Premier Gold, Silver & Coin Association

This company advertises and travels for "Roadshows" in various states. They operate under "Premier Gold, Silver & Coin Association" which appears to be a spin-off and yet unaffiliated with other so named, similar companies. When you bring in your valuables, there is usually only one person working who reviews your items. They will say that they are looking to buy items to re-sell to "Collectors." When we asked how they find the collectors, it was mentioned that they have a website for such purpose (the website domain was not mentioned).

After chatting us up a bit with friendly conversation, the representative for the company proceeds to review your items. Anticipate comments made about the "condition" of your items and the mentioning of any visible flaws. They will write notes on a worksheet, making a list of items they may be interested in and then set your items off to the side while they calculate their value.

Next, comes a monetary $ offer to purchase your coins/goods/jewelry. If you find that you don't like their offer, the rep will make a phone call to the boss to inquire if he/she can offer you more, which is a pittance more than the first offer. If you're still not happy with the offer and proceed to gather your items to leave and happen to ask "How long is this offer good for?" (because you want to check your local gold/silver/pawn shop for another opinion), they will probably say, "only until the end of the day."

If you are still not happy with the second offer, which is no doubt a small increase from the first offer, the rep may make a third phone call to the boss to see if they can do better. All of a sudden, your goods don't look so bad after all. The flaws that were pointed out in the beginning when you presented them seem to become less of an issue.

A third offer may be presented only this time it is a "Take it or leave it" offer and it is not good until the end of the day as was the first or second offer. You either take it right then or forget it. We don't know about you, but we really don't appreciate pressured sales tactics like this. We found this style of trying to close the deal as reminisce of a buying a car as the rep had to check with the boss each time before making or increasing the offer.

On top of that when they offer you more then they did on the first offer, and the second offer, one questions the validity of their first evaluation of your goods and their low ball offer (which they really wish you would have accepted so they could move on to the next person.) Oh, and they will ask you, "how much $ are you looking for?" Seriously, don't give them an answer. They will just use it against you. We wanted the best and highest offer. We didn't want to play games.

We really did not appreciate the "take it or leave" statement and found it completely unprofessional. Add to the fact that the first offer was extremely low and the second offer wasn't much better and the third offer was still "less than the meltdown value" of our coinage, we collected our coins and proceeded to leave.

Folks, you have to do some research and know what your items are worth before taking them to these types of roadshows. At the very least, know the current meltdown value of your goods and coins. You will be told that a local gold and silver shop will give you 50% or less of the value but that's just not true. We left there and went to a local shop and did just fine. Do your homework and research. We personally didn't care if our coins were going to collectors or heading for a meltdown, we just wanted the most our coins were worth (taking into consideration that they needed to make a profit). We had down some research and at least knew a reasonable value ahead of time.

To end our lovely visit, we were told, "We can't make everyone a millionaire." We found that comment extremely unprofessional, unnecessary and downright tacky. Never again. We will never attend a roadshow for buying gold, silver, etc. ever again. We're done.