Silver plunges 30% in worst day since 1980, gold tumbles
cnbc.com329 points by pera 4 days ago
329 points by pera 4 days ago
Coincidentally, late this morning I went to one of those traveling roadshows where they purchase precious metals, bringing along a childhood coin collection that I wanted to turn into cash.
I started with a single 1 ounce silver medallion and was given a quote for $80. When I had checked the silver price earlier this morning it was above $115.
I questioned the buyer about the spread and he said the spot price was down, and the smelters were backed up so that was their best offer.
I brought out some other silver coins, specifically liberty head and Morgan dollars. He looked at the app on his phone and said “hold on I gave you the wrong price,” and then said “I’ll give you $35 for each of them,” including the pure 1 oz silver medallion.
I said no thank you and left, miffed, thinking he was jerking me around.
I didn’t realize the price of silver was collapsing.
Chances are, he was indeed jerking you around. Nearly every one of these traveling road show style buyers pay very very very very little for coins. They have no reputation to uphold and are the literal definition of “fly by night” - and by the time you realize how little they paid you, they’re gone.
Source: Am full-time professional coin dealer (who is NOT fly by night!) and have to deal with the repercussions of people getting hosed by these roadshows all the time :(
tbh, I never knew the value of coins was tied to the worth of the metal itself
Do these coins get smelted down or something?
A very excellent question and totally reasonable thing not to know (congrats on being one of today's lucky 10,000!)
I'm speaking from the perspective of US coins because that's what I specialize in but this generally applies to coins all over the world as well:
Prior to (and including) 1964, US 10c, 25c, 50c, (and when they were made, $1) coins were made of 90% silver. We made A LOT of these, so in terms of outright rarity, most are not rare. Today they're referred to as "junk silver" because in terms of collectibility, they're junk, but the 90% silver content means there's some inherent precious metal value (as of this moment on Jan 30, 2026, they have ~approximately~ 60x their face value in silver content, eg $6, $15, $30, and $60 in silver respectively.)
So that's their basal value that fluctuates with the silver market. But the next layer is actual rarity / collectibility -- if a given coin is desirable enough that it surpasses its metal content, you get a different set of values.
Now to your actual question: Do they get smelted/melted down? The answer is...sometimes. They trade somewhat like financial instruments, based on the assumption that you could melt them down (and there's a cost to doing so), so that's how people value the various silver coins. In reality, there's usually enough demand from people who want to hold physical silver in various forms that they don't actually need to be melted down.
There's obviously a lot more to it, but that's the 5c version ;)
Is that more or less than the spot price? I would have assumed that they trade higher, though maybe the non collectibles trade are only a little bit higher.
My experience, I sometimes buy gold coins to make jewelry. I do that because at least here in Belgium, there's no VAT on coins but there is VAT on the other forms of gold that are more commonly used for that. For professionals it's not a problem because they pass VAT but for an individual it's a 20% difference. Also I'm in Antwerp so it's really easy to just bike to a place that sells gold if I want to.
In my case I buy old French 20 francs coins as they are quite "cheap": 1% above spot price of their gold content (they are 90% gold).
Other more recent coins, like Chinese or Canadian ones, sell at a much higher premium (17%, 20%) so I always wonder a bit who they are for. It's unlikely they can be resold for that much of a premium. At least the shops I use just buy them for their price in gold.
Could you talk more about the "recent Chinese coins"? China hasn't had any fiat money containing gold or silver for at least 100 years. So I'm curious what exactly these Chinese coins are.