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HOW TO SELL COINS

Answer: Sell them to Me! [Click Here]

The way it work is you tell us what and how many coins you have.  If we are interested in reviewing your coins we will send you a sufficient dollar amount (the easiest way to make this work is if you supply a paypal account) to pay the costs of sending use the coins for review (you, the seller, pay shipping insurance).    

When the coins arrive, if the condition allows us to buy (usually does) we  make an offer for the coins.  If you accept, we send you the dollar amount.  If you refuse the offer we send the coins back at our expense.  If the coins/tokens are of such condition we are not able to buy (corrosion, holes, counterfeit, not significantly as described, etc) then we send back to you at our expense.

 coinminer@thecoinminer.com

Wholesale Price and Retail Price

Generally, when you buy a coin you will pay retail price and when you sell a coin you will realize (be paid) wholesale price. The difference between the two supply the profit for the dealer.   On the open market, such as an auction or on a wholesale site, what somebody is willing to pay to buy a coin is termed the 'bid' price.  What someone is willing sell the coin for is called the 'ask' price. 

BlueSheet vs. GreySheet

These two periodical trade papers supply bid and ask prices for various coin types and conditions.  The BlueSheet is the amount for a coin that is sight unseen. That is, if you call up a coin dealer and ask "how much is my coin worth", the dealer will look up your type of coin and get the BlueSheet  value for that type of coin in average circulated condition.  If you bring you coin into the shop, and the dealer is then able to properly view and grade your coin, he will look up the price for that particular coin condition (good, fine, uncirculated, etc.)  and provide you with the 'ask' price, what he is willing to pay for the coin.  'Brick and Mortar' coin shops need to pay rent, payroll and the employee rolls. Internet sites need to recoup development costs and pay operating costs. For these reasons, what offer you receive on a coin will usually be some percentage of 'ask', not the full price. This 'spread' allows dealers to recoup their costs and provides a market for our coins.

Use Pictures

Use honest shipping and handling fees.

Practice honest and dedicated communication, give people a chance to make things right.

The Golden Rule

Think of your customer, the buyer. Imagine yourself a young aspiring numismatist at home. They have just won their first auction and sent off their hard earned allowance money via their mothers personal check. They are now checking the mailbox every single day waiting for the coin YOU are shipping to arrive. Put yourself in their size four shoes. Would you like to get your hopes up in anticipation to receive the coin you just sold?

For any inventory you must make the decision: “Do I want to sell this fast, or sell for the highest dollar?” They are not the same thing, and require different outlets. If you want the highest dollar you need to sell RETAIL. This means you need to build a brand on Ebay and on your own website or find a regular buyer (upline) that can place product.
 

Diamonds
For wholesale diamonds, if you are in New York, why not go to the Diamond District in NYC? Start at Cohen’s on 47th at 5th and work your way up the street. You will learn what the wholesale market offers there for sure.

If you make the right connection and keep your expectations low you can find somebody willing to purchase everything, the good stuff and the dreck. Learn to take decent pictures of material. I will purchase better coins. Know that most internet coin dealers will ask you to send in material and then they make an offer. It's ok, in the biz you live and die by your word and name. One cross and you are blacklisted big time.

Know that stones are in a MAJOR glut right now. Unless it has unusual high clarity or color try to keep diamonds in their original setting and sell the fantasy. Damaged settings should be scrapped. There is a lot of fake stuff out there! Lots of good stuff flooding the market too.

Gold

For gold, you need to find a local smelter that buys wholesale. To do that you need to save up quite a bit (min 5 ounces), or work through a middle man if you need cash more quickly. For better stuff like pocket watches, fobs, and coins you should find someone you can flip stock. Go to the coins hows to learn the trade! (Road dealers pay about 92% on small amounts of scrap.)  92-96% is what most wholesalers will pay for junk, and broken pieces.


Selling Scrap Gold to Refiners

There are four major precious metal refiners in the United States.  Major means they have the physical infrastructure necessary to convert scrap gold of various purities and alloys into 99% pure gold which is used for international finance and bullion making.  These four are:

1) Metalor

2) Johnson Matthey (JM)

3) Ohio Precious Metals (OPM),

4) Republic Metals Corp. (RMC)

Anyone else is a middleman. Some are honest, some will play games with your assay or weight.

The trick is to sell directly to a Primary refiner for your largest return on the gold content.  Only OPM and RMC are buying metals in smaller amounts that most folks can accumulate.  Johnson Matthey and Metalor deal in large industrial size lots. You can get more for assayed lots from a refiner if you send in 10 ounces or more.

The refiners can rarely offer to pay more than 98% of the weight.  So, be careful when using a middlemen that can promise this amount or higher, they are using tricky math in order to hide their profit.  The refiners will often then calculate up to 2% of the weight as burn off.

There are reasons, however, to use middle-men as brokers.  For example, the one we recommend in NTR Resources.  They have multiple locations across the country (one near us) so one can get paid at a quicker turn-around then shipping across the country directly to the manufacturer.

https://elemetal.com/

If you or someone you know is housebound and can ONLY mail out small amounts of scrap, that is the only time we recommend a smaller middleman. 

In this case here is a decent outfit.

Buy / Sell Scrap Gold, Selling Jewelry, Gold Coins, Diamonds, Platinum Online, Cash for Gold & Silver in NY, NJ - US Gold Buyers

We would avoid most other entities at this point.

Purity

Learn how to weigh and test for purity.

Karat

Karat refers to purity of gold.

10k is 10/24th pure. That's equal to 41.67%; the usual jewelry average is 40%

14k is between 54 and 58.3% gold, averaging at 56.25%

18k is 73.25% pure gold

22k = 91.6% pure gold

24k = 99.9% pure gold

Here is the gram factor (Check all numbers for yourself)

.0179 x spot for 96% and
.0173 x spot for 92%

Jewelry

“Red Gold”, also called Rose Gold, or Pink Gold or Russian Gold are simply terms that denote various alloys with copper.  Yellow gold is the most marketable and accepted color, with a copper percentage between 30% and 50%.  There are also alloys known as black, gray, blue, purple and green gold. They all have gold and silver with another metal as the coloring alloy; specifically rhodium, ruthenium, aluminum.

Italian jewelry is often ‘plum’ or ‘plumb’ gold.  This means that the jewelry is within the legal alloy limits to be marketed as gold, 10k and above.

White Gold

Typically, white gold marketed in jewelry is plated with Rhodium.  However, there are other alloys known as white gold, the usual is a nickel and silver alloy of various purities.

18k white gold is actually very rare, and often counterfeited.  Much of the stuff marketed as 18k white gold has a bogus makers mark and is actually surgical steel.

 Buy only marked (stamped, or with makers mark) pieces.  Do not buy anything marked "Mexico" unless you can personally cut/scrape and do an acid test on the  particular piece.

 Learn the different German and Mexican gold purities. Most ‘German gold’ is just a nickel and silver mixture.

Get a feel, through experience and handling, of 14k and 18k to get a feel for the weight and ‘look’ and ‘feel’.

Coin

U.S. gold coins between 1834 and 1873 were 90% gold with between 1% and 5% silver.

After 1873 the US mint began to refine their own gold. They would refine gold and then alloy with 1% silver before striking coins as a hardening agent (pure gold is rather soft).

American Eagle gold coins produced by the US mint are currently 0.916% gold, 0.053% copper and 0.03 silver.  

The Krugerrand has 0.9166 gold and 0.0833 copper, so it appears more ‘red’ than the American Eagle, which in turn appears a little lighter due to the silver content.

In Sum:

Learn to find a buyer for EVERYTHING so that you don’t every have to turn anyone down. Someone may be selling their class ring one day, but have grandpa’s photo collection the next day. DON’T turn it down, learn how to turn over the deal.

Learn the difference between white metals. DON'T sell 1940s Platinum jewelry for spot, that stuff can be quite collectible when placed with the right buyer.
 

You should also try to separate out the gold by carat. Don’t buy 8k, only buy 10k and above or will have a hard time moving the product upstream.
Keep small foreign gold coins, those have buyers if you shop around.

Also, go to every coin store in the state to find a dealer you can relate to. A dealer friend with a storefront is a friend indeed (they already have a well established upline since most brick and mortar coin stores make their rent off the scrap gold trade).
 

Took me years to learn all this; should get you started.