eBay ... is it the best option?

I was curious to see whether selling gold nuggets on eBay is worthwhile, so I did a little survey of the performance of what appeared to be four established sellers, and these are my findings:

Number of nuggets sold: 39
Total weight of nuggets: 33.77 gms
Average weight: 0.866 gms
Total sold value: $1853.00
Average $ return per gram: $54.87
Largest nugget: 4.56 gm
Smallest nugget: 0.16 gm

Dollar return per gram per dealer:

1)$49.21
2)$62.88
3)$49.87
4)$60.66

Dealer 4 polished all of his nuggets. The nuggets of the other three dealers were cleaned but not polished. Whilst some seemed more attractive than others (to me), they generally did not sell at a significantly higher price. There also didn't appear to be any correlation between the size of a nugget to its sold price per gram.

Not having any experience in selling gold, is this the best way to sell? I recently approached a dealer who is willing to buy nuggets, his buying price is approximately 20% below the spot price which at today's price would be about $49.38 per gram.

What other options are available?

Ringpull wrote:his buying price is approximately 20% below the spot price which at today's price would be about $49.38 per gram.

I work out 20% below spot at about $42/gram in Aussie dollars for todays price.

cheers dave

G'day Ringpull.

How did you come up with $49.38 for my figures at 20% bellow current spot gold price comes to $41.99.Anyway Selling through Ebay is still the way to go,even though their fees including insurance through Pay Pal come to + or - 10%.The cleaner and shinier your gold is,the more attractive it will be to buyers,pending your presentation photos of your nuggets or specimens to be the same.

Cheers kon61.

To me it sounds like its much of a muchness..
your results show that if they prospect for gold then list it on a site cleaned up or not and the extra work needed to list / interact /pack /send
and to only yield the approximate value of say taking it to bendigo gold as an example with no extra work required that they are wasting there time and effort....(or self promoting_business building )
But on the other hand if you came across a nugget of decent size ie; ( a few ounces ) the spot price would be far greater than the current gold price any day of the week ....
so that being said in my opinion if you are a prospector and you are doing it to make money the solution would be to cash in all the small finds to a gold buyer( many in all states )and try and flog your ounce+ nuggets to another source or market dependant on the time you wish to put in........
so it's really much of a muchness..................
cheers...................Trev....

davsgold wrote:

Ringpull wrote:his buying price is approximately 20% below the spot price which at today's price would be about $49.38 per gram.

I work out 20% below spot at about $42/gram in Aussie dollars for todays price.

cheers dave

hi RP. dunno much about it myself,not found any- yet. if you do a search on the subject here/forum, there will be more info. p.w. beck here in adelaide/ottoway buy and essay,smelt gold.USE google also. some reputable jewellers will buy gold too. stay away from that chain of pawn brokers,and the shopping centre kiosk buyers, imho. cheers

Did I goof up?

Spot price about $1750 per oz divided by 28.38 = $61.72 minus 20% = $49.38

Hi Ringpull, there's 31.10 gr in a Troy ounce

Cheers,
Steve

He he ...oops!

Gday

Selling gold on ebay is relatively easy if the pieces have had a bit of a clean and your pics are clear, for the most part gold buyers can be a bit fickle and the price you will get can really vary quite a bit from one week to the next, what appeals to you in a nugget does not always appeal to a buyer.

Some buyers are collectors and will be a better price for a good looking piece, whereby others are only interested in the gold weight/content from an investment point of view.

I have sold specimen nuggets also and I had a buyer contact me and complain that the specimen did not contain exactly the gold content that was estimated, I told him to return it to me and I will refund his money and the cost of postage, as I thought it actually went a bit too cheap for what it was, of course he didnt do that as he had already crushed it, its value as a mineral specimen was more than that of the gold content in my opinion, and of course there are probably buyers that buy species and hope that the gold content is higher than what they have paid for.

At the end of the day you have to do your sums, if selling on ebay you have costs and fees to consider, if you sell you can end up paying three to four seperate fees, and when you work that out to the gram price of your nuggets you may find that if you sold for say $50 per gram and after the fees are deducted you end up with say $45 a gram, sometimes you are able to get very close to that or the equivalent from a gold buyer then you are better off doing that than having all the hassle of listing and waiting then posting them.

Go to reputable gold buyers, not the ones set up is shopping centres etc, or pawnbrokers, they will usually pay less anyway, ask the question anyway just to put your mind at ease.

Some gold like the ugly ragged stuff and crushing from specimens is better amassed until you have an ounce or three then send it on to a refiner, with the prices the way they are you will get a good return and no hassles.

cheers

stayyerAU

I guess I was a little surprised to find that the nugget price was about on par with the spot price. Perhaps my expectations were a little too high after reading about selling nuggets in their original condition to optimise their value. I understand that a buyer may fancy the uniqueness of one nugget over another but is that more applicable to larger nuggets?

Ringpull wrote:I guess I was a little surprised to find that the nugget price was about on par with the spot price. Perhaps my expectations were a little too high after reading about selling nuggets in their original condition to optimise their value. I understand that a buyer may fancy the uniqueness of one nugget over another but is that more applicable to larger nuggets?

Nuggets sold on ebay are rarely in their just dug condition, some have been subject to several cleaning processes, cleaning with acids, tumbling with shot, polishing, to name a few, and many need one or all of these processes to make them look appealing.

Pieces that are used for jewellery are often tumbled to remove sharp edges and make them more wearable, so as that they dont snag on clothing or cut the wearers skin etc, the very shape of a nugget be worn say as a pendant usually will depend on the way it will look when hung on a bail.

There are also other nuggets known as "picture nuggets" and these are the pieces that look like something interesting, I sold one that looked like a platypus swimming, and sometimes these types of nuggets will fetch higher prices depending on their appeal the a buyer.

Very large nuggets appeal to some buyers, but there are fewer buyers who can afford to buy them as well, so that generally only leaves investors and a very few collectors, the price a large nugget will fetch a premium price usually only if it has a unique character, but if its ugly its going to only get you the gold value and is probably best sold to a refiner.

I suspect that most gold buyers and some collectors even, are not prospectors, and have little idea about what it entails to get some nuggets, and having said that, would not completely appreciate at what cost it came to end up in the hands of the detectorist, some come as easily as specking them on the surface where others might entail some serious digging, some people do expect to get more for their nuggets than what they are worth but by the same token I have seen people sell their nuggets well under the true value as well.

cheers

stayyerAU

Just something to think about when selling in ebay. We used to sell on ebay until we worked out how much it was costing in ebay fees and paypal fees.
Work out the fees and then see if you think it is really worth it.
Even when some of our nuggets sold for exhorberant $ per gram we were still loosing out in the long run. May look good first but---.
Just our experiences

So the lessons learned...

1)Find nugget
2)Clean nugget
3)... clean it some more
4)Take a good photograph of it and post it on ebay
5)Sit back and watch the money roll in....


Hmmm, maybe not. I guess we all have to see what works for us.

Oh, and learn the difference between avoirdupois and troy weights! Jeez, I couldn't even pronounce av-wa-dew-pwa until I looked it up here