I would love to be able to do that but the nearest LCS to me is about 30 miles/an hour in traffic away from me.
Yeah it sucks. You would think that living in between Baltimore and D.C. I would have more options. Unfortunately I don't...
For me it would be something I could easily store, easily hide, easily put in my pocket and easily sold worldwide -tenth oz. AGE.
+1 Don't buy small bullion gold coins, you'll only loose money because of the high premium. Go for slabbed bust halves!
Now a more serious answer. I don't think you can really invest in silver or gold with a very limited budget. So I would buy the coins you like most. If their value increases in a couple of years, even better.
This isn't really an investment piece per-se. I guess I should have mentioned it from the start. As it stands right now I am sitting on ~120oz of silver(junk coins, Misc Gov rounds, a few generic rounds) and no gold. This budget is just extra $$ I have. Just trying to figure out what I should buy with it.
Sell it all when silver is at a high and buy gold coins instead. Keep the gold for the next 30yrs. I sold all my silver bullion and only kept the Krugerrand coins.
I like picking up an occasional silver coin every couple of weeks lately. I don't really have the money for gold, so silver it is. I call it the poor man's hedge fund.
Where do you live...I live over in the Suitland area and belong to the Alexandria Coin Club. There's also a monthly coin show over in Annapolis and one in Vienna.
I live in Laurel. Pretty much smack dab between Baltimore and D.C. Annapolis is like 30ish minutes east of me.
THE ONLY WAY TO GO! Not assuming anything, just diversifying. First, the premiums on the P-Pucks with the subscription are very small. Second, you can put all your eggs in one basket by buying only pm or you can diversify by buying rare bullion, If the economy tanks, the bullion should do well - if the economy does well, the numismatic value should do well.
I find coins in a lot of places. Flea markets, occasionally in yard sales, etc. Fortunately there are a bunch of things I'm looking for, so if I don't find silver coins there are always post cards, cast iron pans, old books or nautical items among other things to be found.
They don't have a physical store I've called. I actually drove around trying to find it once. It is just a warehouse.
One, you are assuming the purchaser only owns these. What if a prospective buyer, like me, spends hundreds a month on collectible coins already? You say the premiums are low, but they are still high versus most pm items. In this case, its at least an extra ounce per puck you are giving up with this premium. I thought I was being "smart" and combining collectiblity and bullion back in the 90's. I was paying a premium for junk barbers and SL quarters. I thought this was smart by combining both bullion and collectibility. I was wrong. I wish I would have bought the cheapest junk possible, so that today I would have more ounces of silver. In some ways bullion is on one side of the road, and collectible coins are on the other side of the road. By combining them, its like you are wandering aimlessly in the center of the road, which is a good place to get smacked by a Peterbilt. So, no, I disagree and will continue to disagree with anyone saying there is ONLY one way to collect bullion. Its simply untrue. MAYBE what you predict will come true, but maybe not. If these drop back to bullion value, everyone who bought them will wish they had bought cheap bullion instead, just like me with those barbers and SL quarters.
No, I'm not assuming the purchaser owns only these, I'm just talking about this particular "investment". Well, anything could happen, but then, comparing better junk silver to these rare Pucks, is comparing apples to oranges.
I would be willing to bet you today that if silver spikes up to $70 an ounce fairly quickly almost all or all of these pucks will trade for melt. Same will be true of tons of what is today considered "better" coins. If that happens, would you rather be the owner of a puck or 6 ounces of junk silver? This is a very REAL possibility, it has happened before. When silver went up to almost $50 recently all kinds of coins considered "better" sold for melt. So, for you to ignore this and still cling to your belief that ONLY pucks are the way to invest in silver I believe is misinformed. Its not a BAD idea, but are you truly so "all in" that you consider pucks to be the ONLY logical purchase of silver??? Wanna bet?
Sure, that's happened many times when pm's spike, it takes time for numismatic value to catch up. And, when pm's spike, it's usually due to a bad economy, which puts downward pressure on numismatic value. However, there's no guarantee the economy will tank in the short run, so I like "hedging" with numismatic value. So yeah, for my pm purchases, I like the P-Pucks.