a stamp too. In October 2017 an Ottawa jeweler bought a one ounce .9999 wafer from a Royal Bank of Canada branch for 1,680 Canadian dollars, in sealed Royal Canadian Mint packaging with the marks in the right places. It was too hard to bend, snapped in a jeweler’s mill, and failed acid at 18 karat and then at 14. The Mint said it “did not manufacture, ship or sell” the bar and that the wrapper was itself a forgery. A jeweler bought that from a bank. Your counter gets less provenance than that on a good day.

How do jewelers test gold, and what does each test miss?

Every method reads either the surface of the piece or the whole of it, and a fake is built to pass whichever one you use. So the rule is two tests that fail for different reasons: one that reads the surface and one that reads the bulk, both before money changes hands. Here is what each rung catches and what it walks straight past.

The magnet. Catches steel and iron. Walks past brass, copper, tungsten and anything plated over them. A magnet that does not stick tells you the piece is not steel, and nothing else.

Weight against size. The honest workhorse for solid pieces. Brass and copper are far lighter than karat gold, so a chain that looks heavy and weighs light is finished before you reach for anything else. It fails two ways. Hollow and stone-set pieces cannot be read, and tungsten cannot be separated from gold by weight at all: the Royal Society of Chemistry lists both at 19.3 grams per cubic centimetre. That single fact is why tungsten is the fake of choice for bars and heavy plain goods.

The file and the acid.Catches ordinary plating, provided the notch goes deep enough. The point of the test is the notch, not the acid. It gives you a karat rounded to the nearest bottle in the kit, and Thermo Fisher, which would rather sell you a machine, still describes it accurately as “widely used but not very accurate and potentially dangerous”. It fails on plating thicker than your notch and on any piece you are not allowed to mark.

Electronic testers and XRF.The trade’s step up: non-destructive, precise to a fraction of a karat, and the customer can watch. But an X-ray fluorescence reading is a surface reading. Thermo Fisher wrote on its own blog that portable analyzers limit the “penetration depth of the x-rays to about 10-15 microns (in the case of gold)”, and that “in the uncommon case of plating more than 10-15 um in thickness, the only viable portable method for detection that I am aware of is ultrasonic”. Set that against the FTC’s numbers. Honest plating runs from 0.175 to 2.5 microns, so fifteen microns is six times the heavy-plate minimum. The one legitimate product that is thicker, gold filled, is a sheet of karat gold bonded over brass at a twentieth of the weight or more, and it is marked GF for a reason: file the mark off a gold-filled bangle and a surface reading sees karat gold, because at the surface it is karat gold. So a piece that reads right on the box and is thicker than honest plating is one of two things, a marked product with the mark removed or a fake built by someone who knows what your machine can see. The vendor pages on page one say an XRF sees through the gold to the tungsten. The vendor’s own blog says it sees fifteen microns.

Laser testers. A laser tester vaporises a pinpoint of the surface and reads the light that comes off it. Different physics from XRF, same address. It is a surface reading that leaves a small hole.

The referee.Cut it, drill it, or send it for fire assay, which Thermo Fisher calls “the most precise method” in the same breath as noting that it “destroys the sample”. On a bar or a heavy plain piece where you are paying full melt, drill it before you pay. Price the buy so that a seller who refuses the drill is a seller you can afford to lose. That is not a lost sale. That is the test working.

Now put the rungs together. A notch-and-acid plus a weight check is two physics. XRF plus a weight check is two physics. XRF plus acid is one, because both read the skin. For fine-gold bars, where weight cannot separate tungsten from gold, the second test has to be ultrasound or a drill, and if you do not own the first you use the second. Two tests that fail for different reasons. Write it on the wall behind the counter.

What does your buy ticket have to record?

Enough to prove you checked who sold it to you. That is the seller test, and it is the one the February raids were about. JSA’s guidance after the raids was specific: keep proper records, request identification, hold the licenses your state requires, retain items for the period state law sets, and record every transaction. Report suspicious bulk sales to law enforcement, or to JSA confidentially.

Guginsky’s warning is worth reading twice, because it is about price and not paperwork: “If you are an experienced jeweler and you’re buying goods for far less than market value, for pennies on the dollar, that can be used against you in criminal court.” A bargain is not a win at the buy counter. A bargain is evidence.

The state layer sets the mechanics. Florida is a clean example because its statute spells everything out: a secondhand dealer may not sell, alter or dispose of precious metals, gemstones or jewelry for 30 calendar days after buying them; the ticket records the seller’s name, residential address, workplace and phone numbers, the type of ID, the agency that issued it and its number, and the seller’s right thumbprint; and where the software is provided, the record goes to law enforcement electronically within 24 hours. Your state’s numbers will differ. The shape will not. The Jewelers Vigilance Committee adds that most jurisdictions require a secondhand dealer license, and that “you likely must have a scale” the seller can see, approved by the state in places like New York.

Then there is the federal rule most jewelers have never read. Under FinCEN’s regulation for dealers in precious metals, stones and jewels, a retailer who bought more than $50,000 of covered goods from the public in the prior calendar or tax year is treated as a dealer, and a dealer must have a written anti-money-laundering program: approved by senior management, with a named compliance officer, staff training and independent testing. At this year’s prices, $50,000 across a year is not a gold-buying business. It is a jeweler with a steady counter. JVC has been saying this since 2020, and the rule has been enforced since January 1, 2006.

The rule lists its own red flags, and they read like a description of the courier: large amounts of cash, payment from third parties, an unwillingness to supply complete contact information, requests to skip the usual record-keeping, and purchases that are atypical for the customer or the trade. If your counter has a policy at all, those five belong on it.

What does the gold-bar scam look like when it reaches you?

It arrives as clean, new gold from someone who did not buy it. The victim bought it, on instructions, and handed it to a courier who confirmed the pickup with a passcode, sometimes the serial number on a dollar bill. The courier now owns a problem: bars are not money. Your counter is where that problem gets solved, and everything about the transaction is shaped by that.

So the flags are the opposite of the usual walk-in. New bullion, sealed or freshly unsealed, in quantity, with no receipt and no story about where it came from. A seller who is not the person on the ID, or who takes a call while you are writing the ticket. A price well under melt offered before you have said a number. Cash wanted, or a third party to be paid. A “wholesaler” with new, plain, heavy bracelets and no invoice, which is exactly the form authorities in Texas allege the scam gold took after it was melted. Any two of those, decline the buy, write down what you saw, and call JSA or the police. The seller you turn away is worth more to you as a report than as a margin.

The other end of the same scam can also walk in. If you sell bullion and a senior wants to buy bars, is vague about why, or steps outside to take a call while you write it up, you may be the last person who can stop it. The FBI’s line is simple enough to say out loud: the US Government and legitimate businesses will never ask anyone to purchase gold. One question, asked kindly, costs you a sale you did not want: who told you to buy this?

The two-test buy, on one page

Test one, the metal. Treat the stamp and the packaging as a claim. Weigh it, and know what it should weigh. Read the surface with a notch and acid or with XRF. Read the bulk with a different physics before you pay full melt: weight for karat jewelry, ultrasound or a drill for fine-gold bars and heavy plain pieces. Price the buy so a seller who refuses the drill is one you can let go.

Test two, the seller.ID copied, ticket signed, item described and photographed. Pay by a method that leaves a record, and never to a third party. Hold the goods for your state’s period, in your state’s form. Pay near market. Count the year: past $50,000 bought from the public, you are a dealer with a program to write. Report the bulk seller you turned away.

None of that needs a machine you do not already own. The scale, the file, the acid and the ticket book do most of it. An XRF makes the surface reading faster and lets the customer watch, which is worth something at a counter, but it does not replace the second physics, and the vendor who tells you it does is selling the box, not the buy.

Where the buy counter meets the rest of the store

Most people selling gold across your counter are not couriers. They are customers with an inherited ring, and the visit is a custom order walking in. Before you quote a buy price, ask what the money is for and whether they have considered a remake, because their metal is already paid for and the design and the bench work are what they would be buying. How to get more custom jewelry orders works through that conversation as one of the four doors custom work comes through, and how to price custom jewelry when the gold price keeps moving covers what the metal is worth at spot once you have tested it. If the piece does go into stock rather than the melt, what it retails for is in jewelry markup and keystone pricing.

This is where JewelerStudio fits, and only here. The remake conversation dies when the customer cannot picture the new piece, and a sketch on the back of the buy ticket rarely closes it. Studio AI renders their idea from a description in seconds, on your own site or at your counter, so the person who came in to sell fourteen grams of gold can see what it becomes before they decide. It stays white-labeled to your store. The products page shows both tools, plans run $149 to $849 a month, and every plan includes a 7-day free trial. Book a demo if you want to see it running on your own site, or see pricing first.

The short version

Two tests, every buy. The metal: a stamp is a claim, so read the surface and then read the bulk with a different physics, because XRF reads about fifteen microns and a gold-filled or thick-plated piece is karat gold at the surface. Weight catches the brass underneath. Tungsten weighs what gold weighs, so bars get drilled or ultrasound before you pay. The seller: ID, ticket, hold period, a price near market, and a written program once you have bought $50,000 from the public in a year, because in February jewelers in three states who are alleged to have bought scam gold for pennies on the dollar were raided, and the JSA’s warning is that the bargain itself is what gets used against you.