Selling the Silver

I've just finished a little experiment. I gave my friend a 1oz silver coin to sell on eBay. Just to see what ballpark price you could get without making too much effort. It was a 2024 silver coin from the Royal Mint, with a Morgan le Fay design. Quite nice aesthetically. (Fortunately I have a spare, so I'm not completely severed from the shiny beauty.)

The current spot price of silver is around £24 an ounce.

However, to buy the same coin retail from the Royal Mint it would cost about £40 (this is in the UK, where 20% VAT is applied - without VAT we're looking at around £34).

Anyway, my friend sold the coin for £31 (to a UK buyer) - pretty much slap bang in the middle, and what I would've expected. Obviously, if someone is in the market to buy a coin they're going to be happy to save £10 if they can do so. Providing they feel they can trust the seller.

I think the postage & packaging for the Royal Mint order costs around £4, for this delivery it was around £3. So that was a much of a muchness.

To me, £31 feels like a fair price. The buyer saves a bit of money, the seller gets a sale above the spot price. Naturally, this brings me back to how I disposed of my gold - where I received well under spot price. It stands to reason that it would be similar selling gold on eBay. That there are individual buyers out there looking to get a discount on the retail price, so are happy to pay something in between the spot and the retail. Though, of course, with more expensive purchases trust becomes more of an issue. It's one thing accepting a little bit of risk when buying a £30 silver coin, it's a bit different when it comes to buying a £2000 gold one.

Also, as a final aside, and just to give the full picture: over the six days or so the item was listed on eBay there were two offers. This one for £31 and another person offering £26. So there wasn't a huge flurry of interest. Perhaps we got lucky, perhaps we were unlucky and could've received more offers. As ever, one swallow does not a summer make. Added to this, the way you present things on sites like eBay obviously plays a part too. All in all, getting a sale above spot price was pretty quick and easy though.