These days the price of gold is holding fairly steady, but then it usually does. The thing is not many people are able to figure out what the real price of gold is and whether or not they can convert it over to cash for close to its real value.
It's like cash in the bank simply for the reason that it is easily converted to cash and for very close to its market value. If someone tries to tell you otherwise, then run for the hills.
Do your research when it comes dealing with buying and selling gold, as it may come in handy if you are offered something that doesn't seem quite right to you. The more you deal with gold, the easier it gets to price it accurately.
Yes, they can convert it over to cash for close to its actual value, and beware of people who tell you that you can buy bargain basement gold that is good quality, because it isn't.
Buying gold below market value is a tough thing to do, which means there is no such thing as a bargain. Look at it this way; to find a bargain on gold, it would be like paying $50 for a $100 bill " which will never happen.
If it does happen, then there is definitely something not right with the whole transaction and you can safely guess you got ripped off. This is why it pays to do your homework before you jump in feet first and start doing deals on what may be questionable gold, or rather gold of questionable origins and purity.
That's relatively easy, as all you need to do is grab a local newspaper or plug the request into Google. If you don't have much success one day, try the next as the value of the US dollar does tend to fluctuate. So you would want to sell on high dollar value days and buy on low value dollar day.
Another place to find out the value of gold that day is to check on the stock exchanges, although this is a bit harder to covert over to a value. It's easier to just use the daily figures you find in the paper or online. If you're really stuck, call a large jeweler who would also have this kind of information at their fingertips.