Last year I sold a bunch of silver and some gold coins back to Provident Metals, one of the dealers who had sold most of it to me. As spot prices rose, I sold off four batches of coins. I held onto most of the coins that I had paid a higher premium for, primarily coins from Australia and 5-ounce silver America the Beautiful quarters from the US. Last month I tried selling 5 of the ATB quarters on eBay and the selling prices weren’t great and eBay takes a big 12.5% commission, driving the realized gain down to around what the dealers would have paid. Plus with eBay you have to take pictures, write up an ad, package things up, etc. You can take coins to coin shops, but I feel like most of them would offer even less than the online dealers since they don’t handle the same volume.
One alternative was to try to sell on a forum of silver coin collectors. I found one that seemed okay, but you had to post four messages before you could sell anything there. There was no charge to post items for sale and a lot of the sellers insist on payment methods with no fees like Venmo, Zelle, or Paypal Friends and Family. It used to be you would get in trouble with PayPal if you had to many PPFF transactions, but they seem to have stopped that. However, you do lose any ability to dispute the sale and get your money back. In order to get around that, the forum set up feedback where if you buy an item from someone and everything turns out okay you both give each other positive feedback, similar to what eBay does, but unlike eBay the forum has no way of verifying that a transaction even happened. If you don’t have a feedback history then you are expected to pay or ship before the other person. If neither of you have a trading history, then you just have to figure out something, possibly going to a disputable PayPal transaction and paying 3% in commissions. I always keep a balance in my PayPal account so I can pay someone right away with those funds without a fee. But I think most people use a credit card to to fund PayPal purchases so there is a mandatory fee from the credit card company. PayPal can also transfer money from your bank account and wait for that to process, or process it immediately if you also have a credit card for backup. Zelle is nice because it eliminates PayPal and you just send money from one bank account to the other without revealing anything more than your email address or phone number and there is no wait involved.
I put off posting anything at first because I had a trip planned, but I went ahead and put together a list of coins I could sell and tried to pick out reasonable prices above what the dealers would offer me, but undercutting the dealers’ and past sold prices on eBay. These prices were much lower than what one of the dealers said the value of the coins were. Right now demand is so high that premiums over the spot price of silver are very high and the dealers still sell out quickly because the mints that produce the coins can’t get as much silver as they can sell. I think there is something a little broken with the market since it seems like in an efficient market the silver price should just be higher. I also think the mints sell silver as a way to support the silver industry and when prices are high the silver industry doesn’t need support and may actually be hurt if supplies are too tight and prices go up too much, so the mints back down. Dealers may list prices that seem high or low, but often don’t have stock. The stuff they do have in stock seems to have a higher premium, like plain silver bars for $4 over spot when you used to pay maybe $1 over spot. When I sold stuff last year, the spot price was still under $20, but lately it has been around $28. I didn’t make that much money on sales last year, I just wanted to get rid of some silver without losing money. I made more on the gold coins which have (or had) tighter premiums between buying and selling.
Yesterday I got my 4th post approved at the forum, so I was allowed to sell. Then I retrieved all of my silver from the bank vault to make sure I still had it and make sure there were no issues with the condition that I might need to mention to a buyer. I actually found one extra 5 oz coin, which I had missed when looking at my spreadsheet. I set the prices of the Australian coins at about $4 over spot, which was more than the $1 offered by the dealer, but pretty good. I had paid more like $3.50 to $5.00 over spot, but eBay prices were higher. For the ATB’s the prices seem to vary depending on the particular quarter design. The mint would release 5 designs (states) per year and some sold better than others, sometimes making the ones with lower mintage worth more later. I set the prices of mine between $160 and $200 (mostly $170), prices that wouldn’t be that hard to get on eBay (before fees to the seller), but above the dealer buyback offers of $150 to $160.
I went ahead and placed all of my items in one listing and then waited for the magic to happen. After a few hours, a guy sent me a message saying he was interested in almost all of the Australian coins. He also wanted the two cheapest ATB’s I had at $160 each. Basically he is paying the same price a dealer charges for a plain bar, but getting pretty nice coins. So probably I set the price on the Australian coins a dollar or two low. But I am super happy to have sold 131 ounces of silver for 58% more than I paid. And much faster and easier than eBay. I didn’t even take any pictures. The ATB’s may be more of a challenge, but hopefully someone will bite on some of those. If not I could sell most of them back to the dealer and then keep some of my favorites or the rarest ones.
Then next day another forum member wrote and said he wanted the remaining 3 Australian coins, plus a 1 oz bar of silver that I found and have held onto for years. He paid me right away, so that’s the first money I have gotten out of this round. Then on Thursday, the first guy got his package from me, counted everything up, and paid me. So that was a double relief that the coins arrived and that I now had payment.