How buyers are assessed here
Any site that earns commission from the buyers it recommends owes you a written method you can check it against. This is mine.
The short version
- Buyers are ranked on what they pay and how they behave.
- Commission never changes an ordering.
- Some of the best answers pay nothing at all.
What is measured
Percentage of melt actually paid
Not the advertised rate. What a real lot of ordinary sterling scrap converts to, after any deductions, expressed as a percentage of the melt value calculated the way the valuation page sets out. Advertised headline rates usually apply to bullion or to large quantities and tell a household seller very little.
Whether the quote holds
The single most important behavioral test. Does the number you were quoted survive contact with the metal arriving? A buyer whose offers routinely drop after they take possession is disqualified regardless of the headline rate.
The cost of saying no
Declining should be free, prompt and insured. Where return shipping is charged to the seller, or where declining is slow or awkward, that friction is a deliberate product and it counts heavily against a buyer.
Transparency of weight and purity
Does the buyer show the weight they worked from and the purity they assumed? Photographs on arrival? A stated spot reference and an expiry? These are cheap for an honest operation to provide and expensive for a dishonest one.
Insurance in transit
What is actually covered, by whom, and up to what value. Most ordinary carrier cover excludes precious metals, so a buyer who is vague here is either careless or hoping you will not ask.
What disqualifies a buyer outright
Some failures are not a matter of degree. A buyer showing any of these is not listed here at any commission rate.
Quotes that systematically drop on arrival. An occasional revision with a documented reason is legitimate. A pattern is a business model, and it is the single most damaging practice in this trade.
Charging the seller to return declined goods. This converts a free quote into a hostage situation and it is indefensible.
Manufactured urgency. Quotes expiring in an hour, claims that the market is about to turn, pressure to decide on a call. Real price locks have real windows and no salesperson attached.
Refusing to state weight and purity. If a buyer will not tell you the inputs, there is no offer to evaluate.
Gold IRA and retirement account promotion. This site does not link to that market. The payouts are the largest in the sector and the regulatory record is the worst, and neither of those facts is a coincidence. Someone selling inherited cutlery is not the right audience for a retirement product.
How commission is handled
Some buyers listed here pay a commission when a reader sells through a link. Some pay nothing. Both appear, and the ordering does not distinguish between them.
Where commission exists it is generally a percentage of the transaction rather than a flat fee, which means it increases when you are paid more. That alignment is better than a fixed bounty, but it is not a solution to the conflict and should not be presented as one. The honest position is that an incentive exists, it is disclosed, and the method above is written down so you can hold the recommendations to it.
Two practical consequences. First, a local coin dealer or a specialist auction house frequently is the right answer for collectable pieces, and neither pays anything, so the coins page sends you to them anyway. Second, where the correct advice is to wait for a calmer market, the pages say wait, even though nobody earns anything from patience.
The commercial relationships themselves are set out on the disclosure page.
What is not measured, and why
Star ratings from review aggregators are not used as evidence. In this sector many comparison sites are themselves affiliates, review volume is easy to influence, and a five star average tells you nothing about whether quotes hold after the metal arrives. Where a buyer's public reputation is mentioned here, the source is named so you can weigh it yourself.
Where this method is weak
No method is complete, and pretending otherwise would undermine the point of publishing one.
Percentages move. A buyer competitive this quarter may not be next, because spreads respond to volatility and to competition. Anything here is a snapshot, and the right protection is always to get three current quotes rather than trusting a page.
Coverage is uneven. There are many local dealers and only one of me, so this site can describe categories of buyer well and individual local shops barely at all. That is a real limitation and it is why the advice keeps returning to comparing quotes yourself.
Behavior is observed, not audited. I am not inspecting anyone's books. Assessments rest on published terms, on what buyers actually do when tested, and on eighteen years of competing against these firms. That is better than guesswork and considerably short of certainty.
If your experience contradicts what is written here, that is the most valuable correction this site can receive. Tell me, and the page changes.
How a buyer is actually tested
The criteria above are only worth as much as the evidence behind them, so it is fair to ask where that evidence comes from. It is a mix of three things, in descending order of reliability.
Published terms. The cheapest and most honest signal a buyer gives is what they are willing to put in writing before they have your metal. Who insures a parcel in transit and up to what value; whether return shipping on a declined lot is free; whether a quote is an estimate or a lock, and for how long; what deductions apply. A buyer whose terms are clear and generous on paper has already told you a great deal, and a buyer who is vague about these things on their own website has told you something too.
Observed behavior. What a buyer does when tested matters more than what they advertise. The decisive test is whether a quoted number survives the metal arriving. An occasional revision with a photographed, documented reason is legitimate; a pattern of offers drifting downward once the buyer has possession is a business model, and it is disqualifying regardless of the headline rate. How a buyer handles a declined lot is the second test: it should come back promptly, insured, at their expense, with no friction engineered to make saying no feel expensive.
Eighteen years of competing with these firms. Some of what informs this site is simply having operated in the same market for a long time and watched how particular kinds of operation behave. That context is useful, but it is the softest of the three sources and it is treated that way, because memory is not an audit.
What to expect from each kind of buyer
Buyers are not ranked in the abstract; they are ranked against what their category can reasonably deliver. A pawnbroker and a bulk refiner are not doing the same job, and holding them to an identical percentage would be misleading. Here is the shape of each, so a quote can be read in context rather than in isolation.
| Buyer | Best for | What to watch |
|---|---|---|
| Mail-in refiner | Clean sterling scrap in quantity | Transit insurance; whether the quote holds on arrival |
| Local coin dealer | Coins, bullion, anything collectable | Convenience is worth a little, but still compare |
| Pawnbroker | Immediate cash, small lots | Usually the lowest percentage; know your melt first |
| Specialist auction | Signed, antique or rare pieces | Fees and timelines; only worth it above scrap value |
The pattern worth noticing is that the highest scrap percentages tend to come from operations that move large volume on thin margins, while the best answer for a collectable piece often pays nothing to this site at all, because it is a coin dealer or an auction house rather than a metal buyer. Both realities are built into how the pages point you, which is why the coins page sends silver dollars to a dealer even though there is no commission in it.
How to read a buyer's written terms
You can apply most of this method before you ever speak to a buyer, just by reading what they publish. The terms a business is willing to put on its own website are a preview of how the transaction will actually go, and a handful of specifics separate a serious operation from a vague one.
Look for a stated payout basis. A buyer who explains that they pay a percentage of melt, and roughly what that percentage is for clean sterling, is telling you something you can check. A buyer whose site talks only about "top prices" and "trusted service" without a single number is deferring the real figure until your metal is already in the post, which is the opposite of what you want.
Look for the shipping and insurance detail. Who pays to send, who insures it, up to what value, and by what service. Most ordinary carrier cover excludes precious metals entirely, so a buyer who is precise here has thought about your risk, and a buyer who is silent is hoping you will not raise it.
Look for the return policy on a declined lot. The words to want are prompt, free and insured. If declining costs you the return postage, or if the process for getting your own property back is left undescribed, treat that as a warning rather than an oversight.
Finally, look for how they describe their quote. An honest estimate is called an estimate; an honest lock states its window in plain terms. Language engineered to make you feel a deadline, without a real mechanism behind it, is the single most reliable sign to slow down and get another quote.
Run the same assessment yourself
Establish your melt value first
Before you talk to anyone, do the weight times purity times spot calculation from the valuation page. Without your own number, you cannot convert an offer into a percentage, and the percentage is the whole game.
Get the inputs in writing
Ask each buyer for the weight and purity they will work from and the spot reference they are using. A buyer who will not put these in writing is not offering you something you can evaluate.
Test the exit before the entrance
Ask what happens if you decline. Who pays return shipping, how it is insured, and how long it takes. The answer to that question predicts the whole experience.
Get three quotes, five on a large lot
The spread between the best and worst honest offer on the same metal is routinely wide enough to pay for the phone calls many times over.
How often this is reviewed, and how you can correct it
Percentages move with the market and with competition, so anything written here is a snapshot rather than a permanent verdict, and the real protection is always your own three current quotes. If your experience contradicts what a page says, that is the most valuable correction this site can get. Tell me what happened - what you sold, what you were quoted and what you were actually paid - and the page changes to match reality rather than my memory of it.