Gold Seller Verification: What Must Be True Before You Engage
Gold attracts more transaction fraud than any other commodity. The patterns are stable across years and countries: unverifiable dore claims, assay certificates from laboratories that do not exist, storage fees on gold nobody has seen, and sellers whose authority evaporates under one registry check. The defense is equally stable — verify the seller, the metal and the structure independently.
What a legitimate gold seller can show
A real gold seller in a producing jurisdiction operates under licenses that can be confirmed with the issuing ministry or minerals authority: a mining or trading license, export authorization, and — for artisanal aggregation — documented purchase records. They can name the refinery or vault holding the metal, and that custodian will confirm the holding directly.
Legitimate sellers accept independent assay as a matter of course. The assay that matters is one you commission on sealed samples, performed by an accredited laboratory — not a certificate that arrives in the same email as the offer.
Claims that should stop the transaction
Requests for upfront payments framed as storage, insurance, taxes, or 'release' fees are the operating mechanics of advance-fee fraud. So are offers priced dramatically below the London fix — real gold sells at market, and a discount deep enough to be exciting is deep enough to be impossible.
Be equally careful with intermediaries claiming mandates they cannot document. In gold, an unverifiable mandate is not a formality problem: it usually means the metal, if it exists at all, is controlled by someone who has never heard of your transaction.
Verification checklist
- Confirm the mining/trading license with the issuing authority by name and number
- Confirm export authorization for the specific quantity and destination
- Commission your own assay on sealed samples through an accredited laboratory
- Confirm vault or refinery custody directly with the custodian
- Reject any fee payable before independent verification
- Treat below-market pricing as a red flag, not an opportunity
Paste the offer, email or chat into the Free Deal Check and get a preliminary verification posture with a concrete evidence list — no account required.
Run the Free Deal Check