How Much Do Coin Dealers Pay for Silver and Gold?

A coin dealer pays a share of the metal’s value, and the share depends on what you bring in. A one-ounce Gold Eagle can bring 97% of spot. A bag of worn silver dimes might fetch 74% of its melt value from one buyer and 87% from another, going by their posted prices. Coins with real collector demand are priced separately, and they’re the main reason a dealer would pay you more than melt.

The numbers below come from buy prices that dealers publish, checked on Friday, October 9, 2026, and the morning after, while metals markets were closed. Every percentage uses the spot price Gainesville Coins displayed after Friday’s close: gold $4,206.40 and silver $61.13 an ounce.

Do coin shops pay spot price?

Rarely. FINRA’s investor bulletin on physical metals says a dealer will always sell above spot and buy back below it, and calls the gap the dealer’s spread. Each dealer sets its own, which is why FINRA tells buyers to shop around. The same advice holds when you’re the one selling.

How far below spot depends on how quickly the dealer can resell what you bring in. On October 9, 2026:

• 1 oz gold bullion coins: 95% to 99% of spot.
• American Silver Eagles: 90% to 93% of spot at two large national dealers, 96% to 97% at two local shops that post prices.
• 90% silver dimes, quarters and halves: 74% to 87% of melt across three buyers.
• Gold jewelry and scrap: 80% to 85% of melt at the buyers that post a rate.

What’s the difference between spot, bid and ask?

Spot is the cash price for metal delivered right away, quoted per troy ounce (FINRA’s definition). It’s a wholesale benchmark. No dealer sells coins at spot.

Bid is what a buyer will pay, and ask is what a seller wants. Metals price screens often show a market bid a little under spot. Gainesville Coins showed silver spot at $61.13 and a bid of $60.75 that evening; Kitco’s bid was $60.70.

A coin dealer’s own bid and ask sit much further apart. Here is Gainesville’s spread on four common items the same evening:

The spread is the dealer’s gross margin. It covers rent, staff, shipping and the risk that prices drop before the coin resells. Handling a Silver Eagle costs about as much as handling a Gold Eagle, so the silver coin’s spread is a much bigger share of its price.

When a shop says “spot,” ask which number it means. A posted “95% of spot” works out a little better for you if it’s figured from spot than from the lower bid.

What percentage of spot do coin dealers pay?

Two large national dealers publish what they pay for common items. Gainesville calls its figures estimates and sets the final price when your coins arrive. Percentages are of spot for bullion and of melt value for 90% silver, Morgan dollars and pre-1933 gold. Silver and gold content per coin comes from NGC’s melt-value tables. For 90% silver we use 0.715 troy oz per $1 of face, the allowance for wear our junk silver calculator uses. A full-weight dollar of dimes holds 0.723 oz.

Local shops rarely publish prices, but a few post formulas on their websites. Here are two, converted at the same spot. Neither list shows a date (Raleigh says it updates its list at least weekly), so treat them as advertised rates, not quotes.

Raleigh posts one rate for gold coins in general rather than a price per coin.

A third shop, Wilkes Barre Gold in Pennsylvania, posts at least 90% of spot for .999 gold bullion and up to 85% of melt for gold jewelry, depending on volume. The jewelry calculator on its site figures 80%.

Gold bullion paid the most, 95% to 99% of spot at every buyer that posted an exact rate. Silver Eagles brought $2 to $3 an ounce more than plain bars and rounds. Junk silver and common Morgans paid the least against their metal. Each dealer also had favorites. Kitco, which runs a walk-in counter in Montreal, offered 99% for Canadian Maple Leafs, while Gainesville offered more for U.S. Gold Eagles than for Maples or Krugerrands.

Why do dealers pay less for junk silver than for bullion?

A Gold Eagle can go straight back into the display case. Buyers know exactly what it is, and nobody has to test or refine it.

Junk silver often goes to a refiner, and when lots of people are selling, refiners get backed up. After silver’s record prices, CoinWeek reported in March 2026 that heavy selling had flooded dealers with physical metal, that major refiners reported large backlogs, and that many quoted payment delays of up to eight weeks. Many refiners had halted or sharply limited purchases of 90% and 40% silver coins. Many shops were paying well under spot for junk silver while paying closer to spot for .999 bullion.

Jeff Garrett, writing for NGC in January 2026, described the same squeeze from the dealer side:

• Wholesale 90% silver coins were priced $5 to $7 under melt.
• Circulated Morgan and Peace dollars were selling below their silver value.
• Sterling silver, the slowest to refine, traded at discounts near 20%.

Don Rinkor of Rinkor Business Group, quoted in the same column, put the wait between shipping metal to large wholesalers and getting paid at 15 to 30 days.

Lower purity makes it worse. Raleigh Coin Dealers marks 40% Kennedy halves “not buying now.”

Scrap gold costs the buyer more to handle. The karat has to be tested, and everything goes to a refiner. JM Bullion guarantees at least 80% of melt for gold jewelry and 70% for sterling silver, and the shops above post 80% to 85% for gold. For your own pieces, the scrap gold calculator gives melt by karat and weight.

How do shortages and sell-offs change what dealers pay?

Dealers price around their own inventory. When the public is buying and supply runs short, premiums climb. When the public is selling, buy prices drop further under spot.

2020 and 2021 were the buying side. A June 2021 CoinWeek piece by the dealer Bullion Shark said Silver Eagle sales and premiums had been up sharply since early 2020. Covid protocols slowed production at the mints, the U.S. Mint sold Silver Eagles to its network of major bullion dealers on allocation again and again, and demand for physical silver from the Mint rose 28% in 2020. When Reddit users tried to force a squeeze in silver, some major U.S. bullion dealers stopped selling silver for a time. By September 2022, the same writer said Silver Eagle premiums were at perhaps the highest levels over spot ever seen, and blamed a shortage of silver planchets at the Mint.

2025 and 2026 brought a record run and then a sell-off.

The 2025 and January 2026 figures are Reuters reports, as summarized on Wikipedia; October 9 is Gainesville’s displayed spot.

High prices brought sellers in, and that’s when the refiner backlogs and below-melt bids described above showed up. By October 9 silver had fallen by half from its January high, the two large dealers we checked were offering 86% to 93% of spot for silver bullion, and Gainesville offered about three-quarters of melt for junk silver.

In a market like this, sell .999 bullion where it pays close to spot and get several bids on junk silver, because the gap between buyers is widest there. On $100 face value of 90% silver (about 71.5 oz, worth $4,370.80 in metal on October 9), Gainesville’s $32.44 per dollar comes to $3,244. The Ohio shop’s posted 38 times face comes to $3,800. That’s a $556 difference for the same coins.

When will a dealer pay more than melt?

Only when collectors will pay more than the metal is worth. That covers key dates, scarce mint marks, high grades and some certified coins.

Price guides show the retail end. NGC describes its price guide values as the average dealer retail price for an NGC-certified coin, and says retail prices can vary between dealers, sometimes a lot. A dealer buying from you pays less than that, because it still has to resell the coin.

A plastic holder doesn’t guarantee a premium. Gainesville’s buy list priced a 2006-W Gold Eagle graded NGC MS69 at $4,067.60, exactly what it offered for an ungraded Gold Eagle, and listed random-date Gold Eagles graded MS70, the top grade, at the same price. A bullion desk buys the gold. Take a graded coin with a collector premium to a dealer who handles collector coins.

Common silver dollars sit in between. In a hot silver market even circulated Morgans sold under their silver value, and on October 9 two buyers offered or posted 78% and 80% of melt for common dates. Pull out the better dates before you sell a roll. The Morgan dollar melt value page shows the silver floor, and our coin appraisal page lists shops whose own websites say they do free appraisals.

How do you read a coin shop’s posted buy prices?

Posted prices come in five formats. Convert each one to a percentage of melt before comparing shops.

1. Percent of spot. “97% of spot” on a Gold Eagle means spot times 0.97. Ask which spot they use.
2. Spot minus dollars. “Spot minus $2” on a Silver Eagle is 96.7% at $61 silver. The same $2 takes a bigger bite when silver is cheaper; at $30 silver it would be 93.3%.
3. Times face value. “38 times face” for 90% silver means $38 for each dollar of face. Divide by the melt value of $1 face. A fixed multiple doesn’t track the silver price. Thirty-eight times face is 87% of melt at $61 silver, but it would be 76% at $70 and more than melt at $50. Ask when the shop last updated it.
4. Dollars per coin. Raleigh Coin Dealers posts $8.75 for a 90% Washington quarter, which holds $11.05 of silver at Friday’s spot. That’s 79% of melt. It sells the same quarter for $11.25, so its spread is $2.50 a coin.
5. Percent of melt. Scrap gold and sterling are usually quoted this way. Make sure the shop is weighing in the same units you are; the gold price per gram tool converts grams, pennyweight and ounces.

At today’s spot, one dollar of face value in worn 90% silver holds about … of silver, and one Silver Eagle holds ….

Do the math every time, because lists go stale and contain mistakes. The same evening, one large dealer’s buy list priced 40% silver halves at $2.92 per dollar of face value, about a sixth of their $18.08 melt value. Whether that was a typo or a “we don’t want these” price, you’d only catch it by checking.

Read the terms, too. JM Bullion’s sell page sets a $1,000 minimum, locks your price when you check out online and pays after it inspects your shipment. The page gives two different payment timelines: 3 to 7 business days in one place, 10 or more in another. Gainesville has no minimum but doesn’t lock your price until the package arrives. If silver drops while your coins are in the mail, you get less; if it rises, you get more.

Few local shops publish buy prices at all. When a shop’s own website posts buy prices or makes a pricing claim, its CoinShop Finder listing says so, along with the payment methods the shop says it offers.

What’s a fair offer?

These are the ranges buyers offered or posted on October 9, 2026. An offer near the top is good. One near the bottom is worth trying to beat.

If an offer is far below these, take your coins somewhere else. In AARP’s March 2026 guide, Money Metals’ Stefan Gleason said an offer of 50 cents on the dollar for gold is probably a bad deal and you shouldn’t take it.

How do you get the best offer from a coin dealer?

1. Know the melt value before you go. Use the silver coin melt calculator, the gold coin melt calculator or a per-coin page such as silver quarters.
2. Sort into piles: bullion, 90% silver, silver dollars, gold coins, and anything that might be collectible. Each pile gets priced differently.
3. Ask every buyer the same question. “What are you paying today for each pile, as a percent of spot or per dollar of face?” Write down the answer, the spot price they used and the time.
4. Get three quotes on the same day. AARP’s guide says to visit at least three buyers, ideally on the same day so the quotes reflect similar market prices.
5. Check each offer with the coin offer checker. Enter what you’re selling and the offer, and it shows melt value, the offer as a percent of melt and how it compares with what dealers commonly pay.
6. Confirm when the price locks and how you get paid before you hand anything over.
7. Read what past sellers said about offers. A pawn and jewelry shop owner quoted in AARP’s guide suggests looking for consistent comments about fairness and honesty in a buyer’s reviews. Where we’ve analyzed a shop’s recent Google reviews, its CoinShop Finder listing counts how many describe fair offers and how many complain about lowballing. Listings also show the shop’s BBB record and NGC authorized-dealer status when it has them.

Find shops to compare in the coin dealer directory, or go straight to Texas, Florida, New York, Ohio or Pennsylvania. For the whole selling process, from sorting to taxes, read how to sell a coin collection.