People with small amounts are just going to have to deal with the "downtown" pawn shops, the ones in the mostly seedy areas with the "We buy your gold" neon signs in the window.
A miserable experience as the owners of these shops are obviously more focused on their margins than getting you the most for your gold. If you get 80% of spot price in those situations, consider yourself lucky.
I would say once you get to the $200K mark (40 ounces these days), you can start dealing with national firms.
For those with large amounts of precious metals, I highly recommend storing them in a depository, as opposed to a home safe or a bank safe deposit box.
Storage fees are reasonable, under $200 a year in most cases (I pay $175). You can even pay a little extra, as I do, for segregated storage, where your metals are stored separate and not mixed up with other people's.
Once your gold (and silver) are stored in a depository, get yourself a decent gold custodian, which are the "national firms" I spoke of earlier. Such as Lear Capital, Noble Gold, or Goldco, for example.
Now it becomes much easier to both sell your gold as a routine online or phone transaction. Say you want to sell five ounces, you just place the order and a few days later you get a check or transfer to your account for about $20K.
No more going to see "Joe" in the wifebeater t-shirt down at the pawn shop next to the payday loan joint!
Now of course your custodian is going to take a fee off the top on every transaction, but now you are getting very close to spot (around 95%).
Thank you.