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Like this question, but cranked up to 11.

One day I'm going about my business, answering questions on Worldbuilding.StackExchange, when all of a sudden I get sucked into a fantasy world. I meet some people, have all sorts of wacky adventures, help two of my traveling companions hook up (because let's be honest, it's clear as day they like each other and the whole "we're not together!" thing is getting old fast) and together we beat a big doomsday villain. I get to keep a share of the villain's treasury, and with a tearful goodbye I travel home with my prize.

In this case, the prize is 100 gold bars. They are stamped to mark them in a way not used anywhere on Earth, yet somehow they are the standard 400 troy ounce Good Delivery size and shape we use on Earth with a same amount of purity. The gold is identical to Earth gold as well: if you were to run tests on it you'd find the gold to be identical to what we on Earth mine.

But here's the problem: you cannot just sell gold bars on the open market without drawing unwanted attention from the authorities. 100 bars is the equivalent to 1240kg of gold, so I cannot easily haul it around either. The markings on the bars would draw attention as well, but those could be erased (though unmarked gold could draw even more attention). I don't want the bars to sit around collecting dust, I want to be able to make money off of them and spend it. So how would I go about liquidating all this gold without getting into trouble with the law?

Community
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Thomas Jacobs
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15 Answers15

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Melt down small amounts and use it to manufacture gold plated "ultra fidelity lossless" audio/video/network/iphone charger cables that you sell at \$100 - $500 a piece to pretentious fools. This actually gets you more than the market price for your gold!

You may not have 45 million dollars at once, but you'll have a steady income for many years, and as a bonus, you'll have 99 bars of gold left in case of apocalypse or something.

Alternatively, restamp some of the bars with a Swastika, hide them in some cave in Germany and then "find them". If you get a 1% finder's fee, you're still rich.

Edit: This answer has drawn a lot more attention than expected, so I will try to improve the quality some.

The original question outlines the problem with authorities taking a dim view of anyone trying to sell a huge amount of gold from an unknown source.

Unloading the gold in bulk to any shady people carries a serious risk too: They may well decide to betray you, lock you up and torture the location and source of your gold out of you.

Assuming you don't already know how to speak "Billionaire", you would look out of place and suspicious trying to pass yourself off as one or even as a representative for a rich guy trying to liquidate some assets, though that is still a realistic option (see user16295's answer for a better description of that) but there are better options.

Pawn shop road trip

Luckily for you, you live in the age of StackExchange and more importantly, 3D printing with gold. It will take some setup and preparation, but you don't have to try and sell whole bars, you can instead mass-print jewelry and age it a bit (get some small bits of dirt stuck in the recesses).

The second part of the prep is setting yourself up as some kind of travelling salesman or freelancer, plan some trips to distant states/cities and start doing rounds of the local pawn shops and gold buying outfits (don't google them from your own internet connection obviously).

Never sell more than a "grandma's inheritance" at once. Accept cash only, but walk away from too low a price. You're not a thief trying to fence stolen goods after all. It will take a long time, but you can have fun along the way and get see more of the world.

Hook up with someone important

This is a lot more complicated, but you did become a hero in the course of your fantasy world adventure, so maybe your skills are up to it. The goal here is to make someone with the resources to buy your gold believe that you are well-connected, so that they will refrain from taking your gold and life for fear of the consequences.

Your target will be some rich person that can unload the gold again, no questions asked. This means you'll probably end up with some Arab billionaire who's looking to gold-plate his newest yacht or wants to work with foreign businessmen on a prestige project. Getting into the oil and construction industries (as a contractor) will be difficult, but if you can manage it, they are your best options. Alternatively, you cash in some of your gold through the pawn shop route so you can spend enough to pose as an investor in any field currently popular over there.

Your ticket to a deal will be an introduction by someone the target highly regards, so once you have some way in, network like crazy. The best stepping stone is likely a fellow countryman, both because it's easier to connect with them and because your real target will assume you know each other from business or private life "back home". Hang out in the expat favorite bars, find out who's only tech and who's a dealmaker. Get yourself invited to parties and events, etc. Once you have a promising link, investigate their business partners. Select the likeliest prospect and have a good story ready. "I need to sell $45 million in gold" is not a good story in most cases." Investment opportunities work best, so tell your newest BFF about your investment plan while you have some drinks and ask him if he knows about "this guy Aziz" and if they can introduce you.

Make your pitch to the prospect and if he's interested, tell them that you would love to get into more detail and schedule a meeting some weeks ahead. Apologize profusely for the delay and explain you need the time to unwind another deal and free up your money. Pray for the guy to bite and ask about the details, at which point you mention the gold and see what happens.

Note: All this assume you are a) male and b) of an age to pose as a business man. If you are female, all this will not work. If you also happen to be a hot blonde, then you can skip all the socializing and just straight up ask the first crazy-colored supercar driving guy you spot to buy all your gold.

Cyrus
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    In the case of an apocalypse you'll hit the trope of gold not having a high calorie content. – Separatrix Feb 01 '16 at 14:16
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    True, I was more thinking of a financial meltdown, so apocalypse if the wrong word. – Cyrus Feb 01 '16 at 15:17
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    BTW Nazi gold was stamped with Eagle holding Swastika in claws! –  Feb 01 '16 at 19:11
  • This plan definitely works because Monster is currently using it for their cable products and they haven't gone out of business yet. – TylerH Feb 01 '16 at 19:38
  • But I want to go to the space station. That costs 40 million. – Joshua Feb 01 '16 at 20:30
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    -0.5 because the answer is basically "compete with Monster Inc." which is silly for all sorts of reasons, but worst of all is it doesn't have anything to do with having a stockpile of gold. The second option seems to involve losing 99% of the value which is likewise unhelpful. – Superbest Feb 02 '16 at 00:03
  • Third option: Find someone who's sitting on a pile of BTC and swap. You can then convert your BTC to cash through any solvent exchange (just watch out for the insolvent ones). – aroth Feb 02 '16 at 05:06
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    swapping GOLD for worthless internet money is ... pretty much the dumbest thing i can imagine - and the absolute best thing for the BTC seller. Also : 1% of 45M is only 450k - thats hilarious and not worth the effort. Also : noone will take your "nazi gold" from you but they will ask about its origin and why you're supposed to have it --- and you better answer that question believably or else you'll have a criminal investigation on your hands – specializt Feb 02 '16 at 05:16
  • Looking over the linked page, it appears that the "3D printing with gold" does not, in fact, involve any 3D printing with gold. They 3D print a wax model, make a plaster cast of it, then use that as a mold to pour liquid gold into. – Mason Wheeler Feb 02 '16 at 16:02
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    The issue with "gold plated connectors" is that you really use very very little gold to plate a connector. You probably will need less than 10 Kg to build 100.000.000 gold plated headphones, and now your trouble will be finding 100.000.000 idiots who think they can hear the difference. You will be stuck with the gold and having spent your cash building them. So back to square one. – SJuan76 Feb 02 '16 at 23:43
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Laws are local with that sort of money

If you want to clear the whole lot out at once, you could to sell to a national government. The advantage of this option is that it's legal. If it's not strictly legal, they'll make it legal.

Sell to an eccentric millionaire, the amount of gold you're moving, while heavy and a lot of money to normal people, isn't a vast amount in the world of the super rich. In fact it's not enough for you to join their ranks, but is a reasonable amount to be paid certain items in their world.

How to actually go about this

Make contact through a respectable legal firm. That's all you need to do. Take the whole deal above board. You're in wholesale now, not retail. If you try this through the back door, if you act suspicious, people will be suspicious. If you go to a city legal firm and suggest that you want to do a deal on this sort of scale, and they'll find you a buyer or suggest someone who can. Don't just walk in through the door of course, make an appointment first.

Things to remember

If you want to handle that sort of money, you need to look like someone who handles that sort of money. Get a properly tailored suit from Savile Row, get a shirt that fits, wear really good shoes, get a shave and a haircut. You can expect to spend easily a couple of thousand on clothes before you start. You're moving millions, dress like someone who moves millions, it'll make your life much easier

Separatrix
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    Hello, is this "Rich and Richer Law Company"? Uhm, yes, I would like to make an appointment with mister Rich. About what? Well, um... I need to sell about ton of gold. Hello? Uh, hello?... – Pavel Janicek Feb 01 '16 at 14:05
  • As long as it is not illegal to own the gold bars in the first place, you still need to explain how you have all this gold, which can be a little difficult, to say at least – Gianluca Feb 01 '16 at 14:07
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    @Gianluca it's a problem in the UK, but if you have them in say, the UAE, nobody will look twice. You almost certainly won't need to explain how you have them, if someone had stolen that much everyone would know. – Separatrix Feb 01 '16 at 14:13
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    When you sell them, don't go to the legal firm Dewey, Cheatum, and Howe. – Xandar The Zenon Feb 01 '16 at 14:40
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    @PavelJanicek They won't hang up on you, this is lawyers we're talking about, and you just told them you have 45 million dollars you don't want. – Draco18s no longer trusts SE Feb 01 '16 at 15:36
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    +1, but I am kind of split on this answer, it contains what I think is the correct answer, but it is kind of unclear. Basically, what you need to do is to make a perfectly legit deal with your own government using a respectable law firm as intermediary for the negotiations. That is the only solution that avoids all legal issues by allowing you to actually provide an accurate explanation of the source of your wealth as proven by a ton gold and whatever else you brought with you. – Ville Niemi Feb 01 '16 at 15:57
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    @VilleNiemi, it doesn't have to be your own government, just a government that your government doesn't currently have a trade embargo against. The entirely above board way in the UK would be to declare a treasure find. That's less fun, I should probably edit it in though. – Separatrix Feb 01 '16 at 16:01
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    @user16295 If you use another government, you'll eventually end up having to explain your wealth to your own government anyway to avoid legal issues. Many governments can simply confiscate property that they suspect is of illegal origin. The US, for example, at least had such a law. Even a hush hush secret deal with your own government removes such issues since your wealth will already be approved legal by definition. – Ville Niemi Feb 01 '16 at 16:17
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    Being able to just confiscate on mere suspicion sounds harsh, but fundamentally it comes because you have failed to prove you really legally own the property instead of simply possessing it as a part of a crime. – Ville Niemi Feb 01 '16 at 16:19
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    I'm rich because the, let's say French, government paid me €50million for my goods. It depends how friendly your government is but certainly in the UK they can't take on suspicion, you're still innocent until proven otherwise. Unless you're trying to move it in cash, then they'll take it. Once a government payment is involved it's all as clean and laundered as it's possible for it to be. – Separatrix Feb 01 '16 at 16:24
  • FYI, the US government does seize assets on suspicion if they're implicated in a drug crime. If the case is dropped, not brought to trial, or lost - it requires legal action on the part of the person whose assets were seized to get the property returned. – Jim2B Feb 01 '16 at 16:26
  • French government only decides what is legal within France, so you are covered if you bring in the gold in France or never leave France afterwards. If a foreign government pays you 50 million for no apparent reason questions will be asked. They can't really sue the foreign government so good enough lawyers might be able to cover you, but it would be a hassle. And a government friendly enough to give real protection, would also be friendly enough to just ask your government what is going on when receiving your offer. So going foreign doesn't really add value, just complexity. – Ville Niemi Feb 02 '16 at 03:02
  • yeah and after you arrive at the law firm the police will have a nice talk with you .... kids, it aint that easy - no matter how expensive your suit was. Sorry, this is reality. – specializt Feb 02 '16 at 05:21
  • @PavelJanicek the conversation is more likely to go along the lines of "you have lots of gold you can't account for... well, you say you acquired it legally and that's good enough for us,we have no reason whatsoever to think you're not fully reputable. Now our fee is...." – gbjbaanb Feb 02 '16 at 09:41
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In the US, try the following...

Contact Washington and ask for an appointment with the Under-Secretary responsible for International Trade. You won't get a direct meeting, but one of the Under-Secretary's secretaries will happily hear your case. During that meeting, introduce yourself as a representative for (whatever your fantasy friends call their homeland), a newly sovereign nation which is petitioning for favored trading status with the United States of America. Show the Under-Secretary's secretary one of the gold bars and describe it as a goodwill gift for the Under-Secretary.

Wait patiently to meet the Under-Secretary in person. With 30lbs of gold on the line, it shouldn't be a long wait.

Tell the Under-Secretary the whole truth about your fantasy world adventure, except the part where you were sent home to Earth with no means of getting back. Your friends obviously understand inter-planetary or inter-dimensional transport. They really should have left you with a means to return, but since they didn't, you will just have to wing it, and fill in the cracks in your story via the generous application of gold.

In short order, you should find yourself recognized as the U.S. Ambassador for (whatever your fantasy friends call their homeland), conditional upon your building an embassy in Washington, (and anywhere else you want a mansion). You will have tax free status, immunity to most laws and the freedom to spend as much of your money as you like, without anyone caring where it came from.

--- alternative plan if your friends gave you a way to return ---

Really no different from above, except that you become a real Ambassador, arranging trade agreements and issuing visa's to wealthy tourists, anthropologists and CIA operatives. The nice part of this scenario, is that after the original bribes to the Under Secretary, the rest of the expenses will be picked up by your friends back on the fantasy world.

Henry Taylor
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    I like the "balls" this one takes to pull off. I just don't trust my government officials that much, lol – Jim2B Feb 01 '16 at 17:04
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    @Jim2B - At this point, you ARE the untrustworthy government official! ;) I love this idea! – Taegost Feb 01 '16 at 19:42
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    As pointed out above, it's not really that much money. There are hundreds of thousands of people with that much money, and I'm sure the US government has better things to do than sell ambassadorships to every yahoo with a few mil lying around. – Superbest Feb 02 '16 at 00:18
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    @Superbest it's not that they don't have better things to do, but what makes you think that they would actually be doing those better things? – user2813274 Feb 02 '16 at 02:57
  • @Superbest It's not that much money, but it's exactly just that much gold. Imagine someone suddenly appears with more than a ton of gold that's marked. No new mines have opened, nobody has cried of theft nor are there records of somebody selling this ton, as well as nobody knows how that pile of gold got into your country. And the guy owning it tells you this story about a new, wondrous land. – Nikita Akopjans Feb 02 '16 at 08:46
  • Evidence of the existence of inter-universe travel, by any means, is a much much much more valuable thing than a few tonnes of gold. I won't say "you'll be dissected", but, you'll be dissected. – Yakk Feb 02 '16 at 14:40
  • @NikitaAkopjans My first thought would be the legendary "Nazi gold train", so I would assume I'm talking to an agent of war criminals. – mg30rg Feb 02 '16 at 15:18
  • @mg30rg Sure, but that only works if you live in Europe(in a lesser extent if you live in Africa), I have a hard time believing that Nazi gold could reach the fine shores of the land of Freedom and stay unnoticed for more than seven decades, more so than stay in a nice an tidy pile of golden greatness unless hidden in someone's vault. – Nikita Akopjans Feb 02 '16 at 15:47
  • @mg30rg, truth (or in this case, conspiracy theory) is stranger than fiction. Check out the accounts of Uboat 977 and Uboat 530, during the closing months of WWII. – Henry Taylor Feb 02 '16 at 15:56
  • @Yakk. Okay, so that's a problem... maybe the meeting with the Under Secretary should be handled over the phone, with the gift delivered by courier. Thanks for pointing that out. – Henry Taylor Feb 02 '16 at 15:58
  • @HenryTaylor your estimate of how blatantly open to bribery a public servant in the USA is is also out of whack. This is some senior public servant with 30-odd years of service. It might be possible, but the problem of finding (someone willing to be bribed) and bribing (without them turning you in, even out of self-preservation if not morality) someone with that kind of power is skipping the hard part. You might as well say "just turn it into legal cash deposits." – Yakk Feb 02 '16 at 16:10
  • @Yakk, when I wrote this answer, I wasn't even sure that it was a bribe. Many decades ago, I took a tour of the White House and I can remember the guide pointing out priceless artworks and magnificent furniture and saying, this was a gift from the King of France, and this came from Spain. It seems to me that countries give each other treasures all the time. I thought that giving something valuable was the price of admission into the world leaders club. – Henry Taylor Feb 02 '16 at 16:34
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In the UK (I assume elsewhere as well) there are companies that will buy old gold rings, offering the consumer a low price. They then melt them down and sell the gold. These companies tend to pay the consumer for the old rings etc in cash…

A common way to dispose of stolen gold is to create such a company, operate it as normal, but make up a few fake customers. (Think of the car wash in breaking bad.)

Note: Handling stolen property is a crime in the UK, and the police can take the property from you unless you can prove where it comes from. If the police can make a jury think that you are reckless as to where the gold come from, e.g. the jury does not believe what you tell them, so assume it must be stolen => lots of years in jail.

Cary Bondoc
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Ian Ringrose
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    For a good reference, watch Breaking Bad... to launder money, they buy a car wash... You then see some owner finishes taking money from customer > Actual Customer walks away > Owner says "Oh, you'd like a wax and the super ultimate clean package? That'll be $50 more dollars. Thanks. Come again". Same basic idea. "Funny Money" inserted into a normal business... over a period of time, it's just extra static and extra money. – WernerCD Feb 01 '16 at 19:24
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    Why would you use an illegal method, commonly associated with drug dealers and other organized crime, to evade a few fees and taxes on legally obtained assets? – Superbest Feb 02 '16 at 00:06
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    @Superbest Income tax in the uk is about 40%, capital gains is 28%. We're not just talking about a "few fees", we're talking about 12 to 18 MILLION in taxes. How much trouble would YOU go to, to make $18000000? – Benubird Feb 02 '16 at 10:01
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    @Benubird, because handling stolen property is a crime in the UK, and the police can take the property from you unless you can PROVE where it come from. If the police can make a jury think that you are reckless as to where the gold come from, e.g. the jury does not believe what you tell them, so assume it must be stolen => lots of years in jail. – Ian Ringrose Feb 02 '16 at 10:33
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    @Benubird How much taxes would you pay to keep the remaining 20-40 MILLION? Evading taxes puts all of your assets at risk. – Yakk Feb 02 '16 at 14:41
  • @Benubird Sounds like more of a UK problem, and question does not specify UK. As for your question, I would go to zero trouble and pay all of the income tax, just like millions of other law abiding taxpayers. – Superbest Feb 02 '16 at 23:37
  • @Superbest no, but the answer (which I am commenting on) does specify UK. You asked, I answered - and you may be law abiding, but that doesn't mean that the character in OPs book/play/whatever is. Remember, this is worldbuilding.se, not ethicsandmorality.se – Benubird Feb 03 '16 at 08:10
  • @BEnubird By your logic, you asked me what I would do, so answered. – Superbest Feb 03 '16 at 15:40
  • @WernerCD That process gets even faster as you use the clean money from the car wash to buy other businesses that are easy to coverup, like laundromats, nail salons and barber shops. This gets back to the original problem of paying taxes, since the larger you are, the higher the chances that the government will notice how much you're making and demand that you pay taxes on your businesses. – Carlos Danger Feb 03 '16 at 16:14
  • Depends - millions in tax to legitimately keep whatever is left seems reasonable to me. Tax evasion to keep the rest ...? Well, yeah. But you'll run an unnecessary risk of getting caught, and usually laundering money has an overhead to it that means you lose out in some fashion. – Sobrique Feb 03 '16 at 19:45
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City solution

Make friends with a jeweler. You can melt gold in your microwave and make your own rings but your jeweler buddy can probably make better ones. Make him a full partner in the sale of the rings but don't tell him how much gold you have. Together you make a paper trail for a portion of the rings by setting yourself up as a buyer of gold at estate sales.

Country solution

Buy a defunct gold mine pretend to rework tailings add your gold in a little at a time over the space of years.

King-Ink
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    The problem with the "country solution" is that - at least in my home country - you only rent the mining rights of your goldmine from the state, and you have to pay a huge portion of your gold for mining it from the empty mine, so you would end up losing a huge amount of your money. – mg30rg Feb 01 '16 at 15:38
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    When you launder money this low efficiency should be expected. The answer of course, could be, buy a gold mine in a country with low extraction tax or enforcement. – King-Ink Feb 01 '16 at 15:41
  • I was aware of that, but - since there is no criminal activity related to the gold - money laundering can only be a far parallel here. I mean this is no drug-money or ransom or something. – mg30rg Feb 01 '16 at 16:00
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    You may lose a large chunk, but if you pick a country with relatively low tax rates, you'll still end up with plenty left when you start off with $45 million worth of gold. If you hand me $45 million then immediately take back $22.5 million, I'm still not gonna be too upset about my day. – Jon Story Feb 01 '16 at 16:28
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    @mg30rg You launder money/assets to give it a legitimate paper-trail. Currently, you have large amounts of assets without a legitimate paper-trail. This gold is only marginally more legitimate than gold from a bank robbery, in that nobody is currently looking for that gold. It is arguably less legitimate than cash gotten from criminal activities, in that cash is extremely fungible and usually has no paper trail by default. With enough of any asset, possession is no longer 9/10 of the law. – Yakk Feb 02 '16 at 14:44
  • Use of a gold mine in this manner is essentially fraud and could wind up getting you in trouble. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bre-X – Biff MaGriff Feb 02 '16 at 21:42
  • @BiffMaGriff this is small potatoes compared to that. – King-Ink Feb 02 '16 at 21:57
  • Umm, don't try to melt gold in a microwave, there are lots of safety issues with that.. Gold has a low melting point and buying a home crucible/foundry is easy enough. – RBarryYoung Feb 03 '16 at 16:58
  • I melt glass and and fire ceramics in the microwave all the time. I have never had a problem. Although I recommend reading up on it first. – King-Ink Feb 03 '16 at 17:07
  • @King-Ink Yes, but glass and ceramics are not conductive metals with easily freed electrons, Gold IS. Microwaving gold is a good way to damage your microwave and/or start a fire at the least, and burn down your house at the worst. *DO NOT TRY TO MELT METALS IN A MICROWAVE*. It tends to end very badly. – RBarryYoung Feb 09 '16 at 16:44
  • @RBarryYoung You really have no idea what you are talking about. http://www.microwavegoldkiln.com/ http://www.amazon.com/Gold-Smelting-Microwave-Kiln-Kit/dp/B00I0F1R7C https://youtu.be/tB3oQeTG-Mc – King-Ink Feb 11 '16 at 02:43
  • Nope sorry, that would be you. Just because someone sells a product on Amazon does not make it safe or even a good idea under any circumstances. You will note this line in the description"*Use at your own risk...*" Indeed. – RBarryYoung Feb 11 '16 at 04:33
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Melt one of the bars in small pieces and sell them to a lot of small "I Buy Gold" shops and another lot of Loan houses. This will not get you the right value, but it is just 1 bar. Or half a bar.

Then start buying gold yourself, or even create your own Loan house (a TV show is a plus).

Now that you have a stable income of gold (and a stable outcome of money) you can easily justify selling gold on market price to a Bank or national Treasury. Or even "on the wild" to jewelery makers or gold-recyclers. In the view of any inspector, you sell gold to have an income of money to compensate the outcome and have a small profit margin.

After that point, just sell all the gold as melted items. You have not only made cash from it but also created a stable bussiness that you can use to justify everything afterwards.

Make sure to destroy all documents older that 5 years (or whichever is the expiry time in your jurisdiction) and nobody will ever be able to investigate your first years, but you'll still be on the legal side for the last 5 years.

Envite
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  • So your solution starts with "first, dispose of a half-million dollars worth of gold by going to pawn shops/gold buying shops". Or maybe a quarter-million. You go on, but you are already behind bars at this point in your story. – Yakk Feb 02 '16 at 14:45
  • @Yakk, you could fire up the first three months of the business and storefront on credit cards, and keep it under $10k. This answer is most do-able I think. – vulpineblazeyt Feb 03 '16 at 19:00
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Start a small jewelry shop and try to stay under the radar, at least at the beginning. Try to have customers that give you their jewelry to be transformed in some other jewelry (i.e. make a ring from some earrings) and start making your own.

Then with this type of business, you can start to make some jewelry with your own gold. If someone asks where you find the gold, you can provide the ticket for your customer's gold. For the (small) amount of the additional gold, you can just say you have found at an antiques fair or the gold comes from some of your family jewelry and you transformed it other jewelry.

It is a slow method but as long as you don't do anything too strange to point at your direction, you should probably stay out of the government attention.

Jim2B
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Gianluca
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  • That'll take an awful lot of time for a thousand and a quarter kilograms of gold. – cst1992 Feb 02 '16 at 09:46
  • I know, but since you cannot sell all the gold bars in a relatively short period without drawing unwanted attention (from authorities and probably organized crime), the only option is to work on a longer period. – Gianluca Feb 02 '16 at 10:15
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Take your gold bars on a cross-country trip. Bury each bar in a different location--shallow, only enough to keep them from being seen. Pick locations of no interest to anybody--here in the US at least you'll find plenty of suitable locations in western part of the country. (The Rockies, the desert--anyplace not practical to develop.)

Record the GPS coordinates, put a marker on top of the burial spot and take a bunch of pictures, then remove the marker.

Now go to something like the Silk Road (I haven't paid attention but I'm sure there's some replacement for it out there by now) and sell them. Buyer gets the coordinates and the photos. (Give them a very general area before they bid so they can buy a bar that's near them.) For validation purposes you might want to set up a long range solar powered camera pointed at the spot in case they try to claim nothing was there.

If the authorities do start sniffing around they can't get any farther than your bitcoin address if you were careful in doing this.

Loren Pechtel
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    Hey! Guess what? I just did it. Since you gave me the idea, I offer you the incredible offer of 1 kg gold bar for just 10.000€. Just send me a bank check for 10.000 € and I will tell you the coordinates were you can find your gold bar! What could go wrong? – SJuan76 Feb 02 '16 at 23:49
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1) Spend a little time learning how to convert your bars into a believable facsimile of naturally-occurring gold dust.

2) Buy some equipment and set yourself up as a gold miner in Alaska.

3) By adding your fake gold dust to the pot, you will become known as a phenomenally successful miner.

4) Get a borderline-dysfunctional crew, and you can get your own reality TV show, along the lines of "Gold Rush".

5) With decent ratings based on contrived crises, not only will you make excellent money selling your gold, you will get paid by the show. The two top earners on "Gold Rush" are estimated to be paid $500,000 per year.

True, you'll have to spend your summers hauling dirt in the boonies of Alaska, but you'll have about 8 months a year to enjoy yourself in luxury.

WhatRoughBeast
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    Then sell the "fake gold mine! – Ian Ringrose Feb 01 '16 at 23:28
  • Thing is, converting gold bars into "naturally-occurring gold dust" is not that easy, and trained experts can and will catch you. Alluvial gold is different from other form factors of gold. And the Bre-X scandal broke when due-diligence geological coring by independent parties failed to find significant gold (post facto it was found that Bre-X had spiked the surface of its cores with gold ground off from jewelry, amongst others). – Iwillnotexist Idonotexist Feb 02 '16 at 02:57
  • You won't have to spend your summers in the Alaskan boonies if you hire an actor to pretend to be you... they'll do a better job of being on TV too. – gbjbaanb Feb 02 '16 at 09:44
  • @gbjbaanb - True enough, but then you have to worry about the actor blackmailing you. – WhatRoughBeast Feb 02 '16 at 13:33
  • @IwillnotexistIdonotexist - The Bre-x fraud was uncovered when the mine output did not match expectations, causing a close examination of saved lab samples. In this case, all output would be immediately melted down for purification, and no evidence would be saved. The mine output is concentrated product, not in situ samples. Furthermore, there is no due diligence effort applicable to someone who is just selling his "mined" gold. Part of learning how to fake it would be identifying trace impurities which need to be added to the fakes so the raw dust is not too pure. – WhatRoughBeast Feb 02 '16 at 13:42
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Trade them for cocaine! There is a huge and thriving market for cocaine which can be sold in small quantities. As long as you stay out of the ghetto and peddle your drugs to the middle - or even better upper - class of society the chance of being caught is minimal (and since you are not selling crack a tearfull eye will make the judge take pity on you if you are caught).

The trick of course will be how to execute that big initial trade. Sorry I cant be of too much help with that, but if you place a question like "how to trade gold for coke" here in the forum I am sure there will be plenty of creative and valuable suggestions.

Good luck.

mortpiedra
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    There might be some people, who would take issue with you stepping on their turf, and who have less-than-pleasant ways to deal with competition... So quite a risky proposition. – hyde Feb 02 '16 at 13:20
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Pretty much all the answers so far require you to invest time money or possible jail time. If i had just happen to have received 100 gold bards I'd go in one of two ways, which are a bit illegal but not as much as trading for coke or resource consuming as melting or buying old gold mine (even though they would still require some action on your behalf):

  1. Claim that you have found the gold, like they recently did in Poland with the Nazi Gold Train. Claim that you were just going around your back yard with your trusted metal detector and the gold just happen to be there. It's not stolen, there aren't any missing 100 bars anywhere, nor the markings will give anyone any clue where the gold came from, its just old, long lost gold you found.

  2. Slightly less preferable as it would require more preparation on your side like taking care of a will, and will executor, etc. is you inherited it from your recently deceased uncle, who's had it who knows from where ...

Иво Недев
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  • I don't know about the laws everywhere but be careful with treasure trove laws in 1 and inheritance tax in 2. Also, in both cases, I think people will look very closely at where you got the money from – Alchymist Feb 03 '16 at 12:56
  • In Poland this train wasn't actually found, it was just more rumors than usual. (Treat it as some local Loch Ness Monster equivalent). Anyway, by Polish law, if this train was found, it would be mostly gov property. – Shadow1024 May 12 '17 at 06:58
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Assuming that you're in the United States, you absolutely can sell gold bars on the open market without drawing attention from the authorities if you turn the bars over to the authorities and tell them that you found them, for example, when you were digging in your backyard. In most jurisdictions in the United States, the bars will be considered "abandoned" by the theoretical original owner, and you will be deemed the owner. You will have to pay taxes on the proceeds from the sale of the gold bars, but no one will raise an eyebrow when you go to sell them.

If you say that you found the bars digging on U.S. public property (e.g., you find them while hiking in a national park), you should again turn the bars over to the authorities. In most states, the law requires that the authorities post a notice of the find, and allow the public some designated period of time to come forward and claim ownership. (To claim ownership, a person would have to provide details regarding where that person buried the gold bars that you "found," which of course no one would be able to do.) Once that claim period expires, most jurisdictions' laws are pretty much akin to "finders-keepers;" the gold bars will be given back to you, and again, you can do with them what you like and with no interference from the authorities as long as they ultimately get their share in the form of sales and/or capital gains taxes.

yapishkahilt
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  • Note that last time I read a law like this, the time period was some 10 years before you get it back. So while it's legal, it may not be fast. I'm not able to find any good info on normal time periods right now though, or even confirm the case of 10 years. – MichaelS Feb 04 '16 at 07:06
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If you have the ability to remove the stamp, you must have the ability to re-stamp it. In which case, soon after in the news...

Local man discovers 60 year old unclaimed Nazi treasure

After claiming a sizable reward for the funds it was donated to insert real-organisation for repatriating Nazi gold...

Sure you won't clear 100% of it, maybe you can negotiate 20-50% but that's still better than 0 and the authorities won't be on your tail because its untraceable prior to 1945.

Community
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"I don't want the bars to sit around collecting dust, I want to be able to make money off of them"

  1. to make (even) "more money" out of them should not be a priority, right? I mean, why should it? Is it really such a difference to have e.g. 40Mio (in gold) or 60mio (cash&dividends)?
  2. so, if it is not about "making more money", why not keep the gold you don't need to be liquidated for spending? The gold will be there tomorrow, even when it collected dust. Nobody knows about tomorrows "value" of the nominal cash from a one time sale you would received.
  3. to liquidate just the amount you need for your day to day spending on your consumption, sell some flakes of a bar to your local Cash4Gold shop. If it is bigger, go to Switzerland to a refinery.
  4. Government will be interested anyway, regardless if it is gold or cash. So with keeping the gold, you might be better off, than with having the cash in a checking account instead (remember wealth tax?).
T3 H40
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Ein Gast
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  1. Write a book about your story

  2. Get a gold bar authenticated as real gold

  3. Become a paid speaker at conferences or book signings or whatever, using your gold bar as a prop to bolster credibility. You could even give moral lectures about the evils of greed and how you won't sell the gold because money isn't important (you just insist on a $100,000 speakers fee because, you know, expenses)

  4. Eventually, you might actually sell one as a collector's item, but your main money could come from the book/speaking circuit.

Just trying to think outside the box a little :)

Adam D. Ruppe
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