PROPER HANDLING AND CARE OF PRECIOUS METAL BULLION

Handling Gold and Silver Coins

SUMMARY: Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium are very soft metals. Properly handled precious metals retain the most value and resell best. Here is how to do it.

Gold is gold.  A gold coin is a gold coin.  Right?

Well, yes, technically.  But there are caveats.  It is just that gold, and the other precious metals as well, are very soft and easily scratched.  If gold, silver, platinum and palladium bullion are not well cared for, they are still very valuable.  The problem is that beat up precious metal bullion eventually qualifies as “scrap”.  “Scrap” grade gold goes to melt.  Thus, it takes a scrap discount.

The best way to take good care of your gold, silver, platinum or palladium bullion is to keep it protected.  Individual items need to be in sleeves.  Stacks of rounds or coins need to be inside tubes.  There are other protectors as well.  What matters is that the precious metal bullion does not get damaged.

If you want to retain your precious metal bullion’s maximum value do the following.

Don’t Touch the Flat Surfaces 

• Hold bars, rounds, and coins from the edges (rim).  Not from the flat surfaces (obverse and reverse).  This will prevent fingerprints and eventual erosion from constant finger contact
• If needed, use silk or soft cotton gloves

Keep the Bullion Protected 

• If the bullion came protected, such as in the case of most minted gold bars, don’t remove the bar from the protector
• Better yet, the protector has a thin protection cover.  Don’t remove that either. 
• Even better, place bullion is individual plastic bags.  This will keep the bullion as new as possible, therefore more desirable
• Keep individual coins and rounds in sleeves or other protectors
• Keep stacks of bullion in tubes.  Better yet, keep it the original tubes if the stack was bought together.  Krugerrands, Maple Leafs, American Eagles and other precious metal bullion products are also sold in tubes of ten and twenty rounds.  Keep it as original
• Keep gold and silver rounds inside tubes tight.  If there is space, fill it up with foam or something.  That way if anything happens to the tube, the coins don’t hit and scratch each other

Avoid Scratching

• Don’t use any hard metal utensils, such as tweezers, to handle gold coins or any other type of precious metal bullion.  That will scratch the metal
• Don’t rub or polish coins.  Gold bullion does not need any polishing.  Silver coins get a patina, which is natural.  Unless the silver patina is extremely unsightly and no more value may be lost, leave it as is
• Avoid dropping gold, silver, platinum, and palladium on hard surfaces.  Work over soft and smooth surfaces when handling them.  Ideally, have a glass or wooden desk over wood or carpet flooring
• Keep hard metals far from gold, silver, platinum, and palladium

Keep Careless People Away

You may do all of the above, but if you let an inexperienced or careless person handle your precious metal bullion, sooner or later, something will happen to it.  The result will be a loss of value.

Some people are just not dexterous.  Old people can’t grip well.  Children neither.  Other people are just clumsy.

The Situation

At selling precious metal bullion, the seller usually does not notice the flaws.  However, the buyer is about to exchange a good bit of money for the precious metal bullion.  Thus, even if inexperienced, the buyer soon notices all the imperfections in the bullion.  Suddenly, the buyer will find another similar piece of precious metal bullion with no flaws.

Good Example

A customer brought to me a partial tube of gold Canadian Maple Leaf coins.  Several were missing.  Thus, there was plenty of space for the coins to move around.  He placed the tube in his pants pocket and walked for a while.  When he arrived, the coins were all marked up by the collisions.  The coins were deemed beyond imperfect.  The gold bullion value dropped to a little bit better than their scrap value.  The coins ended up melted.   This happens every so often.  More often is that I get gold coins, especially pure gold coins, with imperfections due to mishandling.

Conclusion

Take good care of your precious metal bullion.  Gold, silver, platinum, and palladium are very soft metals.  That way you will get the most value out of them when selling it.