Selling coins or bullion follows a fairly consistent sequence no matter who buys them: a specialist inspects and tests each piece, weighs it against the day’s spot price, makes an offer based on that price minus a margin, and pays once you accept, often within the same visit.
Testing comes before any number gets mentioned
Before a buyer names a price, they confirm what the metal actually is. That means checking marks, weight and dimensions against known specifications, and for anything that looks uncertain, running an acid test or an XRF scan that reads the metal’s composition without damaging it.
This step matters more than sellers expect. A coin that looks like silver but tests as a plated base metal is worth almost nothing, and a bar with a hairline seam can indicate it isn’t solid. A buyer who skips testing and just eyeballs a piece is either very confident or not being careful, and neither is a great sign for the seller standing across the counter.
The spot price sets the floor, not the final number
Every offer starts from the live spot price for gold, silver, platinum or palladium, the benchmark that updates throughout the trading day. From there, the buyer subtracts a margin that covers their own costs and risk before reselling, so the number you’re offered is always somewhat below the number quoted on financial news.
That margin isn’t fixed. It moves with the type of item, its purity, how easily it can be resold, and how busy the market is that week. A common bullion coin in a recognizable size tends to get a tighter margin than an oddly shaped bar or a coin that needs grading before it can be resold. Sellers who bring multiple pieces sometimes get a slightly better blended offer, simply because it’s less work per ounce for the buyer to process one larger transaction than several small ones.
Payment method changes what paperwork follows
How you get paid, cash, check or wire, is mostly a matter of preference for smaller sales, but it stops being optional once the transaction crosses a certain size. Large cash payments trigger federal reporting obligations that a check or bank transfer doesn’t, so most buyers will steer bigger deals toward electronic payment rather than a stack of bills.
Some bulk sales of specific bullion products also carry dealer reporting requirements to the IRS, separate from how you’re paid, and a buyer who handles volume regularly will walk you through which category your sale falls into before you commit to anything. A site like paradigmexperts.com lays out that part of the process in more detail, which is worth reading before you show up with a large lot rather than after.
2025’s elevated prices have changed who’s selling
Gold has spent much of 2025 trading at levels well above where it sat just a few years ago, and that shift has pulled a different kind of seller into the market. It’s no longer only estate liquidators and collectors thinning out a set. People who bought bullion a decade ago as a hedge, or inherited a coin jar nobody ever looked at properly, are finding that the math now favors cashing out rather than holding.
That doesn’t mean every year is the right year to sell. Anyone holding physical metal purely as a long-term hedge against inflation or currency risk has a reasonable argument for sitting through a price spike rather than reacting to it, and a strong quarter for gold doesn’t guarantee the next one looks the same. What’s changed is simply that more people are asking the question, and asking it with a stack of coins already in hand rather than in the abstract.
What to bring changes the speed of the whole visit
Bringing original purchase receipts, certificates of authenticity, or grading slabs speeds up the app
