A savvy seller of gold should be prepared to ask a buyer a few questions.

First, in a phone call or a visit, ask the jeweler, coin dealer, pawn shop or other buyer: "Are you a licensed dealer for gold and have your scales been tested and approved?" advised Gary Adkins, president of the California-based Professional Numismatists Guild.

In Virginia, inspectors from the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services check the accuracy of scales.

Adkins said the next question should probably be: "Do you pay by the pennyweight or gram?"

People who want to sell gold can comparison shop by visiting, or occasionally phoning, buyers to ask what they are paying for the precious metal, he said.

For example, a potential seller can ask: "What are you paying today for 18-karat gold?"

The term "karat" is a measure of the purity of gold: 24-karat is pure; 18-karat is 75 percent gold; 14-karat is 58.5 percent gold; 12-karat is 50 percent gold; and 10-karat is 41.7 percent gold.

Most gold jewelry specifies its karat but some suspect pieces are inaccurately marked.

Before making the visit, however, a potential seller should check that day's spot price for gold at sources such as www.kitco.com. Spot prices for gold are per troy ounce. Recently, the per troy ounce spot price for gold was about $920.

A troy ounce equals about 20 pennyweights or 31.1 grams.

Armed with that information, the visit can follow.

Again, the visitor asks: "What are you paying today for 18-karat gold?" and "What weight measure are you using -- grams or pennyweight?"

One gram equals about .643 pennyweight. Conversion charts are available online.

Now, the seller has the information needed to comparison shop.

One example, based on gold selling at $900 per troy ounce: A seller has an 18-karat bracelet that weighs 4 pennyweight (or 1/5 of an ounce). A bracelet that was pure gold would melt at the following: $900 x .20 (1/5) = $180. Then, because 18-karat is 75 percent gold: $180 x .75 = $135, which would be the bracelet's "melt value."

According to Adkins, sellers generally should expect to receive 65 percent to 70 percent of the melt value of their merchandise from a reputable licensed buyer. Thus, in the example above, a dealer might pay about $90 for the 18-karat, 4 pennyweight bracelet.

"Keep in mind that dealers have 'holding periods' on many items, and buy prices may vary depending on a dealer's handling and carrying costs," Adkins said.

Gold prices could drop during the holding period.

In addition, he said, a buyer's testing does not always accurately determine the karat value of jewelry, which means dealers sometimes end up paying for items later found to be essentially worthless. Those costs can drive a buyer to increase his profit margins, he said.

Many buyers, for competitive reasons and because the price of gold changes constantly, will not disclose their pay rate over the phone.

A buyer is the middleman between the seller and the refinery, which separates the pure gold from an alloy. The buyer makes a profit because the refinery pays him more than the buyer pays the seller.

During several recent phone calls to jewelry stores and pawn shops in the Roanoke Valley, only two pawn shops were willing to report the rate they were paying that day for 18-karat gold.

One was paying $8 to $9 per pennyweight and the other about $6.50 per pennyweight -- both rates are substantially lower than the potential value calculated by Adkins. Both said an in-store evaluation would be required before a final pay rate could be calculated.

Finally, a fine piece of antique gold jewelry might be worth more as is than as scrap, Adkins said. The same can be true of gold coins.

Again, he recommended comparison shopping among reputable appraisers.

For more specific information about the sale of coins, go to www.pngdealers.com.