What dealers actually put across the counter.
The same buy-side workflow covers most of what walks in: an estate lot nobody has sorted, a tube of generic bullion, a bag of scrap, a binder of certified type. Here is how each one behaves in CounterMint, and where the pricing rules differ.
Estate lots and inherited collections
The hardest buy in the shop: a box nobody has sorted, mixed dates and metals, some of it certified and most of it not, with a seller who has an inherited expectation and no reference point. Photo-assisted intake turns the pile into itemized lines so the conversation is about individual pieces rather than a single intimidating number.
Because every line shows melt value beside the calculated premium, you can explain why the 1964 halves and the certified type piece are priced by different logic — without pricing the whole box as bulk to save the argument.
Beneficiaries who need to agree with each other get an itemized sheet they can actually circulate. That alone closes lots that would otherwise leave to get a second opinion.
Bullion buy prices at volume
Generic bullion is a spread business, and the risk is the market moving between line one and line thirty. Spot context refreshes under every open quote about once a minute, so a long tube-by-tube buy is priced against one market rather than drifting through the transaction.
Set your buy band off metal content by product and let it run: a percentage of melt for generics, a different band for recognized sovereign issues, no premium share where you do not pay one. The rules apply to every line without anyone remembering the policy.
Interactive per-metal charts let you see the direction and range before you commit a band on a large lot.
Scrap gold and sterling
Scrap is arithmetic, and arithmetic done at a counter under time pressure is where margin leaks. Karat, weight and metal content drive the line; your payout percentage does the rest. A scrap calculation and a numismatic line can sit on the same offer sheet, which matters when a lot contains both.
The customer sees the same itemized treatment they would get on a certified coin: what the metal is worth, what you pay against it, and the total. Fewer arguments about the number, because the number shows its work.
Sterling, dental, broken chain and mixed-karat parcels all price off content rather than catalogue identity.
Certified and graded type
On certified material the label removes the grading question, so the whole conversation is premium. CounterMint calculates the premium above melt from sold comparable sales normalized back to the spot on the day each one closed, then applies the share of that premium you have decided to pay for the series.
Where a certification label is readable in the photograph, its detail is transcribed onto the line. CounterMint does not grade or authenticate anything — it reads what is printed and leaves the judgment to you.
Prestige series can carry their own premium share, so a common date and a key date are not paid at the same rate by accident.
Paper currency
Notes have no melt floor, which means the entire line is premium and the comparable evidence carries all the weight. The same normalization applies, the same premium share logic applies, and the same itemized sheet goes to the customer.
Mixed lots that contain both notes and metal price on one offer rather than two, so a customer does not receive a coin number today and a currency number tomorrow.
Bring a lot you priced last week and we’ll run it through live.