Posted on 06/11/2019 9:16:35 PM PDT by wgmalabama
Vanity - hope ir shows up as such. Anyone have serious experience in silver investments, physical possession? Specially American Eagles due to easy recognition and perceived value. All value is perception.
How much over spot? Valid premise? Alternatives(not gold please). ....
I am ignorant but 15% to more over spot seems excessive. Looking at monster boxes but it smells funny but again it could be smelling my own ignorance. Searches are mostly hitting sale adds.
Any thoughts appreciated.
Admins - if I posted this wrong please delete. Don’t need tp be banned for ignorance. I can be taught.
The mark up appears to be 15-20 percent over spot. Anyone have experience in this. I’m limited in knowledge bur would like to hold 500-1000 American eagle silver dollars cost effectively. Hedge and as a laser resort type holding. Feel free to Pm or post.
Hope I got this in chat. Just asking for knowledge. Nothing more.
15%-20% over spot is quite a lot. I buy from a large dealer who charges about 4% for gold and a little bit more for silver coins - less for 100 oz bars
Give them a call, just to chat. They’ll happily answer any questions. Of course they’ll want to sell you something - but don’t feel pressured.
Another option is to invest in ETF’s (Exchange Traded Funds). The most prominent silver ETF is iShares Silver Trust, with the symbol SLV. I think that the fees for buying and selling will likely be less than in purchasing actual silver coins. I’ve done it both ways, most recently with ETF’s.
First thing to understand, silver is not an investment. It is speculation, basically in a foreign currency, if you want to look at it that way. Can make a nice profit speculating. Very nice. Can also lose your ass. Nothing wrong with speculation as such, but it needs to be recognized for what it is.
Eagles have the highest markup over spot, though they also tend to be bought back at prices closer to spot. Ask your local dealer what his bullion “spreads” are. There are a lot of different ways to buy silver. Bags of pre-65 quarters, 10oz and 100oz bars, all kinds of stuff. If you just want exposure to the price of silver 100oz bars are nice and not much over spot. Very impressive paper weights.
My parents blew 30 grand on silver speculation.
Rhenium. Element #75. It’s very rare but essential for the hardening of jet engine blades at high heat. Fighter jets mean governments create a considerable demand driving up the price on this very rare element.
I have lots of experience in silver. I have well over a thousand Oz. My best advice is not to buy Eagles. They are a beautiful coin....if you like the coin go ahead and buy 5 or 10 or 20 to get it out of your system. Otherwise I believe generic silver is far superior. However my best advice is not to invest in silver.
I could give you dozens of reasons. But in the end silver has nothing to do with money. All Nations have removed silver from their coinage as of the late 60s. Silver has a production cost that I would estimate to be about three or four dollars. And it costs a dollar or a little less to mash it into a coin or round. There are very few Silver Mines.....all silver comes from the mining of tin and zinc other than Hecla & Endeavor and
Coure d’elene.
I started investing in silver in 1965, when I got the gals who worked the cash registers at my school to pull silver coins, and I would buy them at face value, a dollar 75 and $2.25 a day. And I would just go hungry that day without eating lunch.
In the End, Silver is simply a commodity. Do you think it would be a good idea to pile up a hundred and eighty thousand pounds of wheat in your backyard? Or 40 barrels of crude oil? The price of silver has very little to do with its Rarity. It is not rare. If Rarity controlled the price of a commodity, then why is platinum selling for $500 an ounce less than gold when Platinum is 10 times as rare as gold? If you study the long-term trends in these Metals you’ll find out that they have violent Peaks and that they go to sleep for 20 years. I do not think silver will go under $10 but it could go to 11 or $12 very easily, and
nobody would care. Of course, I could be wrong and it could go to $80 tomorrow morning.
The number of people who are now trapped in silver, is astronomical. They bought it at 15 18 22 26 31 + $35. So let’s say that silver goes up $10 an ounce to 24 or $25. You are going to see so much silver coughed up onto the market that any perceived shortage will be immediately extinguished. On the other hand if you own 50,000 Oz, or approximately 1 and 3/4 tons, then that $10 rise will be a significant amount of money, a life-changing amount of money. Otherwise no reasonable amount of silver, going up three or four or five or $7 represents an amount of money of any significance. Frankly although I own it and I like it, I think hoarding kilograms in kilograms of silver is just dumb. That’s my opinion, your mileage may vary. It is only a commodity. There is no magic to it. That is all an illusion. Think of silver as permanent wheat. It does not go bad. If you want to own some because you like the coins because you like the feel of the coins because you like the jingle of the coins, fine. Otherwise, why would you stock up tons and tons of wheat, or rice in your backyard?
Some people say that owning silver preserves your purchasing power, and if you were around in the 60s, lo and behold three silver dimes could buy you a gallon of gasoline. Today, those three silver dimes at 10.7 * face will also buy you a gallon of gasoline. But that is only if you buy silver at something resembling its native price. If you pay 15 or 20 or $25 an ounce for silver, it does not preserve your purchasing power. It destroys it. It is not a hedge, it is not something that’s going to soar to $100 an ounce, it’s just a dumb disc of metal.
Can’t really say. Don’t know much. Silver seems like a good investment. It’s also nice and shiny. Polishing helps. Good to have around. Need a safe though.
Or there is bullsheetium...
I think 1964 and earlier US silver coins. EVERYONE knows what dimes quarters and halves look like. And once they’ve heard one ring, what it sounds like. They are less likely to be counterfeited, as the federal government takes a VERY dim view of that!
If the SHTF, a couple silver quarters will buy groceries, and unlike bullion coins, they won’t mark you as someone who bought lots of precious metals, but someone who only has a few precious coins your grandma left you, and you hate to spend them, but...
You don’t want anyone who is desperate to feed their own kids to think you’ve got a safe full of silver and gold!
Don’t make a weekly purchase at the same store, have a tear in your eye talking about the few coins grandma had that you just found, haggle over every dime. A few older and somewhat worn coins adds to the plausibility...
Just my take, YMMV.
Your self-questioning indicates that you are a good investor.
I worked for two of the largest gold and silver retailers - the likes you see on Fox.
They do VERY well; you pay a lot of salaries when you buy retail.
Physical gold and silver have a place in a portfolio...
A small place: no more than 5% of a very conservative prepper’s portfolio.
It is worth mentioning that Au is ALWAYS better than cash. An excellent bulwark against inflation. Always has been, anyway! An ounce of gold bought a fine $5 suit a hundred years ago; the same ounce buys a fine $1600 suit today.
A small-time investor is far better off learning about stocks and investing there. Over time, it is really hard to beat index funds. Of course that means having some self-discipline and sticking to it. Every once in a long while a get rich quick scheme will work out, but the usual result is a big loss. Think about this with the big head and learn to get rich slowly. People who can actually do this are fairly rare, but they are thousands of times more common than people who actually get rich quickly.
Right now I can buy or sell $100k worth of an exchange traded index fund for under $10. A 15% spread on a round trip means that I would pay $15k to buy and then sell $100k worth of silver. If you want a SHTF stash, lead and brass are always good.
If you really want a SHTF plan, buy a still and learn to use it. Illegal right now, but in a SHTF situation you will have an inexhaustible supply of trade goods that can get you anything that is left to be traded...
I buy ancient silver coins. But make sure you learn about ancient coins and how to value them before you put money into it.
Thank you for taking the time to point out that silver (or gold, I might add) is not magical.
Excellent post.
Should you have precious metals as a means for buying goods when the SHTF?Through human history, gold and silver were valuable. They were used for getting goods in all times, including hardest times like wars and similar.
Having precious metal for SHTF is big in the prepping community but I need to point out some things.
The value of gold went down during SHTF so much that you need to think about it very hard.
For example, in normal times (I am using these numbers as an example) you could buy with one gold ring 300 small cans of meat. When SHTF you could buy 20, and you could buy 20 if you could find a man who wanted to take that ring from you.
He did not usually want to take it because he could take stuff that he could immediately use, like weapons, drugs, or medicines.
He simply could not do anything immediately useful with it.
Having precious metals is a great idea for later, when some kind of system jumps in, because they are gonna be again precious.
Right in the middle of SHTF, the value of it is poor.
That is one of the reasons why some local warlords came out as very powerful people after everything. They simply took precious metal from folks for a “can of the soup“ value (or sometimes for nothing) and they had enough power to store that metal for the time when it would be valuable again.
Do not throw everything into precious metals. Store immediately useful things.
Any time their is extremely high value there can be the temptation to steel. In this case they took coins of lesser value and added fake mint marks to increase their value over ten fold, rendering the coins worthless.
invest in brass and lead.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.