I'm at level 40 and I have never found or ran into a merchant who sells golden ingots or golden ore. The reason I am asking is I want to make gold jewlery because I have a lot of precious stones.

I'm starting to wonder if you can only get golden ingots at really high levels of the game (like level 80) or maybe you can only get it by finding a gold mine.

There's a spell book in one of the bandit caves (for a quest) that transmutes Iron to Silver and Silver to Gold. I can't recall if it was for a companion quest or not.

You can slo find gold veins out in the wild and in mines. But yeah, that transmutation spell is pretty nifty as well.

Yeah, it's in the bandit hideout northwest of whiterun. It's an alteration spell that turns iron ore into silver ore, and silver ore into gold ore. It gets you pretty much unlimited gold.

Oh, and I found gold ore vein in a spriggan cave (with the waterfalls and all).

you need the transmute spell. it allows you to get gold ore, which you can just smelt

Forbidden Cave has lots of them. It's west of Windhelm, the Windhelm alchemy shop keeper send you there on a quest.

I find gold ingots as treasure. Gold ore deposits aren't so common, but I've ran across a few (and I always carry my pickaxe).

Location of a lot of Gold Ore..

Korggstoddr (or whatever) Mine near Markarth is a literal gold mine; and it has a LOT of veins.