How to Start a Coin Shop: Licensing, Inventory, and Margins

Step 1: Get the licensing picture straight

There is no federal license to sell coins or bullion, but the regulatory stack is bigger than most first-time owners expect:

• State precious-metals dealer license. Most states license dealers who buy precious metals from the public, with bonding requirements in some.
• Secondhand-dealer rules. Buying from walk-ins usually triggers the same framework that governs pawnbrokers: ID capture, transaction reporting to law enforcement, and holding periods before you can resell or melt.
• IRS Form 8300. More than $10,000 in cash received, including related transactions that add up to it, means a federal filing within 15 days. Read our Form 8300 guide for coin and bullion dealers before your first big cash deal, not after.
• Sales tax nuance. Many states exempt bullion above a purchase threshold but tax numismatic coins; the boundary between the two is state-specific and audited.

Step 2: Decide what kind of coin business you are

Most successful independent shops end up hybrid: the "we buy gold" counter brings inventory in below market every day, bullion turns cash quickly, and the numismatic case carries the margin. That hybrid is also why generic retail software fails here; the buy side is half the business.

Step 3: Build the buy side before the sell side

Retail foot traffic for coins is modest in most markets. Walk-in sellers are not. Estate liquidations, inherited collections, and scrap gold walk through the door of any shop that advertises buying. Your competitive edge is making a fast, confident, defensible offer:

• Live spot prices at the counter, not this morning's printout
• Weight and purity payout calculations with your margins built in, so any employee can quote
• ID capture and transaction records as part of the offer flow, so compliance is automatic

Step 4: Treat inventory like the one-of-one items they are

A PCGS MS65 Morgan is not "Morgan dollar, qty 12." It has a certification number, a grade, a cost basis, and its own market. Bullion needs weight and purity tracking; raw coins need lot tracking. From day one, every item should carry its acquisition cost, source, photos, and history, both for margin visibility and because law enforcement and examiners will eventually ask.

Step 5: Sell where the buyers are, from one record

The days of the display case being the whole business are over. Graded coins clear fastest to national buyers online, and bullion customers price-shop everything. Shops that photograph and list at intake, to their webstore, eBay, and marketplaces like Buya, turn inventory dramatically faster than case-only shops. The operational key is one master record per item, so a coin that sells online comes out of the case inventory instantly, and vice versa.

Step 6: Watch the three numbers that decide survival

1. Buy-side spread: your average discount to spot or market on purchases. This is your real profit engine.
2. Inventory turn by category: bullion should turn in days to weeks; numismatics in months. A slowing turn means mispriced buys.
3. Cash compliance exposure: transactions approaching reporting thresholds, tracked per customer, automatically.

What does it cost to open a coin shop?

Typical all-in startup ranges run from roughly $50,000 for a lean buy-focused storefront to $250,000 or more for a shop opening with meaningful bullion and numismatic inventory. Inventory is the swing factor; licensing, bonding, a safe or vault, insurance, and buildout are relatively fixed. A gold-buying counter reduces the inventory capital you need, because your sellers finance your stock.

Do coin shops need special point of sale software?

Yes, in practice. A coin shop needs live spot-linked pricing, buy-side intake with ID capture and reporting, serialized tracking for graded coins, cash-threshold monitoring, and multichannel online listing. That is a different feature set from a generic retail register, and it is the same operational core that pawn and jewelry stores run. See what that looks like in Bravo's coin and bullion dealer software.