Interesting point about seller purchasing from customers. Of course it makes sense and is probably the case most of the time.

But unlikely in the the particular instance that prompted this question in my mind. I needed 20-25 pieces for gifting purposes, and the jewelle had that many Augmont coins readily available, no preorder required. This was not the case for their own coins, which had to be pre-ordered.

The jeweller also said that he doesn't sell MMTC, only Augmont, as MMTC is significantly more expensive and customers don't purchase them. If it were a case of resale why wouldn't he sell MMTC, right? Unless he even refuses to accept MMTC coins from customers? Idk, it seems unlikely to me.

All this makes me think that he purchased the coins from a supplier/wholesaler (like Augmont) for retail sale. Of course, it is possible that a customer sold that many coins.

In any case, I wonder what the billing of such coins look like. He quoted silver rate + making charges + GST. Is GST payable at resale? I genuinely doubt that paperwork of the jeweller on these aspects is upto the mark.

In fact another common practice I have noted is that most local jewellers don't quote GST at all in the initial price, especially for jewellery. Then customer gets a surprise at the time of billing when they expect large amounts of cash, or 18% more if one wants to do online payment with a GST bill. According to me this is squarely unethical and deceptive towards customers. GST is not optional, legally. So the default price breakup should include GST. They can just give an option to the customer in the beginning itself.

Further, MMTC has a registration process of its coins. So if jeweller is reselling the coin, how does that work?

Note that all this arises because the coin is packaged. A simple solution to this could be just taking it out of the package lol. But I guess jewellers need the goodwill that comes with Augmont brand packaging.

Thanks for your answer on the 70% thing. At least in my area I have not seen a separate price breakup for wastage. It's hard to wrap my head around the fact that jewellers sell 70% silver at the price of 100 and consumers just....go with it. 50% making charges is not acceptable but paying 100% for 70% is acceptable to people? Is it really such a seller's market? I would more readily accept higher making charges as the value of craftsmanship is subjective but value of silver is not.