Where to Sell Silver in Singapore
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Selling silver in Singapore is harder than selling gold, and people who have tried usually already know this. The useful part is understanding why, because the reason points straight at where you should be going instead.
Why most places do not want your silver
It is not a conspiracy and it is not that your silver is worthless. It is arithmetic.
A buyer's cost of handling a transaction is roughly fixed. Testing the metal, recording the sale, taking custody, holding stock and eventually reselling costs about the same whether the item is a 100g gold bar or a 1kg silver bar. But those two items differ enormously in value.
So the same handling cost, expressed as a percentage, is far heavier on silver. A pawnshop that makes sense of gold at a modest discount to spot has to discount silver much harder to cover the same work, and often decides it is not worth doing at all.
This is why you get quoted poorly, or turned away, at places that would happily take gold off your hands.
Who actually buys silver properly
Bullion dealers who trade silver as a line of business. This is the answer for almost everyone. If a dealer sells silver bars and publishes silver buyback rates, they have an onward market for your metal and can price it against spot rather than against scrap.
The distinction to look for is whether they treat silver as a product or as an inconvenience. A dealer with silver on the shelf and a published rate is in the first category.
Pawnshops. Some will take silver, most at a heavy discount, and many will decline it. Worth a quote if you are passing, not worth a special trip.
Jewellers. Generally interested only in silver jewellery, priced as scrap against melt value, which is well under spot.
Private sale. Better prices in theory, but silver is counterfeited more than people expect precisely because the per-piece value is low enough that buyers skip testing. That cuts both ways: as a seller you may find buyers cautious and slow.
What you are actually selling
Before you go anywhere, work out which of these you have, because they price completely differently.
| What you hold | How it is priced |
|---|---|
| 999 bullion bars from a known refiner | Closest to spot. Easiest sale |
| Bullion coins such as the Britannia, Maple Leaf and Kangaroo | Close to spot, sometimes a small premium retained |
| Sterling silver (925) items | Metal content only, 92.5% of weight, minus handling |
| Silver-plated items | Effectively nothing. The silver layer is microns thick |
| Collectible or commemorative coins | Depends entirely on the collector market, not on spot |
That fourth row disappoints more people than any other. Silver plate looks like silver and is not, and no bullion buyer will price it as metal.
Bullion bars are the easy case
If you hold 999 bars from an accredited refiner with their purity marks intact, you have the most liquid form of silver there is.
A dealer can take that bar and resell it as the same bar. No refining, no assay, no uncertainty. Any discount beyond a normal dealer spread is being charged for work nobody has to do.
Bring the packaging and any assay card. As with gold, an intact sealed bar with a matching serial is the easiest thing in the market to price.
What to check before you sell
- Know the spot price that day. Silver moves more than gold in percentage terms, so a quote given yesterday may be meaningfully off today.
- Ask for the rate per gram or per ounce, not a lump sum for the pile. It is the only way to compare two buyers.
- Ask whether they actually deal in silver, before you carry it across town.
- Check they are licensed under the Precious Stones and Precious Metals Act.
- Bring ID. Licensed dealers are required to record it.
- Get more than one quote if you are selling a meaningful amount. Silver offers vary more than gold offers.
If you have been told it is not worth much
It is worth getting a second opinion from somewhere that trades silver as bullion rather than as scrap.
The gap between a scrap-metal quote and a bullion quote on the same 999 bar is not small. If the first place you tried was a pawnshop or a jeweller, you have not yet found out what your silver is worth. You have found out what it is worth to someone who does not want it.
FAZ Gold trades silver as bullion, not as scrap, and we publish our silver buyback rates rather than quoting on the day. We are MinLaw-registered, we test on site, and you see the result before you decide anything. Bring your silver to 10 Jalan Besar, #B1-19/20, Sim Lim Tower, open daily 10.30am to 8pm, or call +65 6209 1448 for a rate first.