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

New York has no statute that licenses or registers businesses buying gold, silver or jewelry outright, whether over a counter or by mail. Its pawnbroker law ties each license to one location: no one may do business "in any other house than the one designated in said license" (General Business Law s. 41), and the five-business-day cancellation right covers a person selling "upon the premises of a collateral loan broker" (s. 47). A bill to register mail-in precious metals buyers has been introduced every session since 2009; the current version, S4133, sits in the Senate Consumer Protection Committee and is not law. We have no New York 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.**

State law leaves outright gold and jewelry buyers to local rules. The junk dealer law in General Business Law Article 6 applies its seller statement, photo ID copy and five-day hold to listed base-metal items such as copper wire, brass castings and metal beer kegs, not to gold or silver. Pawnbrokers, called collateral loan brokers, need a local license tied to one address and must register with the state comptroller, and when they buy secondhand goods outright, s. 47 says they must follow "local laws or regulations governing dealers in second-hand articles." So any ID check or holding period a shop applies to your gold comes from local law, not a state statute.

Selling to a pawnshop does carry state protections. Under s. 47 you get a receipt listing each item and its price, you may cancel the sale within five business days by paying back the price plus a fee of no more than ten dollars, and if you sold jewelry, watches, precious stones, precious metals or coins you may convert the sale into a pawn loan within 14 days. The shop must post a sign telling you so.

Tax Law s. 1115(a)(27) exempts "precious metal bullion sold for investment": bars, ingots and coins of gold, silver, platinum, palladium and three rarer metals, priced close to their metal value. It counts as an investment only when the sale is for more than one thousand dollars and you keep the metal in the same form. Below that, or for jewelry and other metal made for "esthetic or artistic" use, the full rate applies: 4% state plus local tax, reaching 8.875% in New York City and Yonkers.

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

New York starts from your federal adjusted gross income (Tax Law s. 612), so a gain on gold, silver or platinum you sell flows onto your New York return and is taxed at the regular state rates. The state offers no exclusion, subtraction or credit for precious metals.

Federal rules still apply: the IRS taxes physical precious metals as collectibles, with gains on metal held over a year capped at 28% and gains on metal held a year or less taxed as ordinary income. Inherited metal generally uses its date-of-death value as cost basis. We are not tax advisers, so check with yours before you file.

New York has not passed a sound-money statute making gold or silver coin legal tender in the state. That has no effect on selling: buyers price your coins and bars off the live metal market, not face value.