For the most general difference, an Oklahoma City gold buyer typically focuses it’s business model on scrap gold, silver and platinum. An Oklahoma City coin dealer typically focuses it’s business model on gold, silver and platinum coins and bullion. A coin dealer will also typically deal in currencies and random collectors items. One way to look at it is a gold buyer is only interested in the precious metals in the pieces and for the most part coin dealers are interested in the collectible part of the piece as well as the precious metal.
For example, a gold buyer will typically not purchase a coin if the coin has no gold, silver or platinum in it. However, a lot of times, a coin dealer would be interested in something like that. You see this a lot with people who have collected currencies in the form of coins from over seas. A lot of the time this is something someone’s grandparents brought back from a trip to Europe or China years ago.
Gold buyers will still purchase gold, silver and platinum coins though. Gold buyers are in the business of scraping or trading precious metals based on the market value of the item. Gold buyers get this price from the internet. Once a gold buyer knows the market price of gold, silver or platinum, then they can quote a price for your coin.
For a coin dealer, their price can be derived from things different then the actual market value. For example, older coins can be more valuable if there was less of them made in a particular year. Like all things, the fewer coins made in a specific year make that coin year more valuable then the others.
A lot of people have a misconception that coins get their value on the year they were made or minted. The is typically not true. Most coins get their value from the precious metal in them. This is why a gold buyer will buy almost all coins that have precious metals in them.
Then you have graded coins. Coins can be graded by professionals on a scale from 0 to 70. Seventy is a perfect score. So if you have a coin with the grade of MS70 then you have a perfect coin. While the grades aren’t extremely important on new coins, they can raise the value by quite a bit on an older coin. For example, a coin made in 2010 with a score of 65 is not nearly as valuable as a coin made in 1908 with a score of 65.
If you have coins that have been set in a jewelry piece, the coin has almost always lost it’s coinage value and is only valued based on the precious metal inside the coin. If this is the type of coin you have then you are better off seeing a gold buyer about your coin as the coin has lost the intrinsic value that the coin dealer might be interested in. Based off our findings of dealing with gold, silver and platinum coins for three years now, is that almost every coin out there is priced based off the precious metal inside of the coin and not the intrinsic value. We believe this is the case based off the historic high prices for precious metals right now.
In the future, when prices come back down to normality, there may be a difference in gold buyer and coin dealer speculation of coins. But for now, almost every coin is looked at and valued based on the market price of gold, silver and platinum.
Click here if you are looking for the best place for Cash for Gold in Oklahoma City or if you need to sell your gold coin in Oklahoma City, call us at (405) 639-4653