scrap silver bullion worth it?

Silver is like life, we take it as it comes.....

Sounds like you are doing Ok here. You certainly 'have your feelers out' about the different forms in which silver comes to us.
I prefer coins. They tell me, the seller, my buyer, the entire world just exactly what they are.
----
Sterling is a word which sometimes appears where it justly should not. Even before there was "Counterfeit China", there were stamps available for the unscrupulous or unknowing to 'hallmark' their wares.
----
On the other hand, given an appropriate price differential such as you describe in your original post, there is sufficient room to allow for that ( most fake sterling is IME usually coin silver or 0.900). There ARE the out-and-out fakes too of course, the plate, sectional triples, etc that we've failed to weed out of the lot as well.
Still, it's interesting and gets ya out of the house.
--------------
If you're making $4 oz with fast turn-around time, you're making out pard!

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

I love that law......."to ensure that sufficient quantities of 5-cent and one-cent coins remain in circulation...." That's why I'm hoarding them all, not melting down a single one. Funny law that is!

 

Well 5 coin stores, one smelter and a couple metal dealers later, they all say melting silver coins is illegal as well as defacing any coin or altering its apperance. They mentioned a law, I will look it up and pass it on to you.

 

Nickels are barely worth over value.
Only copper pennies from 1982 (if theyre the copper not zinc) and before are worth $.022 cents each. not worth the time to pick them out since their value is so small, however they are selling them on ebay already as investments.
In addition I would find it funny if dealers would start offering $.013 cents per copper coin, It would be funny IMO.
However copper may rise since there is a good chance of a strike in copper mines in chile and canada this year. Good doesnt mean will, and I dont know how it will affect prices and supply if it does occur but do expect a nice little short spike. Time to pump and dump then.

 

Actually I must apologize, I looked through it again and again and here is what I came up with from my talk with a mint official.
Any silver pre 1969 can be metled. And commemoratives can be melted.
The onyl way they prosecute you if your special ordering ASE from the mint and then directly melting them by the hundreds or thousands each week. Only a couple smelters ahve been hit with this.
As for the copper pennies, he claimed so far that most of the busts have been from people who melting pennies of all years and trying to sell zinc as copper, or if they were placing 1982 zinc cents with their copper penny melts a percentage of it would be zinc and when its assayed by scrap metal dealers they would notify the authorities based on suspicion.
Plainly, I am about to melt scrap silver and make bars, I am considering doing it to some silver coins as well. In addition I am thinking about hoarding those copper penny's buy a bunch from a dealer for maybe 1.5 cetns each and then once its legal to melt ill start doing those as well.

 

It is curiously reminiscent of a 1967 law that was passed to prohibit the melting of silver coins, a vain effort to promote President Johnson's naive belief that silver and clad coins would circulate side-by-side for decades.

 

Thank you for your clarification. :smile

Interestingly enough, all Lincoln cents contain zinc to one extent or another. Most of the pre-62 cents also contain tin.

 

What 1967 law? You contradict Cerdsalicious in his post directly above yours. I also don't understand why melting ASE would be illegal. If I was a manufacturer, and I needed .9999 pure silver for a product I was making, wouldn't it be logical to order that from the mint.....guaranteed purity...unlike some private mints.

 

In 1967, there was a law implemented to prohibit the melting of US silver coins in a vain attempt to keep them in circulation. But people were hoarding the 90% silver coins, as well as the 40% Kennedys that were being produced at the time, and they didn't circulate. Two years later, the Coinage Act of 1969 was passed which made the melting of US silver coins legal.

In 2007, a similar law was implemented ostensibly to keep pennies and nickels, whose metal content may be more than their face value, in circulation by preventing their exportation and melting. The other poster said he was nonetheless hoarding those coins. No doubt many others are as well.

I was pointing out the similarities between today and 40 years ago.

Where's the contradiction?

 

Sorry, no contradiction. The above poster said melting silver coins was legal. If a law was passed in 1967, making it illegal...that would be a contradiction. But, you explained it all. Still doesn't explain why melting ASE would be illegal???

 

At first glance it does seem a little strange, doesn't it, since the ASE is designed to be a bullion coin, to be sold based on its silver value, and thus by implication, subject to melting for its silver in the aftermarket.

Perhaps the rationale here was, there is a huge demand for ASE coins, and they are distributed through dealers. If the dealers melt a bunch to create "rarities" or to jack up the price for the remaining ones, then it's not fair to the small-time purchaser who must get his/her coins through those dealers.

 

Regardless if 90% U.S. silver is legal to melt or not, I think it is the best way to accumulate silver bullion. People know what they are buying, unlike questionable jewelry or privately minted silver with sometimes unknown purity. If you're selling on ebay, this gets the most hits, and is the stuff that moves. Plus, when it comes to common 90% silver, there is little question of authenticity unless you get into silver dollars.

 

These are excellent points, and reasons why I, myself, usually prefer 90% silver coins. Also, the 90% coins are all at least 45 years old and provide a tangible link to US history. And you can also sometimes get BU coins in a junk silver roll as well. With one exception, that's how I've acquired every BU silver Roosevelt in my collection.

The legality of melting silver coins is important in that, even if you or I don't do it, it can increase demand for the coins from the eyes of the dealer, who might not be able to unload 90% silver coins in a reasonable time but who could (theoretically) immediately ship them to a smelter that could turn them into .999 silver bars that are apparently more attractive to the strictly investment side of the silver market.

 

Apparently some poeple use them to manipulate the market. So they purchase in bulk from the mint with super cheap shipping (similar to the presidential coin airline mile scandal).
They melt mose of the ASE's, thus creating a shortage andhold on to several others. its like manipulating the stock market, if you do it they will punish you, same thing in this case, im not sure how melting some couple hundred or thousand ASE would affect the market but I guess it could drive up numismatic value in the short run.

On a positive note I purchased 1 and 7 ounces of .925 silver for a meager $24.Its stamped too, now thats a come up.