Just read through the entire 2+2 thread this morning. Sounds like the runner/organizer is a real POS, so now none of this is surprising at all. Sounds likely that he had some skim/markup on the coinage with the metal dealer.
Can't speak to the organizer's character, but based on what was supposedly paid, and which coins they chose to use, I suspect this as well.
The video I saw, with one of the winners and his bag of coins, showed a limited-edition (25,000 issued IIRC) Homer Simpson commemorative silver round. This is a pretty eclectic type of item, more likely to appeal to fans of
The Simpsons than to actual coin dealers/collectors. And I can't imagine there's a huge market of
Simpsons fans itching to buy high-priced silver coins either, i.e., it's the kind of coin a dealer might find himself having a hard time selling. The price used by the organizers for this coin was $35. Meanwhile, you can find U.S. Silver Eagles basically everywhere. They're considered the standard for 1-ounce silver rounds, and as of the time of the incident, they were going for much less than $35.
Maybe it would have all worked out more smoothly if they'd been able to do their little buyback scheme, but even that has a pretty glaring hole in it: Why would a coin dealer deliver all this silver and then come out to a poker tournament to do all this work when there's no money to be made? Coin dealers are not charities or volunteers. They underpay when they buy and overcharge when they sell. That's their business. So what's the angle here?
They were supposedly planning to have players sell the silver back for the same prices they'd paid for it, and it's not like it was a couple pocketfuls of coins. It was over $200K worth of coins and bullion bars. Just transporting that much silver safely is quite the undertaking, never mind transacting back and forth piece by piece to accommodate all the payouts. And what if some of the coins were damaged between being bought and sold back? The dealer would at least have to take the time to inspect everything for damage, which can most certainly affect the value of silver coins and bullion. What happens if there's damage? One more expense for someone to eat.
Not only that, but cash payouts in excess of $10,000 require government paperwork and so on, not to mention secure handling. If the dealer was going to pay by check, that still adds to expenses, record-keeping, etc., and this is not even addressing the coin dealer's time (hours and hours spent processing all this bullshit), nor the coin dealer's willingness to get involved in an obvious scheme to violate the spirit of the laws on the matter.
All this expense was going to have to come from somewhere. There had to be some kind of back-end, or no coin dealer with enough stock to cover this would be interested in wasting his time or energy (never mind risking legal trouble) to get involved.