How does a goldsmith "prove" gold and assay it?

Selling gold/silver jewelry OR coins - mailers, coin store, or goldsmith/jeweler?

• With all the hype about selling gold via the mailers you hear about online, TV ads, etc. is it really a good deal. Wouldn't it be better to go to a local coin store or a goldsmith/jeweler? If you take your coins to the goldsmith, then you are getting only the value of the metal, not the overall characteristics of the coin. Yet, if you go the coin store, you may not get what it's worth...any advice would be nice.

• Answer:

  Regardless of the way you decide to go, if you go uneducated about what you have, you're going to come out the loser. The mailer business is for those who know nothing and don't care, just want the money in their hot little hands as soon as possible. They deserve to get taken, and they will. You're right about a goldsmith, because they want the gold or silver to make into jewelry, and because they can't use it for jewelry in coin form, or from old jewelry, they have to have it refined into a form they can use. Any offer they make to the seller will include a deduction to cover this cost. If you go to a coin dealer, you WILL get what the coins are worth...to the dealer. Dealers are in business to make money, not buy coins from you and turn around and sell them to a collector for what they paid you. Dealers will try to buy as cheaply as possible. Wouldn't you? Therefore, it's up to you to know exactly what you have. Most silver coins and many gold coins have no numismatic (collector) value above the value of the precious metal. The ones that do are evaluated by grade, so you need to know something about that, too. You need to research what you have by looking at eBay sales, reading coin magazines and looking at the ads with 'buy' and 'sell' prices. If you can find it, get hold of a current 'graysheet' - that's the wholesale prices that dealers are willing to pay to other dealers. Any offers you get are going to be below wholesale. If you want closer to retail, the best bet is to learn what you have and what the wholesale and retail values are, and then sell individual better pieces on eBay. If you have a lot of 'common' silver coins, eBay may get you a little more than the 10 to 11 times face value that coin dealers are paying.