A working checklist
How to sell gold and silver online.
Selling bullion on the internet is a normal ecommerce store with four things bolted on that a normal store never needs: a price that moves, a payment rail the trade trusts, identity checks the law expects, and sales tax that changes by state and by product. Here is the whole list, in the order it bites.
The list
Eight things every bullion store has to have.
Price off the market
Every product is a premium over the metal in it. Decide the premium per product, in dollars or as a percentage, and let the metal price come from a live feed. Choose the feed carefully: a price derived from an exchange-traded fund or a paper index is not a price anybody will sell you a coin at. A wholesale spot feed, one a dealer can trade product against, is. If the price on the page is typed in by hand, it is wrong within the hour on a moving day, and either the buyer or you eats the difference.Show a price per payment method
A card costs you a few percent of the ticket; a bank transfer costs cents. On a product with a three percent premium that difference is the whole margin. The way to handle it is a discount for paying by bank, never a fee added for paying by card. The two are not the same thing in law. A surcharge on a card is prohibited outright in some states and restricted by the card networks everywhere else, while a discount for paying another way is permitted. So the card price is the list price and the bank price is shown below it. How the two prices are displayed is governed by the card networks, so confirm the presentation with your processor and your counsel. That is how Ophir Markets prices every product, and it reads to a buyer as generous rather than as a penalty.Get the catalog photographed and described
Buyers compare a coin across five dealers before they buy it. Weight, fineness, mint, country and year have to be on the page, and the photography has to be good enough to sell against a dealer who has already done this. This is the slowest part of opening a store from nothing, and the part most worth not doing yourself.Take payment on rails that accept bullion
Bank transfer is the rail the trade runs on: it costs cents, and while a transfer can be returned by the bank, there is no chargeback process of the kind a card network runs. Cards widen the audience and cost more, and a card dispute can arrive weeks after the metal shipped. Before you build on any platform, read its acceptable-use terms: some platform-native card options treat precious metals as a restricted category, and finding that out after launch means rebuilding checkout.Verify who you are selling to
Identity verification on the buyer, a sanctions list check at account creation and again when they transact, and a running total of what each customer has bought over a rolling window rather than per order. The Bank Secrecy Act treats dealers in precious metals as financial institutions above a volume threshold, and the records have to exist before an examiner asks for them.Charge the right sales tax in every state
Bullion is exempt in some states, taxed in others, and exempt above a purchase threshold in a few. The rules also differ between bullion and numismatic coins. Either maintain per-state rules per product category yourself, or use an automated tax service and pay for it, but the number has to be computed at checkout from the destination address.Decide how it ships, and keep the handoff record
Which carrier, whether to insure a parcel and with whom, and whether to require a signature are your decisions, and no platform makes them for you. What a platform should hold is the rate the buyer pays, a free-shipping threshold if you want one, local pickup for buyers who would rather not have metal left on a porch, and the shipment record: carrier, tracking number and handoff on the order, because a lost parcel claim is won or lost on that record.Keep the evidence
Every order should carry its payment state, its verification state, its risk signals and who touched it. Every change in the back office should be in an audit log. When a buyer disputes a charge or a regulator asks a question, the answer is in the records or it is nowhere.
Read this part carefully
These are tools. Ophir Markets is not your compliance officer, not your anti-money-laundering officer and not your lawyer, and using this platform moves no legal responsibility off your business and onto ours. The Bank Secrecy Act, sanctions screening, your state dealer licence, your sales tax, your federal reporting and your own anti-money-laundering program are yours, exactly as they are today. What we can do is give you good instruments and put the evidence where you can see it. Judging whether they are enough for your program is your call, and your counsel's.
Where Ophir Markets comes in
The software side of every item on that list is already built.
Ophir Markets is a hosted storefront and console for precious metals dealers. Live bid and ask for gold, silver, platinum and palladium from CNT's spot feed, a wholesale price you can trade product against; a per-rail price so bank buyers see the lower number; a catalog of about 150 products that arrives photographed and described; bank and card checkout; identity verification, sanctions screening, rolling volume and risk signals on every order; per-state tax rules or an automated service; shipping rates with a free threshold, local pickup and a record per shipment; and an audit log across the whole console.
You bring the premiums and your own compliance program. There is no setup fee and no monthly fee. The platform takes a share of the premium on each order, worked through with real numbers on the cost page. If you are weighing this against building on a general platform, that comparison is here.
Get started
Bring your premiums. Everything else is already here.
Three fields and a confirmation email, and we will show you Ophir Markets running under your shop. No setup fee, no monthly fee.