Selling Silver in the UK: Britannias, Eagles and Bars

Silver is the metal people buy casually and sell nervously. A tube arrives, it goes in a drawer, and four years later somebody opens it, sees pale marks across half the coins and assumes the money has gone. Usually it has not. What follows is what a buyer actually looks at when you sell silver in Britain, which silver moves easily, and the one difference between a Britannia and an American Eagle that has nothing to do with the silver in them.

Five things worth knowing before you sell silver

• The spots are a manufacturing artefact, not corrosion. The Royal Mint links milk spotting to the annealing process used in striking. It is on the surface. The ounce underneath is unchanged.
• A silver Britannia is sterling currency. An American Eagle is not. Both carry a face value. Only one of them is denominated in pounds, and HMRC's manuals treat coins by their legal tender status rather than by their metal.
• Silver is counted, not weighed, when it arrives in quantity. Full sealed tubes and boxes are quicker to verify than the same coins loose, and speed is part of what you are paid for.
• Bars are judged on brand and paperwork before they are judged on weight. The LBMA maintains Good Delivery Lists for silver as well as gold, and a recognised refiner with an intact assay card is an easier item to resell.
• Do not clean anything. This is the one instruction in this article that is worth money on its own, and it applies to bullion and collector pieces alike.

The white marks on your silver are probably not a problem

Milk spotting is the single most common reason people write to us about silver, usually with a photograph and an apology. It is worth saying plainly what it is, because the mint that strikes the coins publishes the answer.

The Royal Mint describes it as "a term to describe a white, milky-coloured blemish that features on the surface of a coin", and says the flaw "can be linked to the annealing process, which prevents the precious metal from becoming too brittle for striking". Annealing is a heating step between blank and strike. Residue left behind can show up months or years later, and no amount of careful storage prevents it reliably.

The commercially useful sentence is the next one. The Royal Mint's own position is that "typically, milk spotting doesn't devalue your coin as it is predominantly desired for its precious metal count". For plain bullion that is exactly right. A one-ounce silver Britannia with pale patches still holds one troy ounce of 999 fine silver, and that is what a bullion buyer is paying for.

There are two honest exceptions, and we would rather you heard them from us. Graded coins are judged partly on eye appeal, so spotting can affect a grade and therefore a collector price. And a heavily spotted coin in a set where the others are clean will draw the eye, which is a presentation problem rather than a metal problem. Neither exception applies to the great majority of one-ounce bullion silver sitting in British drawers.

What will cost you is trying to fix them

Every week somebody polishes a coin before posting it, and every time it makes the item worth less rather than more. The Royal Mint's own care guidance is blunt about handling: "always pick up coins by placing your finger and thumb around the edge, and not by touching the surface of the obverse or reverse", and on cleaning bullion it says you "don't need to clean" it because "doing so may damage a mint finish".

Here is the arithmetic a seller should hold on to. Removing a spot does not add any silver. It cannot increase the metal content by a single milligram. What it can do is leave hairline marks across a mint finish, and those are permanent, visible under a loupe, and read by any buyer as damage. You have spent effort to move the coin from "ordinary bullion with a cosmetic mark" to "ordinary bullion that somebody has worked on".

That is our position rather than the mint's, and it is the one we apply when we quote. We would rather buy a spotted coin than a polished one.

What a buyer actually checks on silver, and in what order

The order matters, because it explains why questions arrive in the sequence they do.

1. Is it what it says it is? Recognised mint issues are checked against known dimensions, weight and design detail. The Royal Mint publishes the 2026 one-ounce silver Britannia at 999 fineness, one troy ounce and 38.61 mm, and lists micro-text, a latent image, tincture lines and surface animation among its security features. Those features exist to be looked at.
2. How much is there? Fine metal content, not gross weight, and for a quantity that means counting as much as weighing.
3. How quickly does it move on? A coin a buyer can resell the same week is worth more to them than one they will hold for a season, and that difference reaches you as the price.
4. Is it intact? Tubes, boxes, capsules, assay cards and certificates. This is where silver differs most from gold, because silver is usually held in quantity and the packaging is part of the unit.
5. Only then, how does it look? Surface condition is the last question for bullion and one of the first for anything with a collector element.

If you want the arithmetic behind the offer itself rather than the inspection, we set that out in selling gold and silver in the UK, and the valuation method in what is my gold worth works the same way on silver.

Britannia, Eagle, bar: three different sells

These three cover most of what arrives. They are not interchangeable, and the differences are not about purity.

The bar row deserves a sentence of its own. The London Bullion Market Association states that it "owns and manages the Good Delivery Lists for both gold and silver", and its requirements cover fine ounce weight, purity and physical appearance including marking and surface quality. You almost certainly do not own a Good Delivery bar, because those are large trade bars. What matters to you is the same principle at retail scale: a bar from a refiner a buyer recognises, with its number and card still attached, is a quicker item than an anonymous one.

The difference that is not about the silver at all

A one-ounce silver Britannia and a one-ounce American Silver Eagle are close to the same object. Both are one troy ounce. Both are struck by a national mint. Both carry a face value nobody would ever spend. They differ by about two millimetres across.

They do not have the same status in HMRC's guidance, and the reason is currency rather than metal. The Capital Gains Manual at CG78305 sets out the test: "coins are to be regarded as currency only if they are legal tender at the time of their acquisition or disposal." It then gives its examples: "sovereigns minted in 1837 and later years and Britannia gold coins are currency but, like all sterling currency, are exempt because of TCGA92/S21 (1)(b)."

Read the next sentence carefully, because it is the one that matters if you hold Eagles. "The chattels exemption does not apply to coins which are non-sterling currency, TCGA92/S262 (6)(b)." An American Eagle is denominated in dollars. It is currency, and it is not sterling currency.

We are not going to tell you what that means for your own sale, and you should be sceptical of anyone who does from a web page. Two things are worth noticing, though. HMRC's published examples in that passage are gold coins, so a silver Britannia is not named there even though it is UK legal tender with a £2 face value. And the exemptions in play are different routes: the sterling currency route and the chattels route are not the same thing. If you are selling enough silver for a gain to matter, that is a conversation with an accountant, and it is worth having before you sell rather than after.

VAT, in one paragraph, because it is covered properly elsewhere

Investment gold that meets HMRC's criteria is exempt from VAT: the relevant exemption in the VAT Act 1994 covers "supplies of investment gold and qualifying gold coins". There is no equivalent exemption for silver, which is charged at the standard rate, currently 20 per cent. The consequence for a seller is one way. A private individual selling silver does not charge VAT, and cannot recover the VAT paid on the way in. That is why silver has to move further in your favour than gold before a purchase and sale round trip breaks even. We explain the mechanism at length in gold against silver, and the seller's side of it in selling gold and silver in the UK. There is no point in repeating it here.

Silver sells by the tube and the box

This is the part that surprises people who have only ever sold gold. Gold arrives as a coin in a hand. Silver arrives as a quantity, and quantity has its own logistics.

The Royal Mint sells its one-ounce silver Britannia not only singly but in a twenty-five-coin tube and in a five-hundred-coin box, described on its own page as packaged in tubes inside a durable box. The trade calls the latter a monster box, and the Mint uses the term too. That is the shape the wholesale market is built around, which is why an intact tube is a different proposition from twenty-five loose coins of the same years.

• A sealed tube is one unit to check. Loose coins are twenty-five units to check.
• Keep the tubes even if you keep nothing else. They cost nothing to store and they are not replaceable once discarded.
• Do not break a box to sell part of it unless you have decided to sell the rest separately anyway.
• Allow more time for counting than a gold parcel of the same value would need, and factor that into any deadline you are working to.

The same point applies to carriage. A given value in silver is a far larger and heavier parcel than the same value in gold, which changes what you can send, how it should be covered and what it costs to send it. Contact us before posting anything, and we will confirm the delivery arrangements and the applicable cover with you first.

Five mistakes that cost silver sellers money

Cleaning, polishing or dipping before selling

Covered above, and it is first because it is the most expensive and the most common. It is also the only one on this list that cannot be undone.

Assuming spots mean the silver has degraded

People accept a low offer because they believe their coins are damaged, or they do not ask at all. The Royal Mint's own guidance says otherwise for bullion. Ask before you assume.

Throwing away tubes, boxes and assay cards

Packaging looks like packaging until you sell. For bars it is part of the item's identity, and for tubes it is the difference between one check and twenty-five.

Selling the wrong metal first

If you hold both metals and need a specific sum, the item you reach for first is rarely the one you should sell first. That decision deserves five minutes, and we cover the coin-by-coin version of it in selling gold coins in the UK.

Posting before agreeing what happens if you decline

Agree the terms of a refusal before your silver leaves your house, not after. Any buyer worth selling to will put that in writing, and if a buyer will not, that is your answer.

Who should not sell silver to us

We would rather lose ten minutes of your time than waste an afternoon of it.

• If you hold jewellery, scrap or broken pieces. We buy bullion only, which means coins and bars. A jeweller, a pawnbroker or a scrap refiner is the right buyer for those, and our sell page says so itself.
• If your silver is a collection rather than a holding. Proof issues, graded coins and limited mintages can be worth considerably more to a collector market than to a bullion buyer, and we will say so if we see it.
• If you bought recently and are selling out of irritation. Silver is more volatile than gold, and a round trip has to clear the VAT you already paid. That is a poor combination for a quick change of mind.
• If you only need part of the value. Selling the whole holding to raise a fraction of it is a common and expensive habit.

How selling silver to Yard Mint works, and the alternative

Our sell to us page publishes indicative buying rates for silver per troy ounce and per gram, recalculated automatically from our own vaulted product pricing rather than quoted only on request. Treat that as an anchor rather than a settlement: it is a rate for investment grade metal, and form, condition and quantity all move the final figure. You tell us what you hold, we reply with pricing and the next steps, and nothing is posted until the arrangements and cover are confirmed with you.

There is a second route worth knowing about, because it answers a different question. If what you actually want is to stop storing silver rather than to stop owning it, our vaulted service holds one-ounce silver Britannias in the UK and one-ounce Silver Eagles in the USA, with no monthly storage fee at present and every transaction charge published on the rates and fees page before you commit. We set out what storage actually costs, including the parts that cost you money, in gold and silver vault storage in the UK, and the home comparison in storage at home against vaulting.

We run both sides, which means we have no reason to push you towards either one. Selling and storing are different answers to different problems, and plenty of people arrive wanting the first and leave having chosen the second.

Frequently asked questions

Do milk spots reduce what I get for my silver?

Usually not for plain bullion. The Royal Mint says milk spotting "typically" does not devalue a coin because it is bought for its precious metal content. Graded and collector coins are a different case, because eye appeal forms part of a grade. Tell us what you hold and we will say which case applies.

Should I clean my silver coins before selling them?

No. Cleaning cannot add silver and can leave permanent marks on a mint finish. The Royal Mint's care guidance says you do not need to clean bullion and that doing so may damage the finish. We would rather buy a spotted coin than a polished one.

Do I pay Capital Gains Tax when I sell silver in the UK?

It depends on the coin and on your own circumstances. HMRC's Capital Gains Manual treats coins by legal tender status, and states that "the chattels exemption does not apply to coins which are non-sterling currency". An American Eagle is denominated in dollars; a silver Britannia carries a £2 face value. Anyone with a material gain should take independent advice on their own position before selling.

Is there VAT on selling silver?

A private individual selling silver does not charge VAT. The direction that matters is the other one: silver is standard-rated at 20 per cent when you buy it and a private seller cannot recover that, so a round trip needs a larger price move than gold to break even.

Do you buy silver bars as well as coins?

Yes. We buy gold and silver bars and coins. Keep the assay card and the original packaging, because a bar with its number and card intact is easier to verify and easier to resell. We do not vault bars, only Britannias and American Eagles among our silver holdings.

Do I need the original tube or box to sell silver coins?

You do not need it, but it helps. A sealed tube is one item to verify rather than twenty-five, and that speed is part of what a buyer is paying for. Keep tubes and boxes if you have them.

Can I sell some of my silver and store the rest?

Yes, and it is a more common answer than people expect. Selling to release a specific sum while moving the remainder into the vault keeps the holding intact and removes the storage problem. Tell us the sum you need and we will show you both routes.

How long does it take to get paid?

Once a quote is agreed, the time is mostly carriage and verification rather than paperwork. Silver takes longer to count than gold of the same value. We confirm the expected timing for your sale when we reply to your enquiry, not after your parcel has gone.