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    How to Sell your Costco Silver Bars or Coins

    Costco entered the precious metals business in 2023 when it began to offer gold bars to its members. Due to the tremendous success of that offering, Costco expanded and began selling silver coins and bars in January 2024.

    Costco members have responded by snapping up the shiny white metal in droves. When the retailer combines its gold and silver sales numbers, it accounts for more than $100 million per month in revenues.

    If you are part of those revenues, you may now want to sell some or all your items. This page provides everything you need to know to sell your Costco silver bar and coins.

    Related article: Compare Costco vs. JM Bullion

    Instructions for Selling Silver Bars and Coins to JM Bullion

    We hope that you have concluded that selling your Costco silver online is the better option. More to the point, we want your business here at JM Bullion.

    So, let’s walk through the process of selling your precious metals to us.

    1. Contact us for a price and lock it in. Get in touch with us via chat, phone, or email. We’d probably recommend calling simply for the personal touch. Speak with one of our representatives, and lock in your sale price with us.
    2. Send the silver to us. Once you’ve agreed to the deal, you’ll receive an email with a mailing label and detailed instructions about how to ship your items to us securely.
    3. Receive your payment. After we receive and verify your shipment, we will move immediately to send your payment to you. We offer payout options via e-check, bank wire, and paper check. We prefer to use an e-check due to its speed and ease of use – there are no fees associated with electronic checking, and you’ll have your funds in 1 – 3 business days. Bank wires are similarly fast but come with a fee. Paper checks also have a fee, and are, quite frankly, much slower to arrive. However, choose the option that works best for your financial situation.

    We hope that you choose us for your business. However, if you don’t, you can rest assured that the process will be quite similar anywhere you go. Just make sure to choose a reputable dealer.

    Related article: Sell Costco gold bars

    Where to Sell your Costco Silver Bars or Coins

    The reality is that your new purchases from Costco may be your first foray into the world of precious metals. That’s okay! You haven’t made a mistake.

    The problem you may now have is that you do not know what to do with them. As it turns out, you have several options available to you. In general, you can sell either to an online dealer (like JM Bullion) or to a local coin shop.

    However, there are some reasons why you would choose one of these options over the other.

    First and foremost, the prices you can get online are usually better than the ones you can get in person. We must compete with each other constantly because other dealers are just a button away at all times, so we have to be competitive with our offers to you.

    By contrast, a coin shop might have a physical zone in which it enjoys a de facto monopoly – that is, it’s the only shop in the area. So, it doesn’t have nearly the pressure to offer top prices because it knows that you won’t want to drive somewhere else.

    There is also greater transparency online, both in terms of pricing and reputation. You can easily see the price points for most dealers, and you can check the reputations of those who seem too good to be true with the Better Business Bureau or with online communities like Reddit.

    The physical realities of a local coin shop also make it harder to shop around in person. There are only so many hours in a day that you can spend selling your metal. Plus, there is a gasoline cost to check different places, which indirectly lowers the sales price even further.

    Another issue is the fact that local coin shops have hours of operation. We are open around the clock, and you have much more convenience online.

    There are some definite reasons to sell in person, though. For one thing, local shops pay you right away. Our payments are very fast, but not as fast as a physical person slapping your palm with cash.

    The other retail positive is that local coin shops offer a much more personalized experience.

    How Much is My Costco Silver Bar or Coin Worth?

    We don’t know. Well, we don’t know exactly. The answer is different on a minute-by-minute basis and based on the price of silver. Let’s discuss how silver pricing works, and how it affects the value of your Costco silver bars.

    Ask and Bid Prices Explained

    Whenever you ask about the price of silver, you are usually quoted a particular number or range of numbers. What you are quoted is almost always what is known as the spot price. More specifically, it is the ask price, meaning the amount one must pay to buy an ounce of silver.

    There is also a lesser-known counterpart to the spot or ask price – the bid price. The bid price is the amount that silver sellers are willing to accept for their metal in the open market.

    It’s best if these prices are close together, as it indicates that there is a consensus about the price of silver on both sides of the transaction. However, in almost every case, the asking price is going to be higher than the bid – meaning that if you were to buy and sell silver simultaneously, absent other factors, you’d lose money.

    Premium/Markup

    There are other factors, however. It is unlikely that you will ever buy silver exactly at spot or sell it exactly at bid because of what is known as the premium or markup.

    The premium is an additional amount of money that a dealer adds to the asking price, the bid price, or both. In the case of the ask price, the premium is the additional charge that the dealer assigns for facilitating the deal.

    In case of the bid price – where you are selling your silver – the markup is the extra amount over the bid price at which a dealer will buy silver from you. On this side of the deal, the dealer’s markup is determined by how attractive he wants to make the deal to you.

    If you’re trying to sell your silver, the bid price should be the baseline amount that you require for the pure silver you have in your possession. Ideally, you shop around for the best deals, but never accept an offer that puts your per-ounce sale price under the bid.

    Managing markup

    As cliché as it is, “buy low, sell high” remains the correct strategy for investing in most things, including precious metals.

    So, you have two goals when you invest in precious metals. The first is to limit the markup you pay when you buy silver.

    Generally, the markup percentage for silver is between 10% and 20%. Although Costco keeps its prices guarded, reports indicate that its percentage is around 15%, or right in the middle of the acceptable range.

    In other words, Costco silver is not a bad buy, but there are better options if you’re attempting to minimize your premiums. Technically, you could factor in a portion of your membership fee as part of the markup, but it’s probably not worth your time unless you specifically joined Costco to buy silver and nothing else.

    The second goal is to maximize the spread between your buy price and your sell price on the back end. Now, absent limited in-person promotions, you will almost always find higher sell prices online.

    As we mentioned above, JM Bullion and other online dealers must compete with one another for business, and we do so, in part, by offering competitive or slightly higher prices on the metals we buy than the other guys. Furthermore, online dealers may run temporary promos that boost the amount they will pay significantly. As a rule, online precious metals vendors pay better than in-person ones.

    Now, you can wait for one of those deals if you like, but the truth is that you may not have that luxury available to you if your financial situation has changed. In general, you’ll have to take the best deal that you can find.

    There’s one caveat to this advice, though: the sale price can be too good. If you notice an offer that is significantly higher than the rest, don’t immediately pull the trigger on it. Investigate to see if there’s a deal running. If not, do some more investigating about the repute of the dealer itself.

    Getting a great deal is the right idea, but don’t do it with a fly-by-night dealer. There might be hidden fees that get you closer to the real price. You might even have a disreputable dealer that stalls or outright reneges on the deal after you’ve sent away your metals.

    If you follow these two rules, your Costco silver bars and coins can mean real money in your pocket. Alternatively, there’s nothing wrong with putting them away as keepsakes or heirlooms, ready for future generations.

    All Market Updates are provided as a third party analysis and do not necessarily reflect the explicit views of JM Bullion Inc. and should not be construed as financial advice.