No value in silver? Give me a break!

[turtlefoot13]

I was floored today. I was going through my box of auction junk from this year pulling out all of the sterling jewelry that was broken and going through coin jars getting all of the cull silver coins out. I took several pieces of jewelry along with about 25 coins (90% silver) to a local pawn shop to sell for scrap. I have sold junk jewelry and some coins this way for years but today was not one of those days. The shop owner told me that he did not buy scrap silver any more as there was no money to be made. It just didn't have the value. I figured with silver being over $18.00 an ounce and with most pawn shops (including him in the past) buying for a certain percentage under spot (and selling for the same percentage over spot) that there would be a higher profit right now than ever. Is anyone else running into this problem or am I just dealing with a funky business owner? I have delt with him for years on many different things without EVER having any problems.

BTW he did say that if I had gold or platinum he would buy it by the pennyweight. Rings have to have all of the stones or the price will be reduced though.

Doug

 

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[TORRERO]

My guise is he does not want to deal with the hassle anymore.
But I would have to believe that there are many people who want to buy Gold and Silver
for scrap weight.
And you don't have to have the stones.....
Did he say he would buy the rings only with the stones, but pay you only for the weight of the Gold?
Thereby pocketing the extra value of the Diamonds ?

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

Why would you sell to a pawn shop? Check out the link for Midwest Refineries.....

http://www.midwestrefineries.com/

 

[thrillathahunt]

He wants all the stones in the rings because he will sell them at a huge mark up! There is a strong market for Gold jewelry right now.

He does not want to hassle with silver right now because Gold is what is really hot and he can resell it fast and make a pretty profit.

You will get top dollar for your scrap silver on ebay.

 

[cntrydncr1]

I sent my silver to midwest....got a check back in a few days.

 

[Wildcat]

Sounds Shonky to me. Maybe like so many others he is getting greedy.

The Cat

 

[turtlefoot13]

I'm guessing "rings having to have the stones or you get a reduced price" is nothing but greed. I think there is quicker profit in gold and silver just isn't worth his time to mess with any more. I would use some place like Midwest if I had several hundred dollars worth of metal to cash in, but with $50.00 or so in scrap, I just usually use someone local. Up until today, he always paid me 10% below spot on silver and if I wanted to buy any scrap, he would charge me 10% above spot per ounce.

 

[thrillathahunt]

As Treasure_Hunter mentioned, Midwest refineries will take your silver in ANY amount large or small.

 

[IWillFindTheGold]

No value in silver? That guy's a fool. Nothing more need be said about him.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

It's the same thing with the local buy-sell-trade gold/silver brick & mortor store in my city too: He doesn't take scrap silver jewelry anymore. And once he explained it to me, I don't blame him and the others, who are not the end-refinery, for this decision. Here's the rationale:

1) there's a lot of jewelry marked "sterling", that's actually fake. Now of course, so too is there fake gold jewelry as well. But it's a lot more time-wise to check a ring that's worth potentially $100 each, for authenticity, than to check oodles of silver rings potentially worth .75c each for authenticity.

2) silver jewelry can have enamel type toppings (like on St. Christophers, for instance), and stones (of which the stones are never valuable, of course). For a gold ring, it's worth the time to remove the stone before weighing, or simply to have a weighted average already factored in to their buy-price. But for silver, it's not worth the time to go through and factor the amount of silver, verses the peripheral junk attached/molded on to them. Naturally, when the smelting process is over, the junk stuff is separated out leaving the pure silver. But to the middle-man, he won't know the final weight, so he would probably offer a lot less "just to be safe".

3) The same is true of buying silver foreign coins, verses USA silver coins: For random individual silver coins mixed in with USA coins, the coin dealer would have to check the silver content of each one. Ie.: some countries historically did 80%, or 50%, etc... "silver". Unlike USA coins were there is an easy-to-count and measure pay-out price, and no need to wonder what is silver, how much silver content, etc... So some buy-sell places just don't deal in paying for foreign silver coins anymore, unless you're talking large quantities, or numismatic deals, etc....

It's not that there's not "silver" in jewelry and foreign coins. It's just that it's not worth a brick & mortor store's time to sort out, arrive at a net amount buy-price, etc... Your best bet for large quantities of junk-silver jewelry is to deal with the end-buyer refinery. Midwest Refinery is one such example. They are the end smelter, and pay on the actual end gold and silver amount. Therefore they could care less how much other slag, glass stones, enamel, etc... are stuck into the mess.

 

[GibH]

The pawn shop owner is right, there is no value in silver. Everybody can send their's to me for disposal and I will not even charge you, because that's just the kind of guy I am

 

[mlayers]

I beleive I would find someone else to do business with. He wants the stones because there is just a big markl up in the price of gold jewerly. For the jewerly store they get to marup there jewerly by 800 or 900 pecent so when they have a sale for 50% off they are still making a profit......Matt