Dealers · mail-in · eBay · auction · pawn — and what each one costs you
Every buyer of silver coins pays you less than melt, and every one of them takes it in a different place: a spread, a commission, a listing fee, or a shipping bill you did not price in. This page converts all of them into the same number so you can compare them.
First, turn every offer into one number
Work out what the silver in your coins is worth today, then divide the offer by it. That single figure — the offer as a percentage of melt — is the only way to compare a coin shop, a mail-in dealer and an eBay listing, because each of them takes its cut somewhere else. Ninety per cent of melt from a shop can beat ninety-five on eBay once fees and postage land.
Get the melt figure first: junk silver calculator if you are selling common 90 % coins by face value, coin melt value if you are counting individual coins including war nickels, 40 % halves or silver dollars. Both price against this morning’s spot and show the timestamp.
Sort before you sell, or you will sell the wrong thing by weight
The single most expensive mistake in this whole process is selling a collectable coin at metal price. A worn 1962 Roosevelt dime is metal. A 1916-D Mercury dime is not, and a buyer paying you melt for it is having a very good day at your expense. Separate anything with a scarce date, a mint mark you had to look up, or genuinely sharp detail, and price those separately. Our page on what junk silver is covers which coins are which and how much silver is in each.
Everything below assumes you have already done that and are selling the metal.
The channels, and where each one takes its cut
| Channel | How the cut is taken | Speed | Worth it when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local coin shop | The bid-ask spread. No fee line, no postage, no insurance — the whole cost is in the number they say out loud | Same day, cash or check | Small to medium lots, or you want it over with |
| Online bullion dealer (mail-in) | The spread again, but published — and you pay to ship and insure it | Days to a couple of weeks | Bigger lots, where a better spread outruns the postage |
| eBay | A percentage fee on the whole sale, plus a per-order fee, plus postage and insurance | Days to weeks, and only if it sells | Coins a collector wants, not bulk metal |
| Auction house | A seller’s commission you negotiate, and a buyer’s premium that suppresses what bidders will pay you | Months | Genuinely valuable single pieces |
| Pawn shop | The spread, usually the widest one available | Immediate | You need the money today and nothing else is open |
Coin shops and bullion dealers: the spread is the price
There is no fee here, which is exactly why it is hard to compare: the cost is buried in the number. The way to see it is to look at a dealer who publishes both sides, because then the gap is right there in front of you.
Some do. Money Metals publishes a sell-to-us price next to its retail price on the same product, no account needed, so anyone can read the spread on 90 % quarters straight off the two pages. JM Bullion publishes its whole buyback list — a few hundred products with a “sell to us” price each — without a login, though it sets a $1,000 minimum on a buyback transaction. APMEX does not publish a bid at all: its buyback route is a quote you request online or by phone.
None of that makes one dealer better than another, and the numbers move with spot every day. What it gives you is a free reference point: before you walk into a shop, look up what a national dealer is publicly paying for the same thing today, and you will know within a percentage point what a fair local offer looks like.
eBay: the fee is bigger than most sellers expect, and it applies to the postage too
eBay treats bullion as its own category with a flat rate rather than a sliding one. As published in eBay’s Seller Center:
- Bullion category: 13.6 % of the total sale if that total is $7,500 or less, and 7 % if it is above $7,500, calculated per item.
- Plus a per-order fee of $0.30 on orders up to $10 and $0.40 above that.
- 250 free listings a month for an individual seller, then $0.35 per listing.
- The fee is calculated on “the total amount of the sale, including the cost of the item and shipping, sales tax, and other applicable fees” — so you are charged a percentage of the postage your buyer pays, and of the sales tax eBay collects.
There is no per-item cap on this, and coins that are not bullion sit in a different row again: eBay Store subscribers get a “Coins & Paper Money (except Bullion)” rate of 9 % up to $4,000 plus 2.35 % above it, while an individual seller without a store has no such row at all. Check which category your listing actually lands in before you assume a rate; the difference between 9 % and 13.6 % on a $2,000 sale is $92.
eBay makes sense when a buyer wants that coin. For a bag of worn quarters, a 13.6 % fee on top of insured postage is a lot of ground to make up against a dealer’s spread.
Auction houses: the number you are quoted is not the number that matters
Two commissions exist and only one of them is published. Stack’s Bowers states a buyer’s premium of 22 % of the hammer price, with a $29 minimum, in its conditions of sale. The seller’s commission is not published at all: it is negotiated with a consignment specialist, and on desirable material it can be very low or nothing.
The buyer’s premium still costs you even though you do not pay it. A bidder willing to spend $1,000 all-in can only bid about $820 when a 22 % premium is stacked on top, and $820 is what lands in your column. That is the real drag, and it is why auction only makes sense for pieces whose price is set by competition rather than by weight.
What we could not verify, and are not going to guess. Heritage Auctions and GreatCollections both put their terms behind bot protection we could not read, so we have no current figure for either — and we would rather say that than repeat a number from a forum. If you are consigning with them, ask for the seller’s commission and the buyer’s premium in writing before you ship anything.
Pawn shops: we found no honest number, so we are not inventing one
Every percentage circulating for what pawn shops pay traces back to blog posts that cite each other, and most of them are describing pawn loans rather than an outright purchase of silver coins. We could not find a primary source worth citing. What is true regardless: a pawn shop is the fastest money and the least competitive price, and you can find out exactly how much you are giving up by pricing the coins first and dividing.
The shipping trap: the post office insures bullion for $15
This is the part that catches people, and it is written in the Postal Service’s own rulebook. The Domestic Mail Manual, section 609.4.1.m, says it plainly:
“Except for Registered Mail, the maximum indemnity for negotiable items…, currency, or bullion, is $15.00.”
Priority Mail Express is not an exception — DMM 609.4.2 repeats the $15 ceiling for negotiable items, currency and bullion. So the $100 of insurance included with a Priority Mail label, or the $5,000 you can buy on a parcel, does not cover a bag of silver. If it goes missing, the check is fifteen dollars.
But coins are not automatically bullion in the Postal Service’s eyes, and this is the distinction almost nobody makes. DMM 609.4.1.g sets the payout for numismatic material at fair market value:
“For stamps and coins of philatelic or numismatic value; the fair market value is determined by a recognized stamp or coin dealer or current coin and stamp collectors’ newsletters and trade papers. The date of the fair market value determination must be current and prior to the mailing date.”
So a collectable coin can be insured for what it is worth, and a bag of scrap silver cannot — two consignments in identical boxes, two completely different outcomes if the box goes astray. Which one you are posting depends on what you are actually selling, which is another reason to sort first.
The way round it is Registered Mail, the one service the $15 rule exempts. Postal insurance is included in the Registered Mail fee for declared values from one cent up to $50,000, and the rule is that you must declare the item’s full value when you present it. It is slow and it costs more. It is also the difference between an insured parcel and a fifteen-dollar one.
Private cover exists too: the American Numismatic Association arranges collection insurance for its members through a broker at member rates. Worth knowing if you move material regularly rather than once.
The paperwork, in two sentences and with sources
The widely repeated claim that selling silver coins triggers an IRS Form 1099-B is backwards. The instructions for the form say a sale of a precious metal is not reportable unless the metal is in a form the CFTC has approved for futures trading and the quantity meets the minimum of an approved contract; sales to one customer within 24 hours are aggregated to test that. The default is no report, not the other way round. The IRS has also issued a correction withdrawing the gold-coin example that used to sit in those instructions, so any article quoting it is quoting something the IRS has taken back.
Separately, a dealer who receives more than $10,000 in cash in one transaction or in related transactions must file Form 8300 within 15 days. That is the buyer’s obligation, it is about cash rather than about silver, and it is not triggered by a bank transfer or a check.
We are not a tax adviser and this is not tax advice — read the IRS pages themselves, or ask someone who does this for a living.
Will a shop hold your coins or demand ID? Usually not, and the reason is interesting
Several states regulate secondhand precious-metal dealers with identification requirements and mandatory holding periods. It is repeated everywhere that this applies to selling silver coins. In most of the states we checked, it does not, because the statutes carve coins out by name:
- Texas excludes “a coin” from the definition of crafted precious metal in Occupations Code §1956.051(3).
- Florida excludes “coins” from the definition in §538.03(1)(i), so the 30-day hold in §538.06 does not reach them.
- Virginia defines precious metals as “any item except coins” in §54.1-4100.
- Minnesota is the clean counter-example: its definition covers anything more than one per cent silver by weight with no coin exclusion, it requires photo identification from the seller, and it imposes a hold of not less than 14 days.
- South Carolina splits the difference: coins are inside the dealer registration and identification regime, but §40-54-50 holds “all precious metals, except coins”.
Five states is not fifty, and we have not read the rest. Treat this as a reason to check your own state’s statute rather than as a national rule — in either direction.
Five things to settle before you accept an offer
- What percentage of melt is this? Price the metal first, divide, and ask the same question of the next buyer.
- Have I separated anything worth more than its silver? Once it is sold by weight it is gone.
- Who pays the postage and what is it actually insured for? If the answer is a Priority Mail label on a bag of scrap, the answer is fifteen dollars.
- Is the quoted price locked, and for how long? Spot moves while your parcel is in transit; ask whether the price is set when you ship or when they open the box.
- Are the fees on the item, or on the item plus postage plus tax? On a marketplace it is usually the latter.
Selling gold rather than silver? The arithmetic is identical — price it first with the gold calculator, and if the buyer quotes you in pennyweight rather than grams, convert it yourself with the pennyweight converter before you agree to anything. Where our figures come from, and what we do when one stops being trustworthy, is set out in the methodology.
