Chances are that many people have a little bit of gold sitting around the house. It may consist of some old jewelry that they inherited but just do not care for because the style is so outdated. It may consist of wedding rings for a marriage that ended painfully. Or it might even consist of some old coins that someone bought as an investment years ago.

With the price of gold reaching staggering heights in this economy over the last couple of years, these people may look at those little bits of gold and wonder how they can go about taking advantage of those high prices. Since the amounts are quite small, it might be really difficult to find someone who will pay them a good price for their gold without charging them a huge percentage to deal with it.

In such a circumstance, the person may be well-served to track down some gold buyers in Columbus OH. Because of the high price, there are businesses springing up or reorganizing themselves to allow them to buy gold from the average homeowner trying to sell a few small pieces. These gold buyers in Columbus OH compete with others in the same vicinity to try and purchase as much gold as possible because with every purchase they make a profit. The idea is that they are able to collect a lot of small pieces and then it becomes economically feasible to go to a refiner and get it melted down, purified, and then sold as pure gold bars or nuggets into the actual gold market.

So, of course, they have to take a lot of factors into consideration when they are appraising a particular piece. Most important of all is the amount of pure gold actually in the piece and this is more than just the weight of the piece, it also has to do with the karat weight, or the amount of other substances mixed in with the gold. Pure gold is too soft to be made into anything, so almost all gold that people own is actually an alloy with something else. The lower the Karat, 10, 14, 18, or 22, the less gold is actually within the piece. Gold buyers in Columbus OH are able to use a complex formula, based on the total weight and the Karats, which they can test and determine with chemicals, to know how much gold is inside each piece you bring to them.