***They are unfortunately just junk silver and pretty junky silver at that.***
Yet, some enterprising person will buy the junk silver at junk prices then resell them through periodicals and magazines as “GENUINE SILVER HORDE FORM THE OCEAN FLOOR!”
and make a killing in the amateur coin market for people who don’t know squat about the real value of the coins.
Good on ‘em, if they can. A magazine ad like the ones you reference can be well into 5 figures and you probably can’t run just one of them. It takes a lot of selling coins with under $3 of Ag in them for $29.95 to buy such ads. But there are people who can market such things feasibly. I’m not one of them. I suspect Americans would buy “Gold Rush” gold coins a bit faster than they would buy Indian Rupees. I used to collect coins, then I bought junk silver for a long time. Now I think coin collecting is bit on the dopey side. But to each his/her own.