Raw gold cannot be sold except on assay by a third party. This means that you have to bring it to a refiner. Johnson-Matthey or Englehard are two. Royal Canadian Mint is another. There is also some refinery in Quebec. Historically, the CIBC or BNS should take it as they did in the 90's and 20's at the turn of the siecle, but if they did today, they would just send it to refine and give a receipt.
Some mining companies may deal with you in quantity, such as Asarco, Newmont, Corona, Lac, Dome (I would not trust Noranda). The coin dealers may deal as well. Jewelers, "surprisingly" may buy gold. They are fully equipped, some of them, to assay and refine. Roots and Norton and such assayers will perhaps deal or find a buyer. I am sure they know lots. Denver Mint would deal as well. I sure Kitco takes what would be called concentrate. A company called Deakins used to operate and would take gold over the counter.
Best deal is to get your gold refined to 4 nines pure and then sell. But 4 nines or one part in ten thousand refineries are all licensed to track gold by the government so you may not want that.
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Gold panning is the best way to determine the pay of a low grade gravel. Why is that with its attendant high losses? Well, a gold pan takes a sample in a ten pound 14 inch pan of 3 pounds. That is 48 times the size of a normal furnace assay. So in nuggety distributed gold, you have 48 times the chance of an even assay. Never mind the losses. The pan equates closely to what you recover in a sluice box, which is what you use. Even if you pan crushed hardrock or pyrites after roasting the iron to release the locked in gold, the loss rate of panning, which you know, is balanced by the high nugget recovery of the large sample, so it is superior, in accuracy. Pannings precision because of losses (up to 50%) is low! There are 500 sluicers in the Yukon even today, athough this is declining. Alaska has it groups. The Indians want too much cash up front for their land for development. Washington, BC and Oregon have effectively blocked stream or bench diggings by yardage limitations (2000 per year in BC) and psuedo environmental regulations. (Thinking that the sluicer is looking for gold in certain places such as stream bends, the government of Washington bans usage of these places as being salmon breeding ground. This in creeks on the sides of mountains that have no fish anyway.)
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