My coin selling saga and recommendations of how to prepare for this process are farther below. I…read morewant to make sure PV Coin Exchange gets the acclaim it very rightly deserves. So focusing on that first. I had been trying to sell some loose silver coins I had somehow inherited - called and visited other places (see below). I confirmed that PV CE are actually not just "melters" who want gold and silver to melt down as scrap no matter what you bring in. Vincent is a real numismatist (someone knowledgeable about coins /currency / collecting). I presented my items, *they wrote each item down and provided the price per item* (VERY IMPORTANT!) and provided that to me. I had done my homework so I knew the range of value of my stuff, and they were within that range. Couldn't have been a better transaction: transparent, fair, pleasant. They are the ONLY Coin dealer that dealt with me fairly. Do yourself a favor, and take the advice of someone who just went through the trial of finding an above board dealer, if you live in the South Bay (or not too far away) go here. (See below for full saga and *important* things anyone with coins /old currency to sell should know.)
SAGA:
I had called another place to the NorthWest of Torrance and the gentleman's first comment was "you know it's a bad time to sell silver." Seeing as, at the time of this writing, the value of silver was up over FIFTY PERCENT from a year ago, I knew what he was doing: anchoring my expectations to be able to give me a low-ball offer. There is no other reason to, well, flat out lie, except for that. I didn't even bother to go see him.
I then called and went to a place North of Torrance. I noticed they had no coins on display. I was ushered over to a small side room and the gentleman examined my coins, wrote nothing down (at least to show me) and made me an offer that was at least 33% below what a fair offer would have been (which I received at PV CE).
My recommendations:
Create a list of coins/currency you have. Give that to an AI and ask it to go out and find *the melt price* for the silver (& gold) coins. Also have it tell you if any of the coins, silver or not, may be worth anything from a coin-collecting stand point. (But being an old coin doesn't always make it a valuable coin) and what the DEALER BUY price is and the RETAIL SELL price (range) is.
FYI - AIs can't easily scrape eBay, a place that sells a lot of coins, so you'll have to do this yourself if you want to do a sanity check, especially for anything valuable. MAKE SURE you filter by SOLD items, and not offered items. I can offer to sell something for $1,000, but people may only be buying it for $5.
So now you may have up to 3 values for each coin: the "melt value," the coin merchant BUY value, and retail Sell value. There is a good chance that a good amount of your coins aren't really rare, so will only be worth melt value or a little bit above that. Some may not be worth anything. I kept a 1904 "V" nickel because it had no silver/no real value for a collector.
I DID have some silver dollars that were coming up on 125-150 years old, with high silver content. Some of them had "coin collector" value - my AI supplied both the BUY price, and the RETAIL price range and I confirmed on eBay. I also had some relatively newer silver 1/2 dollars, quarters, dimes, and nickels. None of those really had any "coin collector" value, so I was ready to get a % of the melt price. For the silver dollars that had "coin collector" value, I noted the value (range).
Here's what you have to remember: no matter what (eBay) sell value you see, that is a RETAIL value. If you are going to a coin merchant to sell, they are going to give you a WHOLESALE value - they have to pay for rent, salaries, insurance, utilities... so they need to have some margin between the buy and sell. How big that margin is is the sign of an honest merchant and, let's just say, a less-than-honest merchant. What's that spread? Obviously it varies, even for honest merchants, but expect at least a buy price that is 30%-40% lower than their sell price. Your AI should already have given you a dealer buy price and a retail range. An honest merchant will be buying around those internet buy prices.
Can you make more money selling some valuable coins yourself on eBay. Yes. How long will it take? could be months, or there may not be a market for some coins and they are only worth melt value, and it's not like you can find a silver smelter nearby to even give you the full melt value. You'll have to sell to some type of precious metals "retail" aggregator. And if you do decide to sell some on eBay, you need to have them professionally graded (which is another expense! and hassle). If not, you run the real risk of misrepresenting the value and getting an angry customer, a bad review, and a return to deal with. If that happens a few times, eBay may shut down your store.
Thanks again to the PV CE team! Good luck everyone