Tips for selling gold as a beginner?

[JamesH]

Good discussion and interesting to see differing opinions. Have hopefully built a decent rep over the last 18 months and I myself started by sending a handful of items prior to payment to get things moving in the right direction. Now am able to enjoy receiving payment first and sending immediately the next day. Not had a single bad trade on the forum and the one buyer I had that was not 100% with what they received were made good as soon as I had an unblemished coin to replace the original one with. Love trading on TSF and feels safer to me than the likes of ebay

[Abyss]

11 hours ago, JamesH said:

Good discussion and interesting to see differing opinions. Have hopefully built a decent rep over the last 18 months and I myself started by sending a handful of items prior to payment to get things moving in the right direction. Now am able to enjoy receiving payment first and sending immediately the next day. Not had a single bad trade on the forum and the one buyer I had that was not 100% with what they received were made good as soon as I had an unblemished coin to replace the original one with. Love trading on TSF and feels safer to me than the likes of ebay

Hit the nail on the head, scammers have tried multiple times on eBay to defraud me (changed the delivery address after payment, obtained a brand new coin from myself and returned a fully scratched coin and obtained a refund. Trading on the Silver Forum taught me all the safety precautions need to take and early on when trading on the forum I was blown away with the communication and the quality packaging and service above and beyond from likes of Chards / Atkinson also help me up my game. Even now whenever I receive a high ticket valuable item (regardless of if it is a precious metal) I video record the unboxing process with proof of the date and time in the video in case something has gone wrong.

Think about this poor couple received a power bank instead of £800 iPhone when ordering directly from Apple UK unable to obtain a replacement/refund I bet if they had video evidence of the unboxing process they would not have to rely on their word alone. If this goes to a small court case it will be on the basis on the judge determining who is telling the truth, make the judges job easier, video record the unboxing process.....

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/couple-devastated-after-paying-800-28037497

[ChrisSilver]

22 hours ago, KleinerVogel said:

 but after the recent scams from a "trusted" person, I decided to perhaps not bother, which is why I'm not too concerned about building my rep now and just speaking plainly.

That member in question did not meet the recommendations in the following topic. Not to say that someone can't turn out to be a scammer even if meeting all of the recommendations below, but I would like to clearly state that they did not meet the recommendations (i.e. account age was lower than suggested, and they had little/no posts outside of trade topics interacting on the forum, low forum reputation points also etc) 

It was an unfortunate event, though fortunately I believe that most members affected were able to get money returned from their banks as this person was reported for fraud. They were also reported to the police and action fraud. 

If you would like to reduce risk as much as possible it is important to be aware of the following recommendations and understand that there is still some risk (as with anything in life)
 

 

Edited November 6, 2023 by ChrisSilver

[HonestMoneyGoldSilver]

18 hours ago, KleinerVogel said:

Just something about "building reputation" or trying to win a popularity contest for the sake of selling a few quids worth of silver now and again just rubs me the wrong way. That's fine, it's not for me. I want to sell on my terms and not basically just hope some random stranger on the internet is going to do the right thing just because he/she is in "the trusted ranks". But as I've stated a few times, I get why this situation exists and understand why you guys like it, and that's great for you. More power to you.

It's really not much of an issue for me anyway, I didn't join this forum to buy or sell, I originally just joined for conversation with like minded people on the subject of stacking and PM. And on that side of things I have found this place to be great, lots of knowledgeable and friendly people here.

TL:DR - It's about maths not trust or popularity

The value someone generates on TSF depends how much money they save when buying items plus how much profit they make when selling on TSF and elsewhere. For those who have been here a long time and made a lot of trades that number is pretty big, perhaps 10+ ozs of gold

There's membership fees and TSF merch plus posting value but that by itself is irrelevant for trade. Commenting in threads might give someone a good impression but then again it might not 😂. I comment a lot but it generates 0 sales figures

To trust someone to ship first before payment you just need to know your items are worth less than their forum value. If their forum value is high it's extremely unlikely they will ever rip you off as it would badly hurt their own self-interest

Of course many people are honourable and have moral standards but you don't have to trust in that unknown quantity - just use numbers

When using an intermediary you borrow their value to make sales on your behalf in the case of BYB or with private traders you borrow their value to gain value on the forum. When you have borrowed enough of their value you can then trade without it

The guy that scammed measured his forum value as being worth less than the money he could steal. We can calculate this to be true. He stole something like 100 ounces of silver AFAIK or £2.3K give or take. He had sold a few tubes and other small quantities of Phillies, the profit on that being much less than £2K. He didn't buy anything and he didn't comment in threads. So yes, we can calculate this was a +EV move for the scammer, if we assume he valued his soul at £0

The money available to steal had greater value than the profit from trades and forum interaction (their forum value)

When dealing with a "high trust" member the money available to steal (from you) will never be of greater value than the profit they make from trades and forum interaction. No trust or popularity is required. Sales figures and a sigma would be better

The above scamming scenario is true for every business. Sometimes it's more profitable to extract every possible penny now even if it means destroying the brand and bankrupting the company. The profit they make from trashing the brand via unethical business practice is greater than the cost of rebuilding that same business from scratch. That number can be rationally calculated and this is a known theory in finance/economics (risk-shifting). That's different from popularity or trusting someone's character, those numbers can't be rationally calculated. 

My intentions were the same as yours btw and I never intended on buying anything on TSF. Didn't quite work out that way though, too many bargains in the buy/sell 💸💸

[stefffana]

38 minutes ago, HonestMoneyGoldSilver said:

TL:DR - It's about maths not trust or popularity

The value someone generates on TSF depends how much money they save when buying items plus how much profit they make when selling on TSF and elsewhere. For those who have been here a long time and made a lot of trades that number is pretty big, perhaps 10+ ozs of gold

There's membership fees and TSF merch plus posting value but that by itself is irrelevant for trade. Commenting in threads might give someone a good impression but then again it might not 😂. I comment a lot but it generates 0 sales figures

To trust someone to ship first before payment you just need to know your items are worth less than their forum value. If their forum value is high it's extremely unlikely they will ever rip you off as it would badly hurt their own self-interest

Of course many people are honourable and have moral standards but you don't have to trust in that unknown quantity - just use numbers

When using an intermediary you borrow their value to make sales on your behalf in the case of BYB or with private traders you borrow their value to gain value on the forum. When you have borrowed enough of their value you can then trade without it

The guy that scammed measured his forum value as being worth less than the money he could steal. We can calculate this to be true. He stole something like 100 ounces of silver AFAIK or £2.3K give or take. He had sold a few tubes and other small quantities of Phillies, the profit on that being much less than £2K. He didn't buy anything and he didn't comment in threads. So yes, we can calculate this was a +EV move for the scammer, if we assume he valued his soul at £0

The money available to steal had greater value than the profit from trades and forum interaction (their forum value)

When dealing with a "high trust" member the money available to steal (from you) will never be of greater value than the profit they make from trades and forum interaction. No trust or popularity is required. Sales figures and a sigma would be better

The above scamming scenario is true for every business. Sometimes it's more profitable to extract every possible penny now even if it means destroying the brand and bankrupting the company. The profit they make from trashing the brand via unethical business practice is greater than the cost of rebuilding that same business from scratch. That number can be rationally calculated and this is a known theory in finance/economics (risk-shifting). That's different from popularity or trusting someone's character, those numbers can't be rationally calculated. 

My intentions were the same as yours btw and I never intended on buying anything on TSF. Didn't quite work out that way though, too many bargains in the buy/sell 💸💸

Wow!🤗

[BackyardBullion]

1 hour ago, HonestMoneyGoldSilver said:

TL:DR - It's about maths not trust or popularity

The value someone generates on TSF depends how much money they save when buying items plus how much profit they make when selling on TSF and elsewhere. For those who have been here a long time and made a lot of trades that number is pretty big, perhaps 10+ ozs of gold

There's membership fees and TSF merch plus posting value but that by itself is irrelevant for trade. Commenting in threads might give someone a good impression but then again it might not 😂. I comment a lot but it generates 0 sales figures

To trust someone to ship first before payment you just need to know your items are worth less than their forum value. If their forum value is high it's extremely unlikely they will ever rip you off as it would badly hurt their own self-interest

Of course many people are honourable and have moral standards but you don't have to trust in that unknown quantity - just use numbers

When using an intermediary you borrow their value to make sales on your behalf in the case of BYB or with private traders you borrow their value to gain value on the forum. When you have borrowed enough of their value you can then trade without it

The guy that scammed measured his forum value as being worth less than the money he could steal. We can calculate this to be true. He stole something like 100 ounces of silver AFAIK or £2.3K give or take. He had sold a few tubes and other small quantities of Phillies, the profit on that being much less than £2K. He didn't buy anything and he didn't comment in threads. So yes, we can calculate this was a +EV move for the scammer, if we assume he valued his soul at £0

The money available to steal had greater value than the profit from trades and forum interaction (their forum value)

When dealing with a "high trust" member the money available to steal (from you) will never be of greater value than the profit they make from trades and forum interaction. No trust or popularity is required. Sales figures and a sigma would be better

The above scamming scenario is true for every business. Sometimes it's more profitable to extract every possible penny now even if it means destroying the brand and bankrupting the company. The profit they make from trashing the brand via unethical business practice is greater than the cost of rebuilding that same business from scratch. That number can be rationally calculated and this is a known theory in finance/economics (risk-shifting). That's different from popularity or trusting someone's character, those numbers can't be rationally calculated. 

My intentions were the same as yours btw and I never intended on buying anything on TSF. Didn't quite work out that way though, too many bargains in the buy/sell 💸💸

Well said.

Back 4 years ago at the height of the silver forum group orders from Estonia we were handling £50,000 packages every 6 weeks.

However, the value of everything I have built since then and will continue to build going forward (hopefully for a long time) far outstrips even the large sums of £50,000 that for some people could have been an exit scam.

I mean, let's also not forget the real world ramifications here. The scammer will be caught one way or another eventually. Either by means of having their bank accounts closed, none every being able to be opened again in the future.

No credit rating, no mortgage, no easy ability to rent, buy a car, get insurance and much more.

That's assuming he doesn't get caught by the fuzz and end up with a criminal record.