Picked up some more silver today. Got some US silver dollar commemoratives. Paid only $1 over melt. Here is my story. I used a tactic on the coin dealer I will share. It is nothing crooked or under-handed. I have used it before with success buying/selling. A few weeks ago I needed to sell some silver and tried to sell some common US commemoratives (like the 1986 Statute of Liberty, the constitution, etc). Every place says they pay spot because nobody wants them. One smaller shop evens say they send them to a refiner to MELT. Fine, I decide to keep them and sell something else. Today I call the shop that says they MELT them because I am in the mood to buy some on the cheap. I know this guy well and he is decent so I am not just some guy going in off the street. I say to him "hey I would like to buy some of those common commemoratives you said you send off to melt, how much you want for them?". The guy knows that I know if they are sent for melt he will get crap because they are only 90%. So coin dealer says $1 over melt. This is awesome because most stores sell these common commemoratives for at least $3 over, even though nobody really wants them. I don't know why that is.
Anyway, I go to the dealer and he only has a dozen or so, but some of them were actually better year coins in the boxes with the COA, etc, (got a Lewis and Clark and San Francisco Mint- both were Uncs, not proofs). The rest were Statute of Liberty coins or Constitution coins. All but one was in the original box with papers. Paid $1 over melt for each.
I have used the same tactic when selling. For example, not too long ago I saw a nice 1990s era Kook and asked how much. The dealer wanted $40+ for it, and said some national dealers are paying $20+ over melt for some of the Kook years. I knew from past dealings these guys would never pay more than a buck or two over melt to buy them from customers (including me). So I said to the guy, "I have a full set of Kooks, how much are YOU paying for them considering the dealers' high buy prices", and he then pulls out the dealer sheet and tells me how much per coin he would be willing to give me (a few bucks off the dealer prices per coin. Some were not too too far off ebay sell prices). I went and got my set and sold the whole thing that day even though I wasn't in the market to sell them.
Jim