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Last updated: August 12, 2026 · By White Metal Resources Editorial
Quick answer: The safest place to sell silver is a buyer who quotes a written percentage of melt against the day's silver spot price, gives you time to compare, and lets you walk away with the goods. Local coin shops and online bullion buyers usually pay closest to melt. Refiners pay best on large sorted lots. Pawn desks and mail-in television buyers usually pay worst.
Compute your own melt floor first. Then call two or three buyers on the same day, ask each for a written paid percentage of melt, and compare dollar payouts on the same items. That single method usually beats brand loyalty by 15 to 30 percentage points on the final check.
Short on time? The essentials
- Melt value is what your silver contains at spot. Grams times fineness, divided by 31.1035, times the day's silver spot per troy ounce. Every honest buyer prices from that formula and pays a stated percentage of it.
- At an illustrative 30 dollars per troy ounce, 100 grams of sterling holds about 2.974 troy ounces of pure silver, worth about 89.22 dollars in melt content. Substitute the day's real spot to reprice.
- Local coin shops typically pay 90 to 95 percent of melt on US pre-1965 silver coins and 60 to 80 percent on sterling flatware. They give you a same-day cash check without shipping risk.
- Online bullion buyers ship-in typically pay 88 to 95 percent of melt on recognizable bullion and 70 to 88 percent on sterling. You bear shipping cost, insurance cost, and delayed payment.
- Wholesale refiners pay 90 to 97 percent of melt on large clean sorted lots (usually 500 troy ounces or more), less on small lots. They require documentation and a lot minimum.
- Pawn desks typically pay 50 to 70 percent of melt on sterling and 70 to 85 percent on recognizable coinage. Use only for immediate cash with no time to compare.
- Mail-in television or direct-mail buyers routinely pay 30 to 55 percent of melt. Payment often arrives as a check the seller cannot cash before the return window closes.
- Shipping any lot worth more than 1,000 dollars uses USPS Registered Mail (insured up to 50,000 dollars at a Post Office counter) or a private carrier with declared value coverage on a documented tracking number.
- Red flags: no written percentage, no scale in view, on-site sorting out of your view, a quote that changes at payment, and "free appraisal" offers that require the metal be shipped first.
- Silver held for retirement is a different topic. IRA silver must sit at .999 fineness or better in an approved depository, covered in our silver IRA explainer.
The market for used silver is unusual. The underlying value is public, computable, and identical from buyer to buyer. Yet the number a seller actually takes home on the same lot can swing by 40 percentage points between the best and worst door. The choice of buyer matters more than the choice of day.
This page walks through the five buyer types a US consumer or inheritor might encounter, ranked by typical paid melt percentage and by the practical risk of each channel. It covers the shipping mechanics for mail-in sales, the get-three-quotes method that captures most of the available spread, and the red flags that separate honest counters from bait-and-switch operators.
Compute your floor before you talk to any buyer
The single most important step is to compute the melt value of your silver before you make any call. That number is your floor, the minimum you should accept, minus a reasonable spread for the buyer's cost of doing business. Every honest buyer prices against this same number.
The formula is simple. Weigh the item in grams. Multiply by the fineness decimal (0.925 for sterling, 0.900 for US pre-1965 coin silver, 0.999 for modern bullion). Divide by 31.1035 to convert grams to troy ounces. Multiply by the day's silver spot price in dollars per troy ounce. The result is your melt ceiling.
At an illustrative silver spot of 30 dollars per troy ounce, a 100 gram sterling lot holds 2.974 troy ounces of pure silver, worth 89.22 dollars in melt content. Substitute the day's real spot to reprice. The full math is covered in our companion page on weighing and calculating silver melt value.
Once you know the floor, every quote you receive is either a percentage of it or a distraction. A buyer who refuses to state a percentage of melt, and instead offers a flat dollar-per-gram number, is not giving you a comparable quote. Insist on the percentage.
The five buyer types, honestly compared
US consumers face five common buyer channels. Each has a different unit economics model, and each pays a different percentage of melt as a result. The typical ranges below reflect published fee schedules, industry practice, and consumer reports collected across common sale scenarios.
Local coin shops handle recognizable coins and bullion by the piece, holding them as inventory for retail resale. Online bullion buyers do the same at scale through mail-in intake. Wholesale refiners melt scrap into new bars and pay for the recovered silver minus a refining fee. Pawn desks buy silver as a small line inside a broader inventory. Mail-in television or direct-mail buyers run high-margin single-transaction models against unsophisticated sellers.
The paid percentage of melt roughly ranks in that order: refiner (highest on large sorted lots), coin shop and online bullion buyer (best for typical retail lots), pawn desk (convenience tax), mail-in television buyer (highest margin extraction). The rest of this page walks through each channel in detail.
Local coin shops: the default for most sellers
A local coin shop is the default recommendation for a typical household silver sale. It offers same-day cash, no shipping risk, direct conversation with the buyer, and a competitive percentage of melt on recognizable items.
Coin shops earn money by reselling inventory to retail bullion buyers or into a wholesale dealer network. They pay best on items that resell quickly: US pre-1965 90 percent silver coins, American Silver Eagles, Canadian Silver Maple Leafs, listed refiner bars (Engelhard, Johnson Matthey, Sunshine Mint, PAMP Suisse), and clean sterling flatware in commonly traded patterns.
Typical paid percentages of melt at a walk-in coin shop:
- US pre-1965 dimes, quarters, halves: 90 to 95 percent of melt.
- American Silver Eagles, Canadian Maple Leafs: 93 to 98 percent of melt.
- Listed refiner bars (10 oz to 100 oz): 93 to 98 percent of melt.
- Generic silver rounds and unlisted bars: 85 to 93 percent of melt.
- Sterling silver flatware or holloware: 60 to 80 percent of melt.
- Continental 800 silver: 55 to 75 percent of melt.
The advantage of a coin shop is speed and finality. You walk in with silver, you walk out with cash or a check that clears the next day. The disadvantage is limited depth on odd items. A single sterling teapot from a maker the shop does not recognize will get a lower quote than an antique specialist might pay.
Verify the shop before you visit. Look up the business on the Better Business Bureau. Read Google reviews with an eye for complaints about lowballed quotes or bait-and-switch pricing. Check that the shop has been at the same address for at least two or three years. A stable local coin shop with a decade of reviews is a very different counterparty from a pop-up.
Online bullion buyers: mail-in mechanics
Online bullion buyers extend the coin shop model nationally through mail-in intake. You request a shipping kit or ship on your own, the buyer receives and evaluates the lot, and you accept or reject a quote before payment. Well-known players in this channel include APMEX, JM Bullion, Provident Metals, Kitco, and Money Metals Exchange, among others.
Typical paid percentages of melt for online bullion buyers on recognizable items sit in the 88 to 95 percent range. Sterling scrap through the same channel usually clears at 70 to 88 percent because the buyer must sort, weigh, assay, and ship the material onward to a refiner.
The mail-in model has three costs the walk-in model does not. First, shipping insurance eats a fixed dollar amount off the payout on smaller lots. Second, the intake evaluation typically takes 5 to 15 business days between shipment and payment. Third, the buyer holds the metal during the quote window, which means the seller cannot easily walk away without paying return shipping.
The advantage of a national online buyer is a firm published paid-percentage schedule that the seller can compare before shipping. The disadvantage is the shipping cost, the delay, and the loss of walk-away leverage once the metal is in the buyer's vault. Use online buyers when local coin shops are not competitive on the specific item, or when the lot is too large to walk in without a security escort.
Wholesale refiners: best price, hardest access
A wholesale refiner buys scrap silver by the lot, melts it into bars, assays the recovered silver, and pays a percentage of the assay minus a per-ounce refining fee. Recognizable US refiners include Elemetal (through its retail buying arm), Metalor, Umicore, Republic Metals (historical), and Asahi Refining, among others accredited by the LBMA and COMEX.
Refiners pay the highest percentage of melt of any channel on large clean sorted lots, typically 90 to 97 percent. The catch is the minimum lot size. Most published refiner intake programs quote by minimum weight, often 500 troy ounces or more of pure silver content for the best terms, and by a signed intake agreement with documentation of source.
Refiners are the wrong door for a household lot of 100 grams of sterling. The fixed cost of the intake process, assay, and settlement eats too much of a small transaction. For a lot below 5 kilograms of sterling or below 100 troy ounces of pure silver content, a coin shop or online bullion buyer usually delivers a better net payout after fees.
Refiners are the right door for large sorted lots from estates, dealers, or jewelers with steady scrap flow. A signed intake agreement with a published fee schedule and a documented settlement process gives the seller full pricing transparency. The tradeoff is the setup work and the lot minimum.
Pawn desks and jewelry stores: convenience tax
Pawn desks and general jewelry stores buy silver as one small line inside a broader inventory. They weigh scrap on the same melt formula in principle, but the retail location, the staff time, and the single-piece transaction cost push the paid percentage well below what a coin shop offers on the same item.
Typical paid percentages of melt at a pawn desk or jewelry buyer:
- Sterling silver flatware or holloware: 50 to 70 percent of melt.
- Continental 800 silver: 40 to 60 percent of melt.
- US pre-1965 silver coinage: 70 to 85 percent of melt.
- American Silver Eagles or Canadian Maples: 80 to 92 percent of melt.
- Odd or unmarked scrap: often refused, or quoted well below 50 percent.
The advantage of a pawn desk is immediate cash and no appointment. The disadvantage is that the seller usually leaves 20 to 40 percentage points of melt on the counter compared to a coin shop, and 30 to 45 percentage points compared to a refiner on a large lot.
Use a pawn desk only as a last resort. Immediate cash on a small pile with no time to compare is the one scenario where the convenience tax is worth paying. Any lot worth more than 200 or 300 dollars in melt content deserves at least a same-day call to a coin shop before it walks into a pawn shop.
Mail-in television and direct-mail buyers: the worst tier
Mail-in television or direct-mail buyers advertise on cable television, in magazine inserts, and by unsolicited direct mail with phrases like "we buy gold and silver," "free appraisal," and "pay top dollar." The business model relies on high margin per transaction and on sellers who do not compute their melt floor before shipping.
Documented paid percentages of melt for this channel routinely sit in the 30 to 55 percent range. A 2010 Consumer Reports investigation and follow-up state-consumer-agency reports tested the leading mail-in services on the same lot of scrap gold. Offers came back between 11 and 29 percent of documented value. The highest offer still fell well below what a local coin shop paid on the same lot. The pattern holds for silver.
The channel also uses several structural tactics that disadvantage the seller. The metal is required to be shipped before any quote is issued. The quote is presented as a check the seller can accept or reject, with a short return window (often 10 business days). If the seller rejects, the buyer returns the metal, sometimes only after a repeated request. Payment on acceptance often arrives as a check the seller cannot cash before the return window closes.
The Federal Trade Commission publishes Guides for the Jewelry, Precious Metals, and Pewter Industries that prohibit misrepresenting the fineness, quality, or value of a silver item. Consumer complaints in this channel typically involve alleged fineness reclassification (sterling scored as plate), lowball opening offers, and refusal to return metal promptly on rejection.
The practical rule: do not use this channel. A local coin shop, a national online bullion buyer with a published percentage-of-melt schedule, or a wholesale refiner for a large lot will always outperform a mail-in television buyer on net payout.
Shipping and insurance mechanics for mail-in sales
Any silver sale that requires shipping introduces a specific set of insurance and tracking mechanics. Getting these right protects the payout even if the package is lost, damaged, or stolen.
The US Postal Service publishes two insurance products relevant to precious metals. Standard USPS Insurance covers a mailpiece for up to 5,000 dollars in declared value. Registered Mail, the higher security tier, covers a mailpiece for up to 50,000 dollars in declared value and travels through a locked chain of custody with signature transfers at every handoff. Both products are purchased at a Post Office counter and priced against declared value.
Private carriers offer their own coverage. FedEx and UPS both cap standard declared value coverage on precious metals well below their published limits for other categories. Specialty carriers like Malca-Amit, Brink's Global Services, and Loomis International handle high-value bullion transfers, but they typically serve dealer-to-dealer traffic rather than individual consumer sales.
Practical shipping protocol for a mail-in silver sale:
- Photograph and video-record the item on a scale before packing. Note gross weight, fineness marks, and any hallmarks.
- Pack the item in a plain box with no branding that identifies the contents.
- Ship USPS Registered Mail with declared value equal to the melt ceiling, not the anticipated payout.
- Retain the Post Office receipt with the Registered Mail number until payment clears.
- Track the shipment daily until delivery is confirmed.
- Ship on a Monday or Tuesday to avoid weekend transit delays.
Never ship silver by an uninsured method, and never accept a shipping label from a buyer that does not name Registered Mail or an equivalent tracked and insured product. A buyer who insists on uninsured or under-insured shipping is asking the seller to absorb the risk of loss in transit.
The get-three-quotes method, step by step
The single most reliable way to capture the paid percentage a specific silver lot deserves is to compare three quotes on the same day for the same lot. The method is simple, takes about an hour, and routinely recovers 15 to 30 percentage points that a walk-in sale to the first door would leave behind.
- Compute the melt floor. Weigh the lot on a scale that reads to the tenth of a gram. Multiply gross grams by the fineness decimal for each category. Divide by 31.1035 to convert to troy ounces of pure silver. Look up the current silver spot on a public quote source (Kitco, APMEX or the LBMA Silver Price benchmark). Multiply troy ounces by spot to get the melt ceiling. Write it down with the time.
- Sort the lot by category. Separate US 90 percent silver coinage from American Silver Eagles from listed refiner bars from sterling flatware from continental 800 silver. Each category will attract a different percentage of melt and may sell best through a different door.
- Identify three candidate buyers. Two local coin shops within driving distance and one national online bullion buyer usually give the best cross-section. Look up each on the Better Business Bureau and Google Reviews before calling.
- Call each buyer and ask three questions. First, what percentage of melt do you pay on this specific fineness. Second, what silver spot reference will you use at the moment of sale. Third, is the quote firm at delivery or subject to change on inspection. Record the answers.
- Compare dollar payouts, not percentages. Different buyers use different spot references, different fineness assumptions, and different inspection protocols. Only the final dollar payout on the same lot is comparable.
- Take the best quote or split the lot. If one buyer is best on the coinage and another is best on the sterling, split the lot by category between two dealers. The improved payout often pays for the extra trip.
Any buyer who refuses to give a written paid percentage of melt before the metal leaves your hands is a buyer to walk away from. Any buyer whose final settlement differs from the initial quote without a documented reason is a buyer to walk away from at the settlement window and take the metal back.
Buyer type comparison table
The table below summarizes the paid percentage ranges, the practical minimums, and the typical settlement times for each of the five buyer channels covered above.
| Buyer type | Typical paid melt on recognizable coins | Typical paid melt on sterling scrap | Practical minimum | Settlement time |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local coin shop | 90 to 95 percent | 60 to 80 percent | Any lot | Same day (cash or next-day check) |
| Online bullion buyer (mail-in) | 88 to 95 percent | 70 to 88 percent | Usually 100 dollars in melt | 5 to 15 business days after receipt |
| Wholesale refiner | 92 to 97 percent | 90 to 97 percent | Often 500 troy ounces pure silver | 7 to 30 days after settlement assay |
| Pawn desk or jewelry store | 70 to 85 percent | 50 to 70 percent | Any lot (many refuse odd scrap) | Same day (cash) |
| Mail-in TV or direct-mail buyer | Not recommended | 30 to 55 percent | Any lot | Check issued 5 to 15 business days after receipt; short return window |
Ranges reflect published fee-schedule structures, industry practice, and consumer complaint patterns across US buyer channels. Actual paid percentages vary by lot size, by silver spot on the day, and by pre-sorting. Sources: FTC Guides for the Jewelry, Precious Metals, and Pewter Industries; USPS insurance and Registered Mail terms; LBMA Good Delivery accreditation framework; Silver Institute market notes; CFTC enforcement history on precious metals. Checked August 2026.
The chart below plots the typical paid melt percentage ranges from the same table in a single visual, ordered from best (refiner on large lots) to worst (mail-in television buyer). The gap between the top and the bottom of the chart is the reason the get-three-quotes method matters.
A worked example on a 100 gram sterling lot
The math below runs a full melt-and-payout calculation across the five buyer channels on a 100 gram lot of clean sterling flatware. The lot represents a common household clean-out scale and makes the payout gap between doors obvious in raw dollars.
Picture a Chicago inheritor who consolidates a parent's sterling flatware after downsizing. The lot is 100 grams gross weight, all pieces marked STERLING or 925, with no filled handles or attached steel blades. Silver is priced against an illustrative spot of 30 dollars per troy ounce.
- Gross weight of the lot: 100 grams sterling silver.
- Fineness of sterling: .925, so pure silver weight equals 100 grams times 0.925 equals 92.5 grams.
- Convert grams to troy ounces: 92.5 grams divided by 31.1035 grams per troy ounce equals 2.974 troy ounces of pure silver.
- Illustrative silver spot price: 30 dollars per troy ounce.
- Computed melt value: 2.974 troy ounces times 30 dollars per ounce equals 89.22 dollars in pure silver content. This is the ceiling. No commercial buyer pays 100 percent of this number.
Illustrative payouts by channel on the same 100 gram sterling lot:
- Wholesale refiner (small lot below minimum, penalty rate 85 percent): 0.85 times 89.22 equals 75.84 dollars.
- Local coin shop (mid-range 72 percent on sterling walk-in): 0.72 times 89.22 equals 64.24 dollars.
- Online bullion buyer (mid-range 80 percent on shipped sterling): 0.80 times 89.22 equals 71.38 dollars, before shipping and insurance cost of roughly 15 to 25 dollars for Registered Mail on a 100 dollar declared value.
- Pawn desk (mid-range 60 percent on sterling): 0.60 times 89.22 equals 53.53 dollars.
- Mail-in television buyer (mid-range 42 percent on sterling): 0.42 times 89.22 equals 37.47 dollars.
The paid amount for the same 100 gram lot ranges from about 37 dollars to about 76 dollars across the five channels. That is a two-times gap in raw dollars on identical silver, driven entirely by which door the seller walks through.
Note the refiner ranking. On a small lot below the refiner's minimum, the refining fee and intake overhead eat the top-line percentage, so a local coin shop or online bullion buyer often nets more than the refiner on the same lot. The refiner is the right channel only above the lot minimum, typically 500 troy ounces or more of pure silver.
Substitute a different spot price to reprice. At 25 dollars per troy ounce the melt is 74.35 dollars. At 35 dollars per troy ounce the melt is 104.09 dollars. At 40 dollars per troy ounce the melt is 118.96 dollars. The channel payout multipliers stay in the same ranges, so the seller can pre-compute the payout at any spot before making a single call.
Figures are illustrative, not a quote from any specific dealer, and not a promise of future silver prices. Spot prices are examples, not forecasts. This is not tax or investment advice. Consult a licensed advisor for personal decisions.
Red flags and pressure tactics to walk away from
Not every buyer is honest. A short list of warning signs appears often enough across consumer complaints to be worth memorizing before you walk into any door.
No written percentage of melt. A buyer who quotes a flat dollar-per-gram number, or a percentage of "our price" rather than a percentage of the day's silver spot, is not giving you a comparable quote. Any honest buyer will state the paid percentage of melt in writing on the intake ticket.
No scale in view. The weighing step is the foundation of every quote. A buyer who takes silver into a back room to weigh it, out of your view, is a buyer to walk away from. Ask that the scale be on the counter and that you observe the gross weight per category before any quote is issued.
Lowball first, walk-back second. A common tactic is a very low opening offer, followed by a small verbal increase when the seller refuses to accept. Any buyer whose opening offer is below 50 percent of melt on standard sterling or below 80 percent on US pre-1965 coinage is signaling that the entire negotiation will run below market.
On-site fineness reclassification. A buyer who quotes on sterling in the initial call and then declares the pieces to be silver plate at the counter, with the intent to lower the payout, is executing a bait-and-switch. Pre-sort at home with a hallmark check, a magnet, and a scale before the pile leaves the house.
Quote changes at settlement. The paid percentage on the intake ticket is what the buyer owes. A settlement that comes in below the ticket, without a documented reason such as a discovered plated piece or a different silver spot at delivery, is grounds to reject and reclaim the metal.
Short return window on a mail-in check. Mail-in buyers sometimes issue a payment check with a short window (10 business days is common) to reject the offer and reclaim the metal. If the check is post-dated or drawn on an account that cannot be verified before the return window closes, the seller is trapped in the offer. Do not ship to buyers whose payment method cannot be confirmed in advance.
Pressure and urgency. "Silver spot is dropping today, sign now" is a sales tactic, not market reality. Silver spot moves in both directions during the day, and no legitimate quote depends on a same-hour signature. A buyer applying urgency pressure is telling the seller that the offer will not survive a second opinion.
Free appraisal that requires shipping. A "free appraisal" that requires the metal be shipped to the buyer before any quote is issued removes the seller's leverage. The seller has already paid shipping, insurance, and time, so accepting a low quote becomes psychologically easier than eating the cost and reclaiming the metal.
Limits and honest caveats
Everything on this page is a computation or a pattern rather than a specific quote from a specific dealer. A few honest limits are worth stating clearly.
Every dollar figure derives from a stated illustrative silver spot price. Real silver spot moves continuously during market hours and can swing by a dollar or two per troy ounce in a single session. Substitute the day's real spot to reprice, and expect the melt ceiling to move.
Paid percentages of melt are typical ranges collected from published fee schedules and consumer reports. Real quotes on any given day vary by lot size, by region, by season, by silver spot volatility, and by the specific relationship between seller and buyer. The ranges in the tables above are common patterns, not commitments.
Antique, hallmark, and collector premiums are qualitative rather than quantitative on this page. A signed piece by Tiffany, Georg Jensen, Gorham, or another recognized silversmith may fetch several multiples of melt from a specialist collector or auction house. A local coin shop pays melt regardless. Get a specialist appraisal before selling a piece with maker interest to a scrap desk.
Better Business Bureau ratings, Google Reviews, and state consumer complaint records are the practical trust signals for a specific local buyer. Check them before you visit. No page can vouch for a specific business by name because ratings and complaint history change over time.
Silver held for retirement is a different topic entirely. IRA silver must sit at .999 fineness or better in an IRS-approved depository, and household scrap silver sold to any of the buyer types covered above does not enter the IRA framework at all. That topic is covered in our silver IRA explainer rather than on this page.
Selling silver questions, answered
Where is the safest place to sell silver?
The safest place is a buyer who quotes a written paid percentage of the day's silver spot, gives you time to compare, weighs the silver in your view, and lets you walk away with the goods. A stable local coin shop with a decade of Better Business Bureau history is the default recommendation for most household silver sales.
Do I pay more or receive more at a coin shop or a pawn shop?
You almost always receive more at a coin shop than at a pawn shop for the same silver. Coin shops typically pay 90 to 95 percent of melt on US pre-1965 silver coinage and 60 to 80 percent on sterling. Pawn shops typically pay 70 to 85 percent on coinage and 50 to 70 percent on sterling. The gap is 15 to 25 percentage points on the same lot.
Should I sell my silver to a mail-in television buyer?
Almost never. Documented paid percentages of melt in this channel routinely sit in the 30 to 55 percent range for sterling, well below any local coin shop, national online bullion buyer, or refiner. The channel also uses structural tactics (ship before quote, short return window, difficult check cashing) that disadvantage the seller. Use any other channel first.
How much can I insure a shipment of silver for?
USPS Standard Insurance covers a mailpiece for up to 5,000 dollars in declared value. USPS Registered Mail covers a mailpiece for up to 50,000 dollars in declared value and travels through a locked chain of custody. Both are purchased at a Post Office counter. Private carriers cap precious metals coverage well below their standard limits and usually require a specialty carrier for higher values.
What percentage of melt should I expect from a local coin shop?
Typical ranges at a walk-in coin shop: 90 to 95 percent of melt on US pre-1965 90 percent silver coinage. 93 to 98 percent on American Silver Eagles and Canadian Maple Leafs. 93 to 98 percent on listed refiner bars such as Engelhard, Johnson Matthey, or PAMP Suisse. 60 to 80 percent on sterling flatware. Percentages vary by shop, by silver spot, and by lot size.
How do I get the best price when selling silver?
Compute your melt floor before calling any buyer. Sort the lot by category (coinage, bullion, sterling, continental 800). Call two local coin shops and one national online bullion buyer on the same day and ask each for a written paid percentage of melt against the day's silver spot. Compare dollar payouts on the same lot. Take the best quote or split the lot between buyers by category.
Is it safe to ship silver through the mail?
Yes, using USPS Registered Mail with a declared value equal to the melt ceiling and a locked chain of custody. Standard USPS Insurance covers up to 5,000 dollars. Registered Mail covers up to 50,000 dollars. Never ship silver by an uninsured method, and never accept a buyer's shipping label that does not use Registered Mail or an equivalent tracked and insured product.
What are the red flags of a dishonest silver buyer?
The most common red flags: no written paid percentage of melt. No scale in view during the weighing step. An opening offer below 50 percent of melt on sterling. On-site reclassification of sterling as silver plate to lower the payout. Settlement below the intake ticket without documented reason. A mail-in check with a short return window that cannot be cashed in time to reject the offer.
Sources
- US Postal Service, Insurance and Extra Services (Standard Insurance up to 5,000 dollars declared value; Registered Mail insured up to 50,000 dollars at Post Office). Checked August 2026.
- Federal Trade Commission, Guides for the Jewelry, Precious Metals, and Pewter Industries (16 CFR Part 23, fineness misrepresentation and consumer protection). Checked August 2026.
- Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Press Release 8260-20: CFTC Orders JPMorgan to Pay Record 920 Million Dollars for Spoofing and Manipulation of Precious Metals Futures. Checked August 2026.
- London Bullion Market Association, About Good Delivery (accreditation framework for silver and gold bar refiners recognized in global bullion markets). Checked August 2026.
- Silver Institute, Silver Supply and Demand (annual global silver demand mix across industrial, coin and bar, jewelry, and silverware categories). Checked August 2026.
- Sterling silver: composition 92.5 percent silver and 7.5 percent other metals, minimum millesimal fineness 925 (summary of the silver-standards literature). Checked August 2026.
- Millesimal fineness for silver: .999 fine (LBMA Good Delivery bullion), .925 sterling, .900 US coin silver, .800 continental, and other national standards. Checked August 2026.
- Troy weight: one troy ounce equals 31.1034768 grams, the unit in which silver spot prices are quoted worldwide. Checked August 2026.
