Selling your bullion and getting a good bid price is every bit as intricate as intelligently buying your bullion. Full attention to detail is required to successfully sell your bullion at the best price.
When it comes to turning your bullion into fiat currency there are hundreds of online and perhaps local options too, especially if you live in a large city. I suggest when selling you only deal with proven dealers with long track records. Common sense suggests you never meet with any stranger in public to sell any of your stash unless you are looking to be robbed at gunpoint there or later on your drive home.
Selling to an Online Dealer
One of the safest methods to get a good price is to sell your bullion online to one of the major online bullion dealers who have proven track records and business systems in place. When you sell online to a dealer you will typically be able to commit with a quantity and price locking in either over the phone or even online without a phone call. When selling online the dealer will most likely take a credit / debit card deposit from you just in case you balk on the delivery of your end of the deal (they would likely charge you some administrative fee and cancellation penalty).
When selling to an online dealer they should give you an order number of some sort to identify the specific transaction, a packing slip to print and put inside the parcel(s), and an address to ship the contracted goods to. Then within one business day you would safely ship the metals to the dealer and give them the tracking information so they can monitor the incoming goods. Once the bullion items have been safely delivered to the dealer’s mandated address, the dealer will then inspect and verify the metals and finally issue payment subsequent to their payment policy and your payment preference (the most common online dealer to customer payment methods are either #1 check via mail or #2 bank wire transfer, which will require your giving the dealer a bit of your bank information at some point).
If you want cash fast and are willing to take a lower bid price in general, then a local coin shop may be the better choice for you. So long as we are not in a 3rd phase mania, you shouldn’t have to wait in line long. Before you get to the coin shop know what average online bids are for the products you are selling. Also know what is the lowest amount you are willing to accept for your goods before a coin dealer low balls you out of your bullion at a poor price.
This may require you to get multiple bids so prepare to drive around your city. If you live in a city with only one coin dealer, well that coin dealer has leverage to low bid and people who are in a bind, they likely will sell at prices lower than they should.
If time is not of the essence and you are somewhat Internet savvy, you might think about trying to yield even more fiat for your bullion by selling on eBay. Be careful though if you do go down this path as selling bullion on eBay can be fraught with risk.
Con artists abound on eBay looking for naive coin and bullion sellers to take advantage of. For example criminals will commit to buy your bullion and then for instance, they may try and change the payment method to check last minute. Once you get the check from the customer you of course cash it and send off the goods… then say 15 to 20 days later you go to your bank account and you have negative funds because the criminal you sold and delivered the bullion to has cancelled or written a bogus check. This is but one example of scams that can be played on naive eBay sellers. I am merely warning you to tread lightly and learn what you are doing if you begin selling your bullion on eBay.
One additional point about bullion being stored in major vault storage facilities in the USA. Many times, these vault companies are servicing multiple dealers in the same vaults so getting multiple references on dealers operating within your chosen vault may help you to quickly liquidate and get paid without having to ship anything anywhere. The vault manager would just transfer title of the contracted metals and slide the sold metals to the dealer’s section of the vault storage facility.
| Local Coin Shop | Online (Mail) | Online (Vault) | |
| Minimum Sale | Low Quantity | Varies | Varies |
| Ease of Sale | Best | O.K. | Best |
| Security of Sale | O.K. | Better | Best |
| Privacy of Sale | Better | Better | Best |
| Speed of Sale | Best | O.K. | Better |
| Price Offered | O.K. | Best | Best |
If bullion-selling privacy is important to you, make sure you learn what the current IRS 1099B Dealer Reporting Requirements are before you take further action.
The next article in our Beginners’ Guide to Buying Physical Bullion will discuss the best way to ship bullion.
» How To Ship Your Bullion Best?
All Market Updates are provided as a third party analysis and do not necessarily reflect the explicit views of JM Bullion Inc. and should not be construed as financial advice.
