Anyone dealing in Silver items?

[sin-n-dex]

This comes up every now and again (when I post about it), wanted to discuss the dealing of silver.

So silver has been increasing in price, and we have silver coins that we're trying to keep up on prices (I had one go a few days ago for less than melt because I hadn't kept up on repricing, the silver belongs to the brick and mortar store and I only get a percentage above melt, no money for me if it's not at least above melt after fees).

We have some coin sets that are proof encapsulated coins. They seem to be sought out now by investors and people dealing in silver who want to obtain them for low prices. I'm thinking of breaking up the set to sell the coins as singles to collectors.

I really don't like dealing with the investors because there's no profit for us if people are investing in silver they can resell or melt later, we can melt it ourselves if that's what we're going to do with it. 

We're kind of torn on whether to break up the sets (they've already been taken down and are sitting in unsolds, I'll either reprice them and relist them or break them apart). Just wondered if anyone dealing in silver is doing anything special with the rising price. I do get lots of people will say they're saving their silver they got cheap until the price is really high (which is what I do with my personal collection that was purchased at $8 per oz), but with the store's stuff they want it listed and to see some inventory turnover.

C.

[bashort]

i would think that the melt value plus at least 30% would be the absolute lowest price because you could sell them for melt value for cash, no fees, no returns, claims of fake, lost in the mail ect.

[sin-n-dex]

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@bashort wrote:

i would think that the melt value plus at least 30% would be the absolute lowest price because you could sell them for melt value for cash, no fees, no returns, claims of fake, lost in the mail ect.

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The shop gets lots and lots of old silver coins, but many are common, and not really so nice looking. We melt all of those.

I fish through silver that comes in looking for nice coins (or sets of coins that were purchased for melt value - we pay a percentage of what melt is when we buy so we make profit if we melt), and then I pack those up to sell to collectors. 

The problem with sets where there's lots of silver, is they attract the investor types (and sometimes scammers), so I'm thinking if I bust up the set for singles we can sell for more per coin to a collector. Some sets we regularly bust up anyway (like Franklin Mint stuff). We get so much Franklin Mint a lot of it is getting melted. I grab what I find when I'm there a few times a month searching and when silver starts going up, I pull less nice coins and return them to the store to be melted (while their value appreciated sitting on my eBay shelves at the shop).

I have a few sets of commemorative coins that are pretty nice, the shop has given me permission to do what I want with the sets (because the alternative is they will get melted, so if I want to sell them I can do it any way I think will work well). Since they are not attracting the type of customer I want to deal with I'm thinking taking the sets apart is a good idea, but I think I can sell the coins as singles.

The other issue is as silver rises, less collectors bother with silver because it's become so expensive. I can get a high price above melt when silver is low because it has numismatic value, but now it's at the point the numismatic value is a lot less than the melt value, so collectors don't bother with those coins.

C.