B&M Story Help me understand the rationale on price for 40% silver

Helping this guy sell his collection and part of it is war nickels. He has 146 of them that I wasn't able to sell for melt based on coinflation pricing so I said bring them to the largest local B&M in Pittsburgh and take the hit on percentage. In an experiment I ran they offered 21% less than melt for the 90% silver. Figured he would get about $120ish for the lot with melt at mid $140s.

I gave him a bottom to accept and said I would buy them if they didn't meet it.

They offered him $0.40 cents a piece versus the $0.99 cents coinflation has them at.

When he said he would pass on the deal the lady said "I don't know what someone told you but this is a fair price." Makes no sense to me, am I missing something?

8.2 troy ounces of Silver - how could this be a fair price for the seller?

 

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I think it's because they'll hard to sell.

 

Because it is illegal to melt cents(pre-1982) and nickels for profit.

 

War nickels are exampt from the prohibition of melting. Just saw the exact text earlier today on CT.

That B&M was trying to rip that person off. I've sold war nickels without ANY problem at local auctions.

Steve

 

Check out the thread "Who would take the time?" The law is stated there.

Steve

 

No one the devil is watching. The goobers are more in the pants of Trump stumpers.......

 

How's it 'hangin' Darryl?

 

Doing well, Thanks Ken, Hope the same for you!

 

Most people probably don't have a smelting process set up at the house. Especially, for war nickels.

 

Not to mention the process gives off chlorine gas which is of course deadly! perhasp one reason ''the devil "doesn't want you refining silver in your house...........of course the devil can't fix stupid!

 

Commercial refiners don't want them - expensive to process relative to the silver content.

Remember - the mint found it cheaper to go from 0.900 fine to 0.999 fine for silver coins this year, despite the 10% increase in the amount of silver...

 

That is exactly what I was wondering and was hoping someone with experience dealing with refiners would let me know. I figured there would be a higher fee for refining but wasn't sure how much.

This is why selling on eBay might be a better option to get best price.

If anyone has sold them to a refiner I would be interested to hear what to cost difference was between 90% and 40%.

 

40% silver halves have to go through the refining process twice because of the low starting fineness. And, if you are buying them, you have to hold them for a while as you accumulate enough of them to make the melt cost effective.

Same thing with the warnickels, except that they are even harder to refine due to the manganese in them. And there are not that many of them left being melted, so you might have to accumulate them for years before you have enough to justify a melt. Thus you have holding costs and the risk that the price of silver will drop before you get them refined.

 

You could always visit a silver refiner and get their answer...

https://dillongage.com/faq-2/

and

So let's see... War Nickels are 35% silver and weigh 5 grams or less due to wear. Silver spot is (10:10 am today) $17.74 per troy ounce.

$10,000 in silver is 563.7 ounces.

A troy ounce is 31.1 grams so 31.1/5/0.35 gives 17.77 nickels per ounce of pure silver.

$500 face of nickels is 10,000 coins and 562.7 ounces of silver.

562.7 * 17.77 is just under $10,000 at spot...

DG would pay 80% less a $30 assay fee or just under $8K...

And your B&M has to collect, store and ship the coins.

 

Appreciate the breakdown!!

 

I do too but this is just one example, googled local refiner that seems to deal in smaller quantities. Advertise more competitive pricing and targeting local dental, bullion, precious metal companies. My only point is this is one data point and may not be representative of smaller refiners that target sources we might be more familiar with. Source I found is Atlantic Precious Metal Refining.

 

I'd venture that perception of refining costs plays as much a role as anything. If people perceive that it's difficult to refine, the demand will decrease, and so will the buying price. I don't have any idea what it costs to refine 35% or 40% or 80%, but I don't buy it because I know demand is lower.

Will

 

Kind of lost me on the math there. Silver at $17.74 makes a war nickel have $0.998 silver per coin so you would need a tad more than 10,000 war nickels to meet the minimum for melt in your example. 5g ÷ 31.101g per oz × $17.74 per oz × .35 Silver per nickel = $0.998 per nickel seems like an easier equation.

 

Those tough sell they not too motivated be buyers. Shop them around.

 

Here's a suggestion.....everybody who thinks that coin dealers should be paying close to melt for hard to refine items such as warnickels and 40% silver halves should go into business for themselves and buy those items for close to melt and make a killing!