Where to Sell (or Buy) Gold, Silver & Platinum in Idaho

Idaho regulates gold and silver buying through its scrap metal law, Idaho Code 54-2701 to 54-2708, which treats metal valued for its gold, silver, platinum, palladium or rhodium content as nonferrous metal property. It covers businesses that buy that metal from the public to aggregate and resell to another scrap business or to process into feedstock. For each purchase of twenty dollars or more, the buyer records your signature, name and street address, the date, location and value, and a copy of a current driver's license valid to operate a motor vehicle in Idaho or a U.S. or Idaho government photo ID. It cannot buy without that ID. You sign a declaration that the property is not, to your knowledge, stolen, and until your fourth sale to the same business within a year the sale is photographed, showing you, the property and any vehicle you came in.

Records are kept five years and handed to police on request. There is no state holding period: a scrap metal business only has to set aside property that police report as stolen, for up to five business days. The chapter sets no age limit and no payment-method rule for purchases from the public.

We found no Idaho statute licensing pawnshops or secondhand jewelry stores. Where those rules exist they come from city and county ordinances, which this page does not cover.

Idaho Code 63-3622V exempts sales of precious metal bullion, meaning smelted or refined metal such as gold, silver or platinum whose value depends on its content rather than its form, and of monetized bullion, meaning coins made of gold, silver or other metals used as money under the laws of Idaho, the United States or any foreign nation. Coins bought to be made into jewelry or art are taxed. The resort cities that add their own sales tax can only tax sales that are taxable under the state sales tax chapter, so the exemption holds there too.

When you sell: sales tax is a buyer's cost, not yours. You pay no Idaho sales tax when you sell your gold, silver or platinum, whether to a local shop or to us by mail.

A 2025 law (House Bill 40, retroactive to January 1, 2025) added Idaho Code 63-3022(v), which has you add or subtract net capital gains or losses on anything that meets the sales-tax definition of precious metal bullion or monetized bullion. A gain on bars, rounds or gold and silver coins comes off your Idaho taxable income, and a loss on them is added back. Jewelry is unlikely to meet that definition, and whether dental gold or scrap does is not settled, so gains on them may still be taxable in Idaho; ask your tax adviser before subtracting one.

Federal rules do not change: the IRS taxes gains on physical gold, silver and platinum as collectibles, at your ordinary rate up to a 28% cap when held more than a year and as ordinary income when held a year or less. Inherited pieces generally use the value on the date of death as their cost basis. We are not tax advisers, so check with yours before you file.

The Idaho Constitutional Money Act of 2025, now Idaho Code 67-9903, makes gold and silver coin and specie, minted in the United States or abroad, legal tender in Idaho to the full extent the U.S. Constitution allows. Specie means stamped coin with gold or silver content, or refined gold or silver bullion stamped with its weight and purity and valued for its metal. Unless a statute or contract says otherwise, no one can be forced to pay or accept it. Platinum is not covered, and the law does not change how metal is priced when you sell: buyers still work from the live spot price.