Confused again

[theman73]

Well

First time when I have this kind of problem.

I sold in the last 3 -4 weeks 600 Krugs

One of my buyers contact me and tell me that all his 10 Krugs are milked.

I usually check the coins before I ship them and I never ever saw any milk spots on any Krugerrands.

What are the chance from 600 coins to send the only 10 milked to the same buyer?

 

 

[Solachesis]

The Krug I got from you developed some very LIGHT milk spots after about a week, but its silver so its not a big deal? plus Krugs can be prone to milking from what i've read. It looks good as new after I lightly removed them with a silver cleaning cloth. 

Milking is a known issue in the silver world, and isn't a handling issue but a mint one, so I don't know if he expects bullion to be proof quality, the Krugs you sold were cheap as chips, they were £5-6 more each everywhere else, even if they were heavily milked, still a bargain. 

It could be that other people, like myself just didn't care, or understood you can't really do anything to prevent milking from occurring, and it was only him who wanted to moan about it.

either way, id just say "sorry, Krugs can unfortunately develop milking, like other silver. They are bullion, and they were a really good price, I'd advise you look for proof coins if you want coins which are 100% perfect" 

[daca]

4 minutes ago, theman73 said:

What are the chance from 600 coins to send the only 10 milked to the same buyer?

the same as winning the lottery

[James32]

4 minutes ago, theman73 said:

Well

First time when I have this kind of problem.

I sold in the last 3 -4 weeks 600 Krugs

One of my buyers contact me and tell me that all his 10 Krugs are milked.

I usually check the coins before I ship them and I never ever saw any milk spots on any Krugerrands.

What are the chance from 600 coins to send the only 10 milked to the same buyer?

 

 

I doubt you sent the only 10 with milkspots to the same buyer ( unless it was literally your last ten?)

It's likely more a case of, this buyer is more vigilant than most and the only one to bring it to your attention!

I'd imagine if some of the batch has begun to spot, a fair few more will now.

It can arrive with milkspots or take months to show. 

4 minutes ago, Solachesis said:

It could be that other people, like myself just didn't care, or understood you can't really do anything to prevent milking from occurring, and it was only him who wanted to moan about it.

This 👍 

[theman73]

I do apologies for this to the buyer but still confused how I didn't see any milked coins when I pack them and how only 10 coins have milked spots

Edited November 27, 2022 by theman73

[James32]

2 minutes ago, theman73 said:

I do apologies for this to the buyer but still confused how I didn't see any milked coins when I pack them and how only 10 coins have milked spots

Could of literally happened in transit, there's nothing you could have done differently to prevent it unfortunately. 

Could offer a refund, then sell for £1 a coin cheaper for a quiet life.

[SilverDrum]

I think it was on a proof coin thread that someone mentioned condensation. The rapid heat exchange from the cold outside air, to the inside of your house could mean condensation would appear on a coin when opened. Even so in transit, if not vacuum sealed, they could come into contact with moisture. This could possibly be a trigger for any change. 

I have however not put a coin into some water to see if it will milk up faster...

[theman73]

15 minutes ago, SilverDrum said:

I think it was on a proof coin thread that someone mentioned condensation. The rapid heat exchange from the cold outside air, to the inside of your house could mean condensation would appear on a coin when opened. Even so in transit, if not vacuum sealed, they could come into contact with moisture. This could possibly be a trigger for any change. 

I have however not put a coin into some water to see if it will milk up faster...

Make sense 

[GoldDiggerDave]

2 hours ago, SilverDrum said:

I think it was on a proof coin thread that someone mentioned condensation. The rapid heat exchange from the cold outside air, to the inside of your house could mean condensation would appear on a coin when opened. Even so in transit, if not vacuum sealed, they could come into contact with moisture. This could possibly be a trigger for any change. 

I have however not put a coin into some water to see if it will milk up faster...

It's likely water/moisture will not make it milk.   The milking is a chemical reaction within the silver and the salt bleeds out of the coin.......Have you got any new builds around you?   Have a look at the brick work house bricks that  have not been property cured bleed salt.  

[theman73]

3 minutes ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

It's likely water/moisture will not make it milk.   The milking is a chemical reaction within the silver and the salt bleeds out of the coin.......Have you got any new builds around you?   Have a look at the brick work house bricks that  have not been property cured bleed salt.  

Thank you 

[GoldDiggerDave]

3 minutes ago, theman73 said:

Thank you 

There's a world wide shortage of silver banks......even some sized gold proof blanks are now suffering with the same supply issues.  I'm convinced we are seeing more silver milking due to the panic to get them manufactured and shipped to the mints and the quality is taking a hit.    Its always been an issue but it looks like its becoming more prevalent for me silver bullion milking is a zero issue.   

[HillWalkerDundee]

My gran always told me never to trust grown ups and, so far, she was right. I suspect that you sent ten good coins and what the buyer is doing is saying that his existing stack of coins has milk spots and wants to return the spotted coins to you while keeping your pristine coins as replacements.

[Mrpound]

I’ll just add proofs develop milk spots too nothing is safe 🤣 it’s just the luck of the draw if silver develops milk spots from what I’ve learned and also conditions and even which mint makes a difference but were not scientists.

unless someone here is a scientist that is 🤣

 

[theman73]

41 minutes ago, HillWalkerDundee said:

My gran always told me never to trust grown ups and, so far, she was right. I suspect that you sent ten good coins and what the buyer is doing is saying that his existing stack of coins has milk spots and wants to return the spotted coins to you while keeping your pristine coins as replacements.

I hope this is not the case but who knows

[SilverDrum]

4 hours ago, GoldDiggerDave said:

It's likely water/moisture will not make it milk.   The milking is a chemical reaction within the silver and the salt bleeds out of the coin.......Have you got any new builds around you?   Have a look at the brick work house bricks that  have not been property cured bleed salt.  

So what you are saying is, buy gold? 

 

Edited November 27, 2022 by SilverDrum

[Petra]

Don’t stress, just tell the person to clean them. Bullion coins no problem. Lots of ways to get the marks off in very quick time. It’s to do with the manufacturing process. Prior to annealing the blanks/planchets are cleaned with solvents, if not cleaned off fully before the annealing process, the heat from this causes the solvent to go into the silver, coming out days or years later as the spots/marks. Contrary to popular belief it’s not just the Royal Mint who have this problem.

[Jvc2858]

The ones I received from OP are absolutely fine.

[theman73]

Just now, Jvc2858 said:

The ones I received from OP are absolutely fine.

Thank you 

[flyingveepixie]

10 hours ago, HillWalkerDundee said:

My gran always told me never to trust grown ups and, so far, she was right. I suspect that you sent ten good coins and what the buyer is doing is saying that his existing stack of coins has milk spots and wants to return the spotted coins to you while keeping your pristine coins as replacements.

Sounds like the kind of behaviour you could expect on ebay...

[Gordy]

I think for some people they put to much emphasis on bullion coins being perfect and have high expectations, the premiums on silver coins on here are lower than most dealers and when they take a coin that has a milk spot on they are possibly hoping for perfection, if a coin is minted at bullion standard they should get try to have a mindset that one or two milk spots is to be expected and if they dont know how to get past that then look to other options as milking on bullion is pretty much a given over time and even on coins just out of production, dealers wont accept returns on slight milking as they know its sold as bullion so when a seller on here is asked for a refund as coins are sent milky etc it can be off putting, as dealers dont have to worry about feedback, and when coins on here are being sold for £23.00-£25.00 per oz if a coin has slight issues the buyers are still getting a good price compared to buying from dealers who may also send milky stock .....

Martin always warns on his site when he has milky coins (Robin Hood, Prime Example) but his prices as a dealer for these are still above prices on here, the only difference is the buyer knows what they are getting prior to ordering... 

[Silverlocks]

16 hours ago, Mrpound said:

I’ll just add proofs develop milk spots too nothing is safe 🤣 it’s just the luck of the draw if silver develops milk spots from what I’ve learned and also conditions and even which mint makes a difference but were not scientists.

unless someone here is a scientist that is 🤣

 

I'm not a scientist, but I do play one on the interwebs - sort of.  

I know a little bit about chemistry, and the publically available information on milk spotting that goes into any sort of technical detail is very sketchy.  I've not really been able to find any peer-reviewed research, or even a decently written analysis of it that goes into the details of the chemistry - at least not in a way that indicated that the author knew what they were talking about.  The general consensus is that it's caused by Borax residue that somehow reacts with the surface of the silver during heat treating, but I've not found any really detailed documents about the process available on the interwebs.

I think that there may have been some proprietary research done on it within the mints - RCM has a process they call Mintguard or some such now that's supposed to prevent it, but they don't publish details on it.  Perth Mint coins are viewed as being less prone to it, so maybe they do a better job of cleaning the gunge off their planchets.

So, I think there really hasn't been a lot of research done on it, at least not in any peer-reviewed context.  I think there's probably a M.Sc thesis in this for somebody somewhere.

If anybody here has a tame scanning electron microscope,¹ I'd be interested to see what the surface of a milk spot looks like up close, and maybe if one can get spectroscopic data or some actual hard facts about its chemical composition that'd be great too.

1 - You can get them on Ebay but they're still quite expensive and I have nowhere to put it.

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Silverlocks

[silversnowflake]

14 hours ago, Mrpound said:

I’ll just add proofs develop milk spots too nothing is safe 🤣 it’s just the luck of the draw if silver develops milk spots from what I’ve learned and also conditions and even which mint makes a difference but were not scientists.

unless someone here is a scientist that is 🤣

 

😑 🔫

[MonkeysUncle]

16 hours ago, HillWalkerDundee said:

My gran always told me never to trust grown ups and, so far, she was right. I suspect that you sent ten good coins and what the buyer is doing is saying that his existing stack of coins has milk spots and wants to return the spotted coins to you while keeping your pristine coins as replacements.

I've had similar BS from lowlife on ebay...