Question About Selling Gold Coins /Melt Vs Spot/

Oh, so it all starts as 24k gold in coins and as you add other metals to the coin, the k would drop to a lower level? So a sovereign would then become 22k, (917) but after you melt it, it still becomes .2354 of actual gold, which would be 24k? I see I see.....

Your first option is incorrect. "1oz .900 fine" indicates 1oz total weight, 90.0% of that weight being gold. (If it's .999 fine, that corresponds to 99.9%, etc.; it indicates permill -- i.e. parts per thousand by weight)

Interpreting that description otherwise would be mistaken.

A lot of people here are confusing gold the element with gold the alloy. Gold is gold, aka .999(9) purity. Everything else is a gold alloy. If your "gold" coin is not .999(9) fine then it's not gold the pure element, it took some labor to alloy it down and mint into a coin, and even the .999(9) coin is minted. So there's overhead no matter where you try to sell your coins, either in the initial investment the buyer makes (provides you with the favor of giving you liquidity and so must take a cut) or the "gold" coin is not pure and must take a cut there to take it to a refiner. Everything has labor in it, so depending how far up the chain you want to go you cut out certain middlemen. The best person to buy your coin should be a collector/consumer because they will always pay you more than someone who sees the coin as scrap metal.

Sandwich said:

False, bars are the best way to get gold the element. It takes time and labor to produce that coin. Go to a refinery and try to buy gold there because the margins they take is from giving out less than the spot price for peoples' refining services; they don't make that much over the spot price, but they give you less when refining your gold alloys and that's where they make their money. Why are bars better? Because they are compact bricks of gold the element without any fancy gimmicks imprinted on it to artificially raise its price. You pay for the metal plus a small fee if at all. In many jurisdictions 24K gold has no taxes and is essentially the same as money.

So when you see in your coin books AGW this means your coin contains that amount of 24K karat (gold) plus alloys to aid in minting and reduce costs. There are alloys so it is actually worth less. Where people get confused in value is because we are into coins and their coin dealers are able to sell coins at a premium to what the gold content actually is; they don't see it as scrap so the calculations are different than a gold buyer would give you for that same coin. When a person gives you liquidity usually they have established a market and margins from which they make their profit.

Also if you are thinking of stacking gold and selling at a higher price, the smaller the bar/coin the more premium above spot price you will pay. conversely the bigger the coin/bar you have (I believe the standard bar of gold is 1 kg) the harder it would be to sell.

Just to add to the confusion a little, a 1oz gold American Eagle contains a small amount of both copper and silver. So if you include those metals in your value calculation, they're always going to be worth more than the current 1oz spot price of gold.

You are correct that the silver/copper content is not factored into the PM value. Where a you are mistaken is assigning numismatic value to AGEs.

One ounce ($50) AGEs sell as plain old gold with buy prices typically being melt. Sell prices are sometimes melt +2% or +3% but they can sometimes be found at melt value+delivery cost. I'm not talking proofs or certified pieces, I'm talking about plain raw bullion AGEs.

P.S. Fractional pieces do bring slightly greater premiums.

Personally, I'd be very happy to pay spot + 2% for an AGE. Yeah, I never find those deals.