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Question About Selling Gold Coins /Melt Vs Spot/

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BStrauss3's Avatar
United States
4593 Posts
 Posted 02/16/2015  08:11 am  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add BStrauss3 to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Steve - I wasn't talking about markings on the coin, I was talking about how things are typically being sold.
"one ounce" and "gold" with the fineness typically being left out of the sales pitch.
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Libertad's Avatar
Canada
3692 Posts
 Posted 02/17/2015  8:03 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Libertad to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
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:
Quote:
So gold coins should be the cheapest way to collect gold for gold purposes, not collectability. This is good news to me!

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.
New Member
United States
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 Posted 02/18/2015  6:10 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add sandwich5027 to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Gotcha! So, basically bars are the cheapest form of gold but they will never have a premium as they are just gold bars. Coins on the other hand, like the basic, over produced Sovereign will have a small premium attached just because it is a coin that may be old and collected. Also, if the coins are suddenly all melted, the Sovereign or similar, might see a premium increase. Whereas the bar will never see an increase because of the even more millions and millions of bars being produced. The odds of a basic over produced coin being worth a collectable premium is slim, but could happen? Am I wrong, or does this make sense?
Edited by sandwich5027
02/18/2015 6:12 pm
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ace_ftw's Avatar
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 Posted 02/18/2015  6:35 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add ace_ftw to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
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.
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Libertad's Avatar
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 Posted 02/28/2015  7:53 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Libertad to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Some old bars are actually rare.
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 Posted 03/31/2015  4:09 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Bret to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
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.
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coinwatch's Avatar
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 Posted 03/31/2015  5:33 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add coinwatch to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
The value of the silver and/or copper in an AGE is negligible: at today's prices, the max silver value (if no copper were included) would be around $1.40 and likely less if copper were included. Factor in the potential refining cost to separate the gold from the silver and copper and this "bonus" value disappears.

Unless that AGE is cull due to damage or abuse, why on earth sell to a scrap gold dealer? Anyone interested in buying your good AGE based on nothing more than it's gold content doesn't sound like the buyer you're looking for.
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BH1964's Avatar
United States
10982 Posts
 Posted 03/31/2015  5:41 pm  Show Profile   Check BH1964's eBay Listings Bookmark this reply Add BH1964 to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply

Quote:
The value of the silver and/or copper in an AGE is negligible: at today's prices, the max silver value (if no copper were included) would be around $1.40 and likely less if copper were included. Factor in the potential refining cost to separate the gold from the silver and copper and this "bonus" value disappears.

Unless that AGE is cull due to damage or abuse, why on earth sell to a scrap gold dealer? Anyone interested in buying your good AGE based on nothing more than it's gold content doesn't sound like the buyer you're looking for.


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.
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coinwatch's Avatar
United States
808 Posts
 Posted 03/31/2015  6:00 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add coinwatch to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Thanks, BH1964. You're correct. At best BU AGE bullion might be referred to as "semi-numismatic." And "sell" prices in the spot + 2% seems about right.

A "w" mint marked AGE (proof or uncirculated) would be an example of real numismatic value.

My point was to say that selling an AGE at a scrap gold buyer's substantially below spot price made no sense to me.

Edited by coinwatch
03/31/2015 6:12 pm
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coinwatch's Avatar
United States
808 Posts
 Posted 03/31/2015  6:11 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add coinwatch to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
Personally, I'd be very happy to pay spot + 2% for an AGE. Yeah, I never find those deals.
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Libertad's Avatar
Canada
3692 Posts
 Posted 03/31/2015  10:41 pm  Show Profile   Bookmark this reply Add Libertad to your friends list Get a Link to this Reply
coinwatch, you make good posts. That silver is very negligible. Most people don't know that 18K yellow gold has traces of silver, but nobody adds that to the scrap value, mostly because the alloy is totally unknown to anyone until it is finally refined. What is known and what is legal to mark is the gold content - that's it. I'd say the trace amounts of alloy detract from the value, but now I'm just getting nitty gritty, no need to add to the cluster.
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