Why Selling Your Precious Metal Items “Blind” via Online Sellers’ Sites Is Especially Risky

How to ScrapRecycle and Refine GoldRecycle Precious Metals

Feb 24

Lots of self-proclaimed experts in the world of precious metals are saying negative things about pawnshops these days. But the fact is, many pawnshops are run by honest people. Although there are stories about people being treated poorly by pawnshops, they can be good places to sell certain items under certain circumstances. For example, they offer a chance to get short-term loans against the value of possessions that you probably aren’t in love with anyway. Although you could stand to lose those items, who else is going to give you a quick way to generate cash from them? Really nobody.

But Let the Buyer or Seller Beware

But here’s something to think about if you are looking to either sell or buy precious metals scrap, jewelry and other items . . .

One seller’s website that is very popular today is an extremely risky place to buy and sell precious metals

We don’t want to name this Website, but you know it. (Hint: Its name starts with the letter “C” and ends with the word “list.”) People are selling and buying cars, hot tubs, appliances, and all kinds of other stuff through this listing service every day, and it seems that some of those transactions are working out pretty well.

But when it comes to buying or selling scrap, jewelry and other items made of gold, platinum, palladium or silver, this service and similar ones are to be avoided, for reasons that include these:

It’s all about speed, and not about verification. In a typical transaction, a buyer agrees to purchase a gold wedding ring from a seller. So that buyer agrees to meet the seller at a service area on a major highway, where he hands over cash in exchange for the ring. Is that ring really gold, or is it gold-plated? In most cases, the buyer has to wait until later on before having the ring appraised. And what is to stop that supposed “seller” from grabbing the cash and driving away without handing over the ring, which might not even exist? Our advice? Avoid becoming involved in this kind of risky activity.
The whole process is prone to all kinds of scams. We spoke with a man who drove a car he was selling to the parking lot of a shopping center. (We know we are talking about a car, not about precious metals, in this example.) A buyer for his car had agreed to arrive with $3,000 “cash in hand” to buy the car but when he showed up, he had brought only $2,000 with him. He said that “a problem had arisen” with his ability to come up with all the cash. “Just take my money and I will meet you here tomorrow with the rest of the money,” the buyer said. But fortunately, the seller just walked away. He had lost only two hours of his life, and no money. He counted himself lucky.
And that’s only one kind of scam. Crooks steal bank account numbers and other data from sellers. They use false promises to get into seller’s homes. They launch still more scams, like offering to sell items on behalf of sellers. It goes on and on. If you want to buy or sell precious metals without exposing yourself to risks like those, stick with tried-and-true selling methods. You can, for example, take jewelry items you want to sell to a local, reputable jewelry store and let it do the selling for you. Heck, your local pawnshop and even eBay are probably a lot safer.