RE: What’s the disadvantage of holding a few common one ounce coins?
Well the advantage of holding commone one ounce coins is you have REAL, PHYSICAL silver that you can buy and sell.
As opposed to this, Holding the SLV ETF simply means you have a piece of electronic proof that “promises” to hold silver for you.
The disadvantage of holding physical silver is TIMING I guess. By this, I mean if you held Silver by way of the SLV ETF, you can trade it quickly like a stock. You can for instance put a sell limit on your holdings if the price of Silver drops below a certain value.
For instance, I bought SLV when the price was $18.50/share (mimicking $18.50/ounce). It is as of today’s close, $26.55/share.
I am already in the money, but not willing to sell my shares yet in anticipation of it going higher ( how can it not when the government is debasing our currency?).
I put a sell limit for SLV at $21.50/share in case (yes, JUST IN CASE) mass dumping occurs on the ETF exchange. That way, I still make some profit (about 16%) if the silver market for any reason, were to crash.
I don’t think you can do that if you were to own physical silver.
I understand. For silver I just buy the junk stuff plus an occasional kruger rand. Holding the silver also ‘simplifies’ any inheritance or capital gains issues.