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 :(

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culi 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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?

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nlh 10 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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 ;)

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culi 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I appreciate you sharing your knowledge! Your layers concept makes sense but I guess I'm just surprised at how large of a layer the market price of precious metals can be—even for "junk silver" coins

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adastra22 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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.

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seszett an hour ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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nlh 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Also a very good question and the answer is also...it depends. The "premium" (delta to spot) on 90% silver (aka "90%") varies with supply and demand. At this very moment with the meteoric rise of base silver, 90% is selling for less than spot. But there have been times when it trades above spot.

The reason is that silver itself is traded on the various international commodity exchanges and those traders are not the same supply & demand sources as the little guy(s) who likes keeping some old silver coins in their garage. So as those supply/demand curves shift, the premium over/under spot price changes as well.

	▲	Ekaros 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Also I heard that refineries that is companies that take 90% silver or even less in and processes it to something that can be sold on commodity markets that is purer silver are now focusing on well purer silver as that is easier to process. Thus there is less demand on less pure silver. And recycled silver ending with industrial use goes through these companies.
	▲	adastra22 10 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Thanks, that makes sense.

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ReptileMan 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Isn't smelting a coin for the metal a crime?

	▲	fragmede 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So is speeding. There might be some crazy radiation related super science way to determine if a lump of silver came from a specific collection of coins, but once it's melted down, and the impurities driven out, silver is silver and you can't really tell that it came from coins.

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wakawaka28 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Collectible coins usually get melted as a last resort, if they stay on the shelf forever. The value of the metal is still in the coin though. Think about it: you could buy a very common coin with the same metal, or a slightly rare one. Which costs more? Now take the rare one and put a huge dent in it. Is it worth less than the metal content then?

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pseudohadamard 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

They're incredibly sleazy scumbags. They buy silver coins at bullion-value or below, which is the lowest grade you can get for a coin, making a small profit on everything they buy and massive profits on the ones that are actually worth something as coins rather than bullion. And it's typically elderly people they rip off, who are thrilled to get the price of a cup of coffee for their 1884S Morgan dollar. Never, ever deal with these predators.

	▲	nlh 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		amen!