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

Mississippi's precious-items dealer law (Miss. Code 75-95-1 and following) defines a dealer by the business of buying precious items for resale, with no in-state limit, but says a dealer may not "operate in the State of Mississippi" without a privilege license and "may operate only from the permanent place of business listed on the privilege license," defined as "a fixed premises" the dealer owns or leases for at least a year. Its weekly reports go to the police chief or sheriff where that business is located. The law does not say whether it reaches a buyer outside Mississippi who buys by mail. We have no Mississippi premises; your items travel to our refinery in Oregon and the purchase happens there.

After you accept, you complete a simple online verification before we pay. Send only items that are yours to sell.

You get an itemized offer listing each piece with its weight and purity. Turn it down and we mail everything back with free return postage.* Accept and payment goes out the same day.**

Since 2011, anyone in the business of buying gold, silver or platinum items (or gemstones and pearls) to resell them needs a privilege license and may buy only from the fixed shop listed on it. Before buying, the dealer must see a driver's license or other photo ID with a traceable serial number, copy it, and record your name, address, date of birth, signature and a physical description. Those records are kept six months, and every week the dealer sends the police chief or sheriff a list of what it bought, what it paid and who sold it.

Each item then stays in the dealer's custody, in the same shape and form, for 15 business days after that weekly report. The law covers any article made in whole or in part of gold, silver or platinum, so coins are not carved out. Payment can only be a check made out to the seller, and a dealer may not buy from anyone under 18 unless a parent or guardian comes along and shows ID. Breaking these rules is a misdemeanor that can carry up to six months in county jail.

Retail merchants, wholesalers and licensed pawnshops fall outside that law. Pawnshops follow the Mississippi Pawnshop Act instead: you sign a statement that you own the goods, the shop will not buy from anyone under 18, and goods it buys outright stay on the premises 14 calendar days when it reports transactions to police electronically, 21 days otherwise. A 2026 bill to cut that to three business days for precious metal, coins and bullion passed the Senate but died in a House committee.

Senate Bill 2862, signed in April 2023, added "sales of coins, currency, and bullion" to the exemptions in Miss. Code 27-65-111 starting July 1, 2023. Bullion means a bar, ingot or coin made at least partly of gold, silver, platinum or palladium that "was or is used solely as a medium of exchange, security, or commodity by any state, the United States Government, or a foreign nation" and is sold for its value as precious metal or a collectible rather than its face value, so privately minted bars and rounds may not qualify. Coins and currency qualify on the same test, but a coin that has been made into jewelry does not, and jewelry itself is still taxed at the 7% state rate plus any city add-on.

Sales tax is a buyer's cost. When you sell your gold, silver or platinum, whether to a local shop or to us by mail, you pay no Mississippi sales tax.

Mississippi taxes a gain on gold, silver or platinum along with your other income: nothing on the first 10,000 dollars of taxable income, then 4.4% for 2025, 4% for 2026 and 3.75% for 2027, per the Department of Revenue. A 2023 bill to exempt bullion gains died in committee, and we found no carve-out for coins or bullion in current law.

Federal rules apply on top: the IRS taxes physical precious metals as collectibles, with gains on metal held over a year capped at 28% and metal held a year or less taxed as ordinary income. Inherited pieces generally use the value on the date of death as their cost basis, so they often carry little taxable gain. We are not tax advisers, so check with yours before you file.

Bills to make gold and silver legal tender in Mississippi were filed in 2024, 2025 and 2026 (most recently HB 1440, the Transactional Gold and Silver Act), and all of them died in committee, so no such statute is on the books. It makes no difference when you sell: buyers price your metal off the live spot market, not face value.