He does have to turn a profit on what he's buying. You want spot price? Oddly enough, in California and maybe other states, a pawn shop will give you spot price.

I’ve also found a few in various states that buy Eagles for spot - of course then they’ll sell them forwards at spot + 15% or something

Why California? Most pawn shops suck (see Pawn Stars where they offer like 1/3 of the value on most stuff), but you might find a few pawn shops that want to deal with metals and coins. The best thing to do is to shop around a bit when trying to sell anything.

I’ve gotten them to sell under spot once bc they mispriced their inventory.