Sure, selling the sorts of gold grandmothers and crazy uncles horde like rolls of Krugerrand coins, etc and even raw flake amateur prospectors mine out in Nevada is common and probably pretty easy to convert into cash amounts up to a few hundred thousand dollars. But these seem to have been minted gold bars, very likely stamped and serialized.

Admittedly, I don't know that industry, but wouldn't trying to cash even a dozen 1kg minted gold bars with Federal Reserve serial numbers trigger some... questions? Or alternatively, require finding a vendor who explicitly asks no questions (basically a fence for probable stolen or illicit goods). And, even moving the gold a dozen bricks at a time is 25 separate transactions of over $1.7 million each. Are there a lot of places that just keep a couple million in $100 bills on hand for transactions? The largest branch of a national bank in our suburban area of 200K people gets pissy when we go to get $10,000 cash without calling ahead because "we might run out and need to schedule extra cash delivery."

If it's really possible to walk into a "We Buy Gold" place with 12 1kg gold bars and walk out with $1.7M in cash, no questions asked I'm just surprised. As someone who leans moderate libertarian, I don't have a problem with it. I do kind of resent having to fill out a government form (and the implied presumption I'm a criminal) anytime I get $10K of cash at the bank.