The vocabulary of a buy-side quote.

Plain definitions for the terms CounterMint uses on screen and in this documentation. Written for dealers, but useful to anyone trying to understand how an offer on a coin lot is actually constructed.

Melt value

What the metal in a piece is worth on its own, calculated from its precious-metal content, its weight and the current spot price. On a generic bullion coin melt is nearly the whole value; on a certified rarity it is the floor beneath the value. On copper, nickel, tokens and paper currency melt is effectively zero and the entire line is premium.

Numismatic premium

Everything a piece is worth above its melt value — scarcity, condition, series demand, eye appeal. It is the part of a coin’s price that has nothing to do with metal, and the part that requires evidence rather than arithmetic.

Collector premium

The customer-facing name for the same figure. Dealer screens say numismatic premium; the copy a customer reads says collector premium, because it is the clearer word for somebody selling a family collection.

Implied premium (aspirational)

The premium suggested by prices currently being asked in the open market. It reflects what sellers hope to receive, not what anybody has paid, and it is systematically higher than what trades. Useful as context, dangerous as a basis for an offer.

Realistic premium

The premium supported by completed sales rather than asking prices. This is the figure CounterMint builds an offer on. The gap between implied and realistic premium is usually the whole substance of a conversation with a seller.

Sold comparable sale (comp)

A completed transaction for a comparable piece, used as evidence of value. A comp is only meaningful once it has been normalized — a sale from eight months ago happened under a different spot price and a different market.

Normalized comp

A comparable sale adjusted back to the spot price on the day it closed, so its metal component and its premium component can be separated. Without normalization, a $2,400 sale in March and a $2,400 sale in August look identical while representing very different premiums.

Outlier fencing

Excluding comparable sales that sit statistically far from the rest of the set, rather than discarding them by eye. It keeps one unusual auction result — a bidding war, a mispriced listing — from dragging a whole valuation with it.

Spot price

The current market price for a precious metal, quoted per troy ounce. In CounterMint spot context refreshes under every open quote about once a minute, so a long lot is priced against one market rather than drifting mid-transaction. It is provider-delayed and is not an exchange feed or an executable quote.

Buy band

The share of melt value a dealer is prepared to pay, configured per series, grade or product. Expressed as a percentage — 100% of melt on one product, 95% on another — and applied automatically to every line rather than recalculated by hand.

Premium share

The share of the calculated numismatic premium a dealer pays out. A shop might pay 100% of melt plus 10% of premium on ordinary material, 20% on prestige series, and no premium at all on generics. It is how a dealer’s margin is expressed as a rule instead of a mood.

Itemized purchase offer

An offer that shows a line for every item, with the melt value, the premium and the amount offered on each, rather than one lump figure for a whole box. It is harder to produce by hand and considerably harder to argue with.

Photo-assisted intake

Building quote lines from a photograph of a lot: separating the pile into individual items and pre-filling the detail the image actually shows. It is decision support — extraction and arithmetic — not identification, grading, authentication or appraisal, and every line waits on a dealer’s review.

Dead band

A movement threshold below which a re-pricing quote ignores the market. It stops ordinary minute-to-minute noise from changing a number in front of a customer.

Upward cap

The limit on how far a live quote may move in the customer’s favour before a person has to approve it. Movement past the cap goes to a review queue rather than straight into the offer.

Locked line

A single line both sides have agreed. It stops re-pricing at the moment of agreement and carries its own deadline from that instant.

Honor window

How long an agreed line is honoured after it locks — a fixed number of hours, or end of business day in the shop’s timezone. Stamped at the moment of agreement; reopening the quote link never restarts it.

Counter-offer band

The range within which a customer’s counter-offer is handled automatically: accepted inside one percentage, declined past another, and referred to a person for everything in between. Off by default.

Quote ID and PIN

The two values printed on a paper offer that let a customer reopen the live version of it in a browser. Both are required, and the retrieval portal will not confirm whether a Quote ID exists, so a mislaid sheet cannot be used to go fishing.

Karat and fineness

Two ways of stating how much precious metal is actually present. Karat is the jewellery convention, in twenty-fourths — 14k is 14 parts gold in 24, or .5833 fine. Fineness is the decimal form used on bullion and coinage. Fineness multiplied by weight gives metal content, which is what melt value is calculated from, so on scrap the karat stamp is the single most important thing on the piece.

Scrap

Material bought for its metal content rather than its collectable identity — broken chain, dental gold, sterling flatware, mixed-karat parcels. Priced from karat, weight and payout percentage rather than from comparable sales.

Raw versus certified

Raw material is unencapsulated and its grade is a matter of judgment. Certified material has been graded by a third-party service and encapsulated with a label. CounterMint transcribes a certification label where the photograph shows one, and never assigns a grade itself.

Every one of these is a switch you set, not a number we choose.