what is your favorite way to buy silver?

ASE's have a high premium over melt ... but they look so nice and are popular.

Silver rounds and bars are cheap but not as popular (a bit more concerned with countefeiting with those)

Bags of 90% coins are a bit unwieldy but cheap

Recently i started looking at circulated morgan and peace silver dollars -- bullion with a slight numismatic kicker.

Just curious if you were going to buy more silver, how would you do it?

 

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I would pay up for the ASEs. They typically resell for more than melt value, which other forms may not. And you get a potential free numismatic kicker. Someday the Mint will discontinue the series, and every ASE will immediately accrue at least some numismatic premium because many people will continue to want them and buy them, but the supply will be fixed. So quality trumps junk in my mind.

 

+1 with Cloudsweeper99

 

I like ASE as well,but englehard prospectors would have to be my first love. They are well knowen mint,the run on the prospectors only lasted afew years,so there is some value apart from the silver in them as well. Lastly i can get them for .50/$100 cheaper then ASE. That said i still buy my fair share of ASE!

 

ASEs as well. TC

 

For bullion coins, I have a fondness for Silver Maples. Denominated somewhere other than the US, for more than an ASE, and usually slightly closer to private mint round price than ASEs, while retaining the same potential numismatic "bump".

Outside of that, I'm a fan of "junk" silver, since I enjoy assembling/looking at sets, regardless of condition. I can just as easily keep Mercs in a set as in some rolls, and I enjoy the process of filling gaps, searching, etc. In many cases, the MORE worn the better, since more wear = more stories for me to wonder about. So, from this point of view, junk silver lets me hold silver AND enjoy circulated sets.

Finally, there's a few "passions" in life that, if I can find them represented in silver rounds or bars, I'll acquire them. I hold, for example, approx 25 oz in various rounds/coins/bars associated with aviation in some way, and hold a few private mint rounds that tie to the themes/characters in Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

 

I really like old 90% when I can get it for melt value. It's way more fun to play with and look through than boring Silver Eagles or bars/rounds. It's also much cooler than boring 90% like Washington Quarters or Roosevelt Dimes. Sure, I'm technically getting less silver due to wear on these old coins (maybe a 5% or so loss in weight on some of them like the really worn out dimes) but that doesn't bother me at all as this old worn out stuff is very easy to sell at melt value (and even usually can get a slight premium).

Here's around $150 face value of old worn out Barbers

 

I prefer 90% halves. EF/AU rolls of Franklins, Kennedys, or Walkers are hard to beat at melt and often you can buy BU rolls at a lower premium than what ASEs cost. I bought 5 BU rolls of Franklins ($50 face) over the summer for $800 delivered and they're beautiful MS62-63-64 pieces. Sure I could have bought $50 face in junk for $650 at that time but I like nice coins too.

ASEs are great but I don't like paying $3 over spot and contrary to what many think, you don't often get that all back when you sell.

 

i actually agree with some of the later posters that bags of old coins (if you can get this fairly close to spot) are an interesting way to play.

however i certainly own a lot of ASE's (over 500) ... they are absolutely gorgeous ... but i have my doubts about most of them ever gaining any numismatic value (other than the few MS70's) the mintages are just so high - i still find it surprising that you typically have to pay nearly 14% over spot for ASE's. Anyway I bought them last year for 19.90 per coin (when silver was lower) so I am doing fine on those.

thanks for everybody's ideas!

 

I like buying it from banks at face value. Someone was kind of enough to dump five rolls of silver halves at my local branch.

 

holy cow ... stick with that bank!!!

 

illini, i love those stacks of barbers ... that is such a cool image.
almost frame-able.


fishy, i agree with you on the frankys ... i bought some unc rolls about 25 years ago ... they have shot up since then

 

Sometimes I have good luck http://www.cointalk.com/t109004/

 

I like modern silver proof sets, for a while i was getting them under spot and i figure that if silver tanks they have a bottom floor in value that is not much lower then what i paid for them and if they go up its all profit, so you cant lose! I usuly stick to the 5 quarter sets since the full sets don't add that much silver but they have a lot of none silver coins that bring the price of them above what i am willing to pay for the silver content, but if i can win them counting the other coins at face i jump on them.

 

Most of the Barber stuff that you find in junk silver are damaged or are so severely worn that they will never be collectible and they are missing a large amount of silver, i have seen rolls of dimes that are half the size they should be because they are so worn. I'm not saying you should not buy any Barbers at all, im saying you should just cherry pick the better ones and leave the rest.

 

Do do this in a big city or a small town?

 

If you're simply collecting silver for profit then the ASE's would be the best overall way to go but if you're collecting coins with a little more depth, like maybe for the art or history, then surely the ASE's are a bit of a bore.

The money to be made in modern coinage is minimal but bullion is a different story. The problem is some collectors don't realize that when you sell to a coin shop, you will get much less than the spot price and some people get blown away when they find that out. I have been in a coin shop on several occasions when sellers come in and they're shocked to find out that the store owner is not gonna give them the spot price of silver/gold or whatever they have. Sometimes it's funny to watch and other t imes it's just sad. just my 2 cnts

 

I think the you should see that as a red flag if a dealer wont even pay spot for premium bullion, that would make me think what other things does he cheap out on? does he over grade is coins? does he sell problem coins? I say if a dealer wont buy back what he sells at a reasonable price that's a red flag.

 

1-oz .999 silver art bars are my favorite way of buying silver.

 

As cheaply as possible.