Yeah if investing in precious metals you have to be prepared to sit on it for awhile. Like you I also bought a bunch of silver almost 15 years ago. The spot price hasn’t risen much but the premiums have. I think the spot when I bought it was around $16 but the premium I paid then was only $2 over spot. It’s not really considered an investment it’s more like insurance in a SHTF scenario. But I think that is about to change soon because of our incredibly reckless deficit spending. There’s almost no talk of austerity rather Congress is going full barrel running up the debt. It’s impossible for this to continue much longer without the dollar being devalued. I’m expecting gold to be around $3k within a year and silver to be in the 30’s in the same time period. And I expect it to continue up on that trajectory. In any event the chance of it going down in the future is almost nil so I consider it a pretty safe investment regardless.
Oh and as a warning to anyone considering investing in silver Eagles (which is what I bought) there’s a slew of fake silver Eagles going around that came out of China so you have to be careful. There’s also lots of fake Morgan silver dollars out there. I know because I bought some fake Morgans and and also some fake gold Eagles myself from China as more of a novelty. I paid like $2 a piece for them. For $3 you can buy them incased in plastic to make them look like they came from a rating agency. So be aware.