Sell your silver coins online

Date and denomination will tell you most of it. Dimes, quarters and half dollars from 1964 and earlier in the US are 90 percent silver, half dollars from 1965 to 1970 are 40 percent, and nickels from 1942 to 1945 with a large mint mark above Monticello are 35 percent. Foreign coins vary enormously and have to be checked country by country.

The edge is the fastest physical check. A clad coin shows a copper line around the rim. A solid silver one does not.

Group the coins by date and denomination before anything goes on a scale, and photograph both sides and the edge. A date check will not catch a counterfeit or a plated piece, though, and heavily worn coins can be hard to read, so weight and dimensions get confirmed properly at verification.

Junk silver is circulating coinage that contains silver but has no collector value above that. The typical example is worn pre-1965 US dimes and quarters, and they trade on metal content.

Bullion coins are made to be bought for their metal. An American Silver Eagle is one troy ounce of .999 fine silver, trading against the silver price plus a variable product premium that moves with the market.

Collectible coins are worth what they are, not what they weigh. Price rests on grade, mintage, mint mark, errors and demand, and the silver content can be almost beside the point.

Most people who bring us a jar or an inherited bag have some of all three mixed together, so separate them before you request a valuation. Bars belong on the silver bars page, and a mixed household lot with flatware or jewelry in it is better handled through sell silver. The line between junk and collectible is not always obvious: a worn common date is easy to call, a scarce year in the same condition is not.

No, and this is one worth being firm about. Cleaning leaves fine hairlines and flat unnatural surfaces that any grader sees right away. Certified coins get marked as cleaned and the value goes down with it. Tarnish and toning are not damage, and on some coins attractive toning is actively sought after by collectors.

Handle coins by the edge, keep them out of PVC flips, and photograph them exactly as they are. Cleaning cannot be undone, so if coins have already been cleaned, say so at the start rather than having the estimate revised later.

Actual silver weight multiplied by the silver price at a given moment. The actual silver weight is the part people get wrong, because it is neither the weight of the coin nor anything to do with its face value.

As a working figure, one dollar face value of pre-1965 US dimes, quarters or half dollars contains about 0.715 troy ounces of silver, before wear is taken into account. Multiply that by the price of silver and you have the metal baseline.

Ask any buyer for four things: the actual silver weight they calculated, the silver price they used, the time it was taken, and every deduction applied. Melt is where the offer starts rather than where it lands, since refining, handling and the buyer's margin come off it, and none of that is a fixed percentage anyone can quote you before seeing the coins.

It depends on what you have, which is why sorting matters. Bullion and junk silver are commodity sales, priced by bullion dealers, online buyers and coin shops against spot with a spread. Collectible coins are a different market, and a specialist dealer or auction will usually do better on those than selling by weight.

The venue rarely decides your outcome. It is the spread, the fees, who pays for shipping and insurance, and how long you wait for the money.

Get two or three quotes on the same day, each with a timestamp, and compare what actually lands in your account rather than the headline number. Quotes taken on different days are not comparable, because the silver price will have moved between them.

Two very different things. A pawn shop is built for speed and will normally price a mixed lot by weight, which means anything collectible in the bag gets averaged away with everything else. A specialist coin dealer will generally pick out the collectible pieces and price them separately, though what they offer varies with whatever they are already holding that week.

Neither is the wrong answer. It comes down to whether you need money today or the best result on the few pieces that deserve one.

Four questions before you hand anything over.

1. What actual silver weight did you calculate?
2. What silver price, and at what time?
3. What is your spread or fee?
4. Did you assess any of these as collectible rather than as metal?

A verbal quote is not an offer. Get it in writing, with the time on it, before you agree to anything.

Yes. Coins carry their own evidence: the date, mint mark, denomination, weight, dimensions and edge are all visible and verifiable, so a coin with no paperwork whatsoever is perfectly sellable.

Certification and original packaging do help. A slab from a recognized grading service settles the question of grade before anyone can argue about it, and original mint packaging counts on modern commemoratives and proof sets. Both widen the buyer pool.

Send the coins as they are and photograph any slab labels and original packaging alongside them. Without certification the grade is assessed in hand, so a preliminary estimate on a possible collectible carries more uncertainty than one on plain bullion.

Coins are small, valuable and easy to dispute, which is exactly what makes them a target. Most of the trouble happens in marketplace sales where you ship first and argue afterwards, and where a buyer can claim the coin that arrived is not the coin you sent. There is more on selling online without getting scammed and on whether it is safe to ship.

The protection is documentation. Photograph every coin and the sealed package before it leaves you. Use tracked shipping with insurance that genuinely covers coins and bullion, since plenty of standard policies exclude them or cap them well below what the parcel is worth.

With Unvault you get a free prepaid, fully insured FedEx label, your coins are examined on camera and you receive video of that inspection, and the final offer is itemized. Decline it and the coins come back free with insured return shipping. Payment goes out one business day after you accept. The full process is on how Unvault works.

Before shipping anywhere, get four things in writing: who insures the parcel and up to what value, whether the inspection is documented, how long the offer stands, and who pays return shipping if you decline. Return shipping insurance is limited to the authenticated value of the items, so what you declare and what gets authenticated need to line up.

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