What are the best bullion coins to collect? Silver dollars/halfs? Silver proof sets? Gold Eagles/buffalos? I'm looking for something that will hold its value well 10-20 years from now.
For wealth preservation gold is your safe bet. For higher risk vs. reward I would go with silver. 10 - 20 years from now silver will probably be hard to come by based on diminishing supply trends. Gold eagles are preferable to gold maples by most gold bugs because they are less likely to scratch, less worry if you want to handle them, but I like higher purity of maples. For silver I'd go with ASE's or maples instead of proof sets. Any premium carries the risk of not getting the premium back. The owner of my local coin shop told me if he would have dealt in bullion instead of rare coins many years ago he would have retired already.
they all hold value. it's all in what you like. for just stacking I go with .999 bullion silver, it's just easier to figure value when you have a lot. in gold any of the top 4-5 coins is good, whatever you can find with lowest premium which changes from time to time.
Best bullion coins? Howdy, There are a lot of answers. The easiest to buy and sell are the American Eagles. The cheapest premium is on pre-1964 circulated 90% U.S. silver coinage. For pure bullion, rounds or ingots are cheap but even here the premium is a little higher for name brand bullion. What I personally like are the different bullion coins from around the world. See how many countries you can get a bullion coin from? There are coin collectors that collect Crowns. Crowns are your old time silver dollar size coin from various countries that have the portrait of their king, queen, etc. Most of these are older coins and can have a numismatic premium. However, you can collect present day bullion coins from around the world very easily and have a very pretty set. Silver eagle, mapleleaf, libertad, panda, kook, brittania, philharmonic, etc. Same/same for gold bullion although the price of poker goes up considerably. One option with gold is to collect in the 1/4 or 1/5 oz. size - british sovereigns, swiss and french francs, etc. At this website of a local dealer, over on the right side is their Daily Quote link. It's a pdf. It gives their buy and sell price for all the most common types of bullion AND shows the premium. http://www.libertycoinservice.com/ It's a very hand reference listing at todays price. Hey, the nut is to try to minimize the vig and otherwise, collect what you like. peace, rono
While I agree that PM's generally hold value, they do fluctuate, sometimes quite widely. Forced sales can be expensive in bad timing. But today, I would buy only 1/4 oz gold coins or smaller or silver coins. The reason, that with modern reporting requirements of transactions, it is becoming more and more difficult to exchange 1 oz coins for cash. Smaller dollar amounts don't seem to have that problem. The LAST thing you want to happen is to sell a gold coin then wait 7-10 days for the buyer's check to clear. As happened to me with a sale recently of a single Maple Leaf. Taxes are unaviodable for any of them. It's a responsibility to pay your taxes. But when trading or selling PMs, I believe if you cannot realize immediate cash, you should buy commodity paper through your broker.
Good tips! Tax would only be on the profit though, and probably at the capital gains rate, which I don't mind paying.
I think anyone would agree that paying the least mark-up would be the best for investment purposes. I'd also like to add that you should also consider when deal shopping to buy from well established companies. Believe it or not (I'm sure it won't surprise many of you), because of demand counterfeit Maple leaf and ASEs are beginning to turn up. One can only wonder why it took this long.
Howdy, I really agree with this. Any more, you can't be buying coins or bullion from just anyone. Find reputable dealers and stick with them. Also, you can use Apmex for a pricing rule of thumb and check the dealers advertising in Coin World or Numismatic News for comparisons. peace, rono
Best bullion coins to COLLECT or INVEST in? Big difference. If investing, I like to minimize premiums but still have recognizable standard units of PM. Its up to you to decide on that one. If you wish to collect PM, then collect what makes you happy. Its not a bad idea to collect PM, you get added enjoyment from the collection, and its still bullion if you get tired of it.
Howdy, This is the nut, if you're strictly investing for the longer term you want to minimize the premium while buying items that you can easily sell. It's call fungible. Cripes, you can sell a Silver Eagle at McDonalds. However, a silver round from the five finger mint and brothel, might be harder to sell. The other issus is about collecting vs. investing . . . oh, feh, why not both at the same time. The reason I started collecting coins 50 years ago was that I knew that they were money and I could always spend them. Well, the same goes for starting a collection of bullion coins. Not only collecting for beauty, but why not history. You got kids or grandkids? Try a Pillar Dollar or Spanish 8 Real coin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_real Let's see, official coinage (silver dollar, as it were) in the early days in America, where we got the double bar thru the S for the dollar sign (the pillars), and being 8 reals, was often cut in parts for small change (scarce at the time) -halved or quartered - into quarters, or 2 Bits as in '2 bits, 4 bits, 6 bits, a dollar . . .' Enjoy, peace, rono
Here is my suggestion buy NCLT coins (prefer. marked 999s) you can get them at lower premiums than most bullions'.
I think that I agree with the above statement that given where the price of gold is headed, it might be wise to go with fractional gold from a portion of one's holdings.
I would revise this to say that coins with the lowest bid/ask spread under a variety of conditions [not just today's happy time for bullion] is the way to go. Sometimes coins with a low markup over spot will sell for a large discount to spot when you dispose of them. ASEs cost more to buy but right now it is pretty easy to sell them over spot also.
Hop over to the coin roll hunting results thread. Pick your poison. I'll save you some time: you will pick half dollars. Once you do some volume (looking for silver), you'll want to start 'collecting' because - why not, right? You're going through all of those coins anyway... Soon you'll have your Littleton, Dansco, or [insert coin folder company name here] filled. Next you'll start replacing specimens with better ones (my weakness is toning). This is just a tactic your psyche is using to keep you 'on.' Little do you know you're already way beyond help at this point. Now when you're not sorting, you're scouring eBay, or maybe you've been hanging at the local coin shop? Now you're looking for errors, so your sorts take even longer - but you don't notice. All you notice is whether it says 1974 D, because you are looking for that DDO. Crazy? Oh - YOU know crazy! Anyway - the cheapest, safest, (and sloooooooowest) way into this game is to 'hunt' for 90% junk in coin rolls. If your bank will do it - half dollars are the way to go (IMHO).
Well yes 1/25 ounce will have some premium but you can generally get .2 oz commemorative coins for around spot price. Granted these days due to large # of bidders due to PM rally it is little hard to bargain hunt.
