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I have a question. For about a year now, I've been trying to self-educate about coins and bullion as investments, but also as a hobby. I want to make purchases that are interesting and their value as a metal is clear.

Whew....it's a jungle out there. I purchased two 1oz silver bullion bars and one 1/10 oz gold bullion bar from an outfit at an excellent introductory sucker-newbies-in price. Now they call me every few months and it's like I'm living in Wolf of Wall Street. They try to sell me stuff at at least a 50% markup if it's bullion or with unknown metal content if it's great old pirate coins or whatever. They talk down to me when I asked questions based on any knowledge I might have on the topic. It's fun to keep the conversation going for a half hour or so, knowing that the phone guy isn't exploiting someone else for that time.

So here's my question. I asked the guy how much over spot 2015 1 oz silver bullion coins were selling for. His answer was "they're a bad purchase, as they're too common. Over 4 million have been purchased so far.

My question is, is he correct? Are people getting more aggressive in purchasing silver bullion? Because if that's the case, silver might be a good stock market play. I'm thinking refining.

And yes, I know where to get it just a little over spot and no postage. And I've got a discount coming for an unsolicited review I wrote.

Thanks,

"grania"

Talking to a dealer about metals trades sounds like asking a barber if I need a haircut. For everything that's bought and sold the prices starts with and offer that's lower than the sale price, and the actual exchange price is somewhere in between. On this site they say that some folks are offering $16.24 for "silver bullion round one ounce" and other people who have 'em are demanding $17.33.

That's a 6.7% fee for buying and selling. This site says the difference between the bid and offer on silver is only 0.6% --a lot less, though I'm not sure what other fees Kitco traders have to put up with. Abb talked about buying shares in BEARX and with my Scottrade broker I can right now buy it at $2.29 and sell it at $2.16, or I can just post my own bid/offer price and wait and see. For silver coins there are places like this one that you can buy and sell silver coins --more listed here.

You can tell I know less about metals than stocks, maybe we'll hear better info from the PM folks.