Who Pays the Most for Gold & Silver?
Straight answer
To get the most for your metal, match the buyer to what you hold. For recognized bullion — American Eagles, Canadian Maples, carded bars — sell to a reputable online or local bullion dealer, which pays closest to spot. For scrap, broken jewelry, or odd karat gold, the highest payouts come from refiners and the better mail-in buyers (roughly 90–95% of melt value); local jewelers and coin shops tend to pay about 70–90% of melt; pawn shops usually pay the least (roughly 40–70%). The single biggest lever is not the buyer at all — it is knowing your melt value first and getting three or more quotes.
“Who pays the most?” is the wrong first question. The buyer who pays the most depends entirely on what you are selling, and the seller who knows their item’s melt value before they walk in almost always beats the seller who shops on the buyer’s name alone. Here is how the payouts actually stack up, and why they differ.
Payout by buyer type, side by side
There is no single buyer who pays the most for everything. Refiners pay top dollar for scrap they can melt in volume, but most do not want a single one-ounce coin. A bullion dealer pays near spot for that coin, but offers little extra for a tangled chain. The figures below are directional — actual offers move with the metal price, your item, and your local market — but the ranking holds up.
| Buyer type | Typical % of melt / spot | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Refiner (for scrap / volume) | ~90–95% of melt | Highest for scrap and lots; usually requires minimum weight, and you pay a refining/assay fee. Poor fit for a single coin. |
| Reputable bullion dealer (online or local) | ~95–99% of spot for recognized bullion | Best for Eagles, Maples, Krugerrands, and carded bars. Published buy-back prices; tight, transparent spread. |
| Top mail-in buyer (scrap / jewelry) | ~85–95% of melt (best operators) | The good ones publish rates and pay fast; the bad ones lowball after you ship. Verify before mailing. |
| Local jeweler | ~70–90% of melt | Convenient and immediate; pays more for clean karat gold than for mixed scrap. You can and should negotiate. |
| Local coin shop | ~85–95% of spot (bullion); ~70–90% of melt (scrap) | Strong for recognized coins; weaker on scrap. Bring a printed quote to anchor against. |
| Pawn shop | ~40–70% of melt | Built to lend, not to pay full value. Fast cash, lowest payout. Use only as a last resort. |
The pattern is consistent: the closer a buyer is to the wholesale metal market — a refiner who melts in volume, or a dealer who resells recognized coins to other buyers — the more they can pay. Each step away from that market adds a margin, and that margin comes out of your check.
Why payouts differ so much
The gap between a refiner’s 90% and a pawn shop’s 50% is not arbitrary. Three forces explain almost all of it.
Refining cost and assay
Scrap gold and silver are not pure. A 14-karat chain is only about 58% gold; mixed jewelry has solder, stones, and unknown alloys. Someone has to melt it, assay it, and refine it back to a sellable form, and that costs money. A refiner doing it at scale absorbs that cost cheaply and can pay you 90% or more of the metal’s real content. A jeweler or pawn shop who has to send it out — or who is guessing at purity — protects themselves by paying less up front.
Margin and overhead
Every buyer between you and the refinery marks up the difference to cover rent, staff, and profit. A pawn shop’s whole model is lending against collateral, so its buy price is set low enough to resell at a profit even if you never return. A local jeweler carries retail overhead. An online bullion dealer running a high-volume buy-back operates on a thin spread because they move metal fast. More links in the chain means more margin skimmed before you get paid.
Recognizability and liquidity
This is the one most sellers underestimate. A buyer pays more for an item they can instantly verify and quickly resell. An American Gold Eagle needs no assay — it is legal tender, universally recognized, and another buyer is always waiting. A generic round or a foreign coin may need testing and sits in inventory longer, so the buyer discounts it. The same logic explains why recognized bullion fetches more than generic or scrap metal: liquidity is value. See liquidity for why this matters at both ends of a trade.
Recognized bullion beats scrap — sort your metal first
Before you ask who pays the most, separate what you own. The two categories sell to different buyers at very different rates.
- Recognized bullion — government coins (Eagle, Maple, Krugerrand) and accredited-refiner bars with a sealed assay card — sells near spot to a bullion dealer or coin shop. Keep these out of any “scrap” pile. A carded one-ounce bar sold as bullion can fetch 10–20 percentage points more than the same gold sold as scrap by weight.
- Scrap, jewelry, and odd items — broken chains, dental gold, mixed-karat pieces, unmarked coins — sell by melt content to a refiner or jewelry buyer. Here the question is purely the metal’s value after refining, so the highest melt percentage wins.
Selling recognized bullion to a scrap buyer is the most common way people leave money on the table. The scrap buyer pays you for melt; the bullion buyer pays you for a recognized, liquid product worth more than its melt. Know which you have. If you are unsure what a piece is, how to sell gold and silver walks through identifying items before you quote them.
The biggest lever: know your melt value, then get three quotes
No buyer choice matters as much as walking in informed. A seller who knows their melt value and has competing offers gets a fair price from almost any honest buyer; a seller who knows neither gets whatever the buyer decides to offer.
- Calculate melt value first. Take the metal weight, the purity (karat or fineness), and the current spot price, and you have the wholesale floor. Our melt value calculator does the math. Now every offer is a percentage you can judge, not a number you have to trust.
- Get three or more quotes on the exact item. Offers on the same gold can differ by 10, 20, even 30 percentage points across buyer types. A refiner, a coin shop, and a jeweler will each see your lot differently — competition is your only real leverage.
- Quote precisely. “A 14k chain weighing 18 grams” gets a real number; “some old gold” gets a lowball. Have weights, karats, and quantities ready.
- Compare net, not headline. Refining fees, shipping, insurance, and mail-in deductions all come out of your proceeds. The highest advertised rate is not the highest check.
Where each buyer fits
Once your metal is sorted and your melt value is in hand, the buyer almost picks itself.
- Recognized bullion, want a clean exit: a reputable online dealer’s buy-back or a local coin shop. Both pay near spot; the shop lets you negotiate and walk out with cash.
- A larger lot of scrap or jewelry: a refiner, if you can meet the minimum weight, or one of the better-rated mail-in buyers. Verify published rates and read the return policy before you ship.
- A few jewelry pieces, want it done today: a local jeweler. Bring a melt-value figure and a competing quote, and negotiate.
- You need cash this hour and nothing else: a pawn shop — knowing you are trading payout for speed.
For the full landscape of channels and the trade-offs each makes, see where to sell gold and silver, and to protect yourself through the transaction, read how to sell gold without getting ripped off.
The bottom line
The buyer who pays the most depends on what you hold: refiners and the best mail-in buyers top the list for scrap (around 90–95% of melt), bullion dealers pay closest to spot for recognized coins and bars, jewelers and coin shops sit in the middle, and pawn shops pay the least. But the buyer is the second decision. The first is knowing your melt value and collecting three or more quotes — that is the lever that moves your payout the most, no matter who you ultimately sell to. Recognized bullion is worth more than its melt, so never let it be weighed in with the scrap. Knowing the difference between numismatic value and metal value, and reading up on premiums over spot, rounds out the picture before you sell.
Who pays the most for gold and silver?
It depends on what you are selling. For recognized bullion coins and bars, a reputable bullion dealer pays closest to spot. For scrap, jewelry, or odd karat gold, refiners and the better mail-in buyers pay the most, often 90–95% of melt value, while jewelers and coin shops pay roughly 70–90% and pawn shops the least. Knowing your melt value and getting three or more quotes matters more than the buyer’s name.
Do pawn shops or jewelers pay more for gold?
Jewelers usually pay more — roughly 70–90% of melt value versus a pawn shop’s 40–70%. A pawn shop is built to lend against collateral, so it buys low enough to resell at a profit. A jeweler is closer to the metal market, especially for clean karat gold. For the most on scrap, though, a refiner or a top mail-in buyer typically beats both. Always get a melt-value figure first so you can judge each offer.
Is it worth selling gold to a refiner?
For scrap and larger lots, yes — refiners pay the highest percentage of melt value, often 90–95%, because they process in volume and sit closest to the wholesale market. The catch is that most have a minimum weight and charge a refining or assay fee, and they are a poor fit for a single coin. For recognized bullion, a dealer pays more than a refiner because the coin is worth more than its melt.
How do I know if I’m getting a fair price?
Calculate your melt value first — metal weight times purity times spot price — so you have a wholesale floor to measure offers against. Then get three or more quotes on the exact item. A fair scrap offer is a clear percentage of melt value, not vague language about “spot,” and a fair bullion offer sits within a few percent of spot. Compare net of any fees, not the headline rate.