Common complaints when selling silver and gold: how to protect yourself

Selling inherited or scrap precious metal should be straightforward, but a surprising number of sellers walk away feeling burned even when nobody technically broke the law. After running a gold and silver buying business for eighteen years and hearing thousands of sellers describe what went wrong at other companies before they found us, the same five complaints came up time and time again. This guide unpacks each one honestly: what causes it, what warning signs to watch for, and what you can do about it before you commit to any buyer.

1. Scams that masquerade as legitimate buyers

The silver and gold market attracts bad actors for an obvious reason: the goods are dense, valuable, anonymous, and easy to resell. Online search results surface dozens of buyers, and it is genuinely hard to tell a reputable business from an opportunistic one just by looking at a website.

The most common scam pattern is simple: the buyer receives your metal, makes an offer far below what was implied in any pre-shipping communication, and then makes returning the goods slow or expensive enough that many sellers give in and accept. A variant is the outright non-payment or disappearing act, where the "buyer" vanishes once the parcel arrives.

What to do before you ship anything:

• Search the company name alongside words like "complaint," "review," and "scam." Look beyond the first page of results and pay attention to third-party review platforms, not just testimonials on the company's own site.
• Check for a physical address you can verify on a mapping service. A P.O. box alone is a yellow flag.
• Look for a clear, written returns policy before you send anything. If the site does not state what happens when you decline an offer, assume the worst.
• Read the frequently asked questions section of any buyer's site carefully. Legitimate buyers answer hard questions in plain language.

The pressure tactics used by silver buyers and how to beat them are well documented: artificial urgency, vague fee structures, and offers that expire within minutes are all tools used to stop you thinking clearly. Recognize them for what they are.

2. Packages going missing or arriving damaged in transit

This complaint is less dramatic than an outright scam but far more common. Sellers drop a parcel at the post office and then hear nothing for two weeks. The buyer claims it never arrived. The seller has no tracking information and no insurance, so they have no recourse.

The root cause is often that the seller used whatever packaging and postage they already had at home. A bubble mailer, a first-class stamp, no declared value, and no signature confirmation is a recipe for a problem that nobody can solve once the parcel disappears.

How to ship properly:

• Always use a tracked service. In the United States, USPS Priority Mail includes tracking as standard; for higher-value lots, Registered Mail is the most secure domestic option the postal service offers, with chain-of-custody documentation at every handoff.
• Declare a value and purchase insurance. The USPS limits included insurance varies by service level, so check the current USPS.com schedule and buy additional coverage if your lot exceeds it.
• Request a signature on delivery. This creates a record that the parcel changed hands.
• Photograph your items against a plain background before packing, photograph the packed box open, and then photograph it sealed. If a dispute arises about what was shipped or its condition, you have documentation.
• Keep your receipt and tracking number until payment clears your bank account, not just until the tracking shows delivered.

A reputable mail-in buyer will typically provide a pre-paid, insured, tracked shipping label rather than asking you to arrange postage yourself. If a company's process skips this entirely, that tells you something about how they treat the rest of the transaction.

3. Slow or refused returns when you decline an offer

Here is a scenario that repeats itself endlessly: a seller ships their silver or gold, receives a low offer, declines it, and then waits. And waits. The buyer delays, says the return shipment is "being processed," or introduces a handling fee that was never mentioned upfront. Some sellers report long return delays, sometimes stretching well beyond a typical two-week window. Others are charged for return shipping despite no prior disclosure.

This is one of the clearest separators between trustworthy buyers and the rest. A buyer who knows their offer is fair has no incentive to make returning items difficult. A buyer whose business model depends on sellers accepting below-market offers has every incentive to make the return process painful enough that sellers give up.

What to look for in a returns policy before you ship:

• How long does the buyer have to make an offer after receiving your goods? A specific number of business days is a good sign. "As soon as possible" is not.
• What is the turnaround time if you decline? Three to five business days is reasonable. Anything framed as "up to 30 days" is a warning.
• Who pays return postage? You should never be charged for return shipping on a transaction you declined.
• Is the return insured? If the buyer was responsible for your items while they held them, they should be responsible for insuring them on the way back to you.

If the buyer's website does not answer these questions clearly, email them and ask before you ship. Save the reply. The quality of that response will tell you a lot about how the relationship will go if things don't go your way.

4. Opaque pricing and appraisals that don't add up

Gold and silver trade at live, publicly visible spot prices set by international markets. The London Bullion Market Association publishes twice-daily benchmark prices, and live spot prices are freely available on financial data sites around the world. There is no mystery about what gold or silver is worth per troy ounce at any given moment.

And yet a common complaint from sellers is that they received an offer with no explanation of how it was calculated. The buyer named a number, the seller had no frame of reference, and they either accepted it or declined without really understanding whether it was fair.

Every offer for scrap or inherited precious metal should be calculable on the back of an envelope:

Weight (in troy ounces) x purity (as a decimal) x spot price x the buyer's percentage = your offer.

If a buyer cannot or will not explain each of those variables, that is a problem. A 90-percent silver coin, for example, contains 0.7234 troy ounces of silver per dollar of face value at full weight. If you know that, you know roughly what any honest offer should be based on. Our guide to 90% silver dimes walks through the arithmetic in detail for one of the most commonly sold items.

Practical steps to protect yourself on pricing:

• Check the live spot price on a neutral site before you accept or decline any offer. Kitco and the London Bullion Market Association are widely used references.
• Ask what percentage of spot the buyer is paying. Reputable buyers will tell you. Scrap buyers typically pay a percentage of melt value depending on the item type and their overhead, and they should be willing to state that percentage.
• If you have coins rather than purely scrap, be aware that some pieces carry a premium over melt value because of collector demand. A buyer offering melt on a key-date Morgan dollar, for instance, is likely not the right buyer for that coin. The broader question of when a coin's numismatic value exceeds its silver content is covered in the selling precious metal: your toughest questions answered guide.
• Get quotes from more than one buyer. This is the single most reliable way to know whether an offer is competitive.

One thing worth knowing: some buyers use in-house testing only, with no third-party verification. Others use independent assay labs. Independent testing is not always necessary for common items, but for large or unusual lots it provides an extra layer of credibility to the offer.

5. Slow, complicated, or conditional payment

The final complaint, and the one that stings sellers the most emotionally, is delayed or complicated payment after an offer is accepted. Sellers who need liquidity quickly sometimes find that payment is delayed for over a week, or arrives as a check that takes additional days to clear. Some find that payment is conditional on the buyer first receiving funds from their own downstream refiner, which can significantly delay payment.

None of this is necessarily illegal, but it is often undisclosed, and it is avoidable if you ask the right questions upfront.

Questions to ask about payment before you ship:

• What payment methods do you offer? (Bank transfer, check, PayPal, Zelle, and similar options all have different clearing timelines.)
• How many business days after I accept the offer will payment be sent?
• Is payment sent immediately on acceptance, or is there a processing batch cycle?
• If payment is by check, does the clock start when the check is mailed or when it clears?

A buyer who processes payments immediately on acceptance, rather than on a weekly or monthly batch cycle, is demonstrably more seller-friendly. Ask the question directly and compare answers across the buyers you are considering.

Putting it all together: how to pick a buyer who avoids all five problems

The five complaints above are not rare edge cases. They come up again and again across online reviews, forum discussions, and the direct feedback sellers shared with me over the years. The good news is that they are entirely predictable, and a little due diligence before you ship eliminates most of the risk.

A short checklist before committing to any buyer:

• Verified reputation: Third-party reviews from multiple platforms, a physical address, a verifiable business history.
• Pre-paid, insured, tracked shipping: Provided by the buyer, not improvised by you.
• Clear returns policy: Specific timeframes, no return shipping fee, insurance included.
• Transparent pricing: Buyer states their percentage of spot and explains the calculation.
• Fast, unconditional payment: A specific number of business days after acceptance, with a payment method that suits you.

If you are starting from scratch and trying to understand which type of buyer to approach, the guide on selling inherited or scrap precious metal covers the different buyer categories in plain language. And if you are working through an estate with a mix of jewelry, coins, and flatware, it helps to understand how each category is valued differently before you approach anyone.

The how to sell silver and gold archive on this site goes deep on many of the specific item types you are likely to encounter, from sterling flatware to bullion coins to designer pieces. The more you understand about what you have and roughly what it is worth, the harder it is for any buyer, whether well-intentioned or not, to shortchange you.

Selling precious metal does not have to be a stressful experience. The buyers who make it stressful are generally counting on sellers being uninformed and in a hurry. Take a little time, ask direct questions, compare at least two or three quotes, and you will almost certainly end up with a fair result and a smooth transaction.

Revision history (1)

• Aug 28, 2026 - Pre-publish editorial QA: 1 flagged, 1 softened; claim audit: 5 claims, 4 rewritten

Claim-by-claim audit (5 checked)

• “Some sellers report long return delays, sometimes stretching well beyond a typical two-week window.” (rewritten to what the article can stand behind)
• “A 90-percent silver coin, for example, contains 0.7234 troy ounces of silver per dollar of face value at full weight.” (reasoning shown in the article)
• “Scrap buyers typically pay a percentage of melt value depending on the item type and their overhead, and they should be willing to state that percentage.” (rewritten to what the article can stand behind)
• “Sellers who need liquidity quickly sometimes find that payment is delayed for over a week, or arrives as a check that takes additional days to clear.” (rewritten to what the article can stand behind)
• “Some find that payment is conditional on the buyer first receiving funds from their own downstream refiner, which can significantly delay payment.” (rewritten to what the article can stand behind)