I took some items a while back that were marked as Gold and were not. Reputable places use machines and they do it in front of you and the machine reads out what percentage of metals an item is comprised of so that you can see and understand. It will be interesting to see what new laws allowing for payment in metals will uncover because any bank backing a mortgage or loan (as an example) will likely be verifying that the metals are what they claim to be. Not my area of expertise, but I did learn a bit from my experience.