The numbers right now
| Businesses that buy coins, listed | 1,270 |
| Profiles deep enough to be indexed by search engines | 508 |
| Dealer websites read for services and policies | 915 |
| Shops with review topics counted | 192 (9,717 reviews) |
| Shops matched to a BBB record | 376 |
| NGC-authorized dealers verified against NGC's locator | 159 |
| City pages | 37 |
1. Finding shops
We start from NGC's authorized dealer locator and from map searches for coin dealers city by city, then add shops we find on dealer association lists and coin show exhibitor lists. Discovery casts a wide net, so the next step matters more.
2. Is it really a coin business?
Search engines return craft stores, video-game shops and crypto ATMs for "coin" searches. A business stays in our directory only if it says it buys coins in its own name, holds a numismatic credential (like NGC authorization), or its own website says it buys or sells coins or bullion. We then label what kind of business it is: a dedicated coin or bullion shop, or a pawn shop, jeweler or gold buyer that also buys coins. City pages keep the two groups apart because they price differently: a coin shop can recognize a rare date; a gold buyer usually pays by weight.
3. What the dealer's own website says
We read each shop's website and record what it states about what it buys (gold, silver, paper money, whole collections, estates), its services (free or written appraisals, house calls, consignment, grading submissions), and its policies (appointments, how it pays, posted buy prices). Every fact is stored with the dealer's own words and the page it came from — hover a check mark on a profile to see the wording. If the site doesn't say it, we don't claim it. Absence on a website doesn't mean a shop won't do something, so call and ask.
4. What recent customers report
For each shop we take up to the 60 most recent public Google reviews and count what they mention: what people brought in (silver dollars, gold coins, an inherited collection), and how it went (a fair offer, a lowball offer, a long wait, a patient explanation). We publish the counts, never the review text, and we never create a star rating of our own. Star ratings and review totals belong to Google and are shown with attribution.
The customer-reported offer figure is the share of distinct offer-related reviews that describe a fair offer or the best offer after shopping around. We count each review once, even when it has both tags. A review can report both a fair and a low offer; the displayed counts can overlap. We only show a percentage when at least three distinct reviews discuss offers. It's a signal, not a guarantee: reviews skew toward happy customers, and one person's lowball is another's fair price for a common coin.
5. Third-party records
- Bing Maps: fills missing weekly hours and supplies a separate rating where Bing identifies the provider, such as Yelp. Existing hours take priority. We omit holiday, split and overnight hours from the fallback because our open-now display cannot represent them reliably. Call the shop to confirm.
- BBB: letter grade, accreditation and complaint counts, matched to the shop by phone number or name and city, with a link to the BBB profile.
- Credentials: NGC authorization from NGC's dealer locator, plus PCGS and Professional Numismatists Guild listings where those directories list the shop. Memberships a dealer claims on its own site are labeled "per their website."
- Licenses: where a state or city publishes a license registry for secondhand or precious-metal dealers, we show the license and link the registry.
- Track record: the year the dealer's website was first captured by the Internet Archive.
6. Red flags we screen for
Listings with only a P.O. box, a phone number from another region with no verifiable storefront, a "permanently closed" status, or no Google reviews in two years are flagged or kept out of search results. Shops that look closed get a visible "call ahead" warning.
7. What gets indexed
Every listing has a page you can visit, but we only ask search engines to index profiles that add something a map listing doesn't: at least 4 independent facts beyond the address and hours for a dedicated coin shop, and at least 6 for a pawn shop, jeweler or gold buyer (plus evidence that coins are a real part of its business). A profile must also contain at least one sourced buying, selling, service or visiting detail; photos, website age and registry records alone do not qualify it. City pages are indexed when they have at least three such profiles and at least two dedicated coin shops.
8. How shops are ordered
Dedicated coin and bullion shops come first, then by Google review volume — a rough but hard-to-fake signal of how established a shop is. On city pages you can re-sort by any column. No dealer can pay for placement, and we don't sell leads or ads on listings.
9. Where we use AI
We use AI models for two narrow jobs: pulling structured facts out of dealer websites, and tagging the topics in reviews. Each extracted website fact must carry a verbatim quote from the dealer's site, and review tags are counted, not paraphrased. We don't publish AI-written descriptions of dealers. State laws and tool formulas are researched from primary sources and fact-checked separately.
10. Corrections
If you own a listed shop or spot a mistake, tell us. We'll fix factual errors and note the date. Dealers can send us their buy-price page, appraisal policy or hours; we publish what can be verified and never charge for changes.