Bit of a shock at the pawn shop today...

Current silver melt value for Morgans is 71.50

 

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So, at 0.7734 Oz silver per coins and $92.91/Oz this is $72 per coin

 

Last pawn shop I went to wanted the current day's spot price plus $7 plus 3% for card transactions.

So any one oz piece they have right now today, if you're using a card, would cost you $103 to take home. I won't be bothering to look there again.

 

If they paid the same (meager) percentage of spot for the keys as they do for common dates, they can sell them to me at the same price they charge for common dates, or they can pound sand.

I don't like to feel like I'm taking advantage of uninformed individuals selling coins, but in a pawn shop, the individuals I'd be looking out for have already been cut out of the deal. It's not like I can find the original owners of the pieces and make them whole.

 

Just seen my first TV ad for local Ottawa pawnshop. Seems he wants people to bring in their "unwanted" gold / silver jewellery, coins, silverware etc. Just me, but I think these people know something is about to happen with precious metals!

 

Like rising prices?

 

lol You got any unwanted metal lying around? I'm paying cold hard cash. Just send to me, I'll evaluate it and let you know what I can do. Simple as that. (They act like they're doing you a favor. )

 

Yep - that's not unusual in my experience. We have a pawn shop in my area of Alabama that is known for having a pretty decent selection of both junk silver and numismatic coins. The dude who handles the coins there is a 30-something fella with good knowledge of numismatics who hits the coin show circuit from time to time. He's not mean, but but he is definitely scared to death of ME because he can tell that I know coins. LOL...

As I cherry pick through his inventory he gets rather fidgety and comes along every so often looking closely at what I've selected and if he sees anything that looks "choice" in condition or variety or date, he lets me know that it will cost a bit more than what he quoted for all the other stuff I picked out of his junk silver bags.

It doesn't really bother me - I'm more bemused by it than anything else. Despite his efforts to closely police my cherry picking I typically make off with most of what I want for a good price. I did a good job cleaning him out of nice Franklin Halves and Mercury Dimes last July when silver was $37 an ounce. Virtually everything I bought was XF-AU to BU and even a few proofs, but I had to dicker with him a bit over them.

I gotta tell you - if I had known that silver was gonna blast off like it did in the late Fall of 2025 I would have gone back in August and cleaned him out - even if I had to put it all on the zero-interest credit card!

 

We do seem to be in a rather unprecented bull market when it comes to the fundamentals that are driving the current silver squeeze globally. A whole variety of factors are in play - but mainly the industrial demand has zoomed up due to the rapid expansion of A.I. data center projects, solar panel projects, new silver batteries that may end up being used to power cars and lots of other things, etc. It's all driving demand way up for physical silver and helping to disconnect the physical price from the phony-baloney paper silver price. China is also helping by restricting the exports of silver from there. Silver is becoming a very strategic metal for military and industrial use and the United States and many other major countries are all on the same page now. I think we will start seeing governments starting to build strategic silver reserves again. It also helps that governments everywhere are deep in debt and are rapidly destroying the value of all fiat currencies. It's a perfect storm - unlike anything seen before - and the fundamentals are unlikely to change through all of 2026 in my opinion. So, yeah, I'm bullish on silver and I'm still buying strongly each week and adding to my stack. But I'm not speculating for a flip. I'm trying to get the hell out of the paper DOLLAR so I can protect my assets from the severe inflationary spiral that I'm convinced is on it's way. With this country at $38 Trillion dollar of debt and running up another trillion every 4 months something has to give soon. Especially if the the BRICS manage to derail the USD as the world's preferred reserve currency. Biden really screwed up when he sanctioned the Russians by going freezing them out of the international settlements system for trade. Once that happened the whole world decided that Uncle Sam cannot be trusted anymore and everyone has been rushing for the exits to dump US Treasuries and move towards hard assets. Central banks everywhere are loading up on gold and investment gurus who spent decades ridiculing precious metals as "barbarous relics" and "shiny rocks" all have egg on their faces now and are hastening to tell their clients to put at least 20% of their portfolios into PM's - mainly gold. So I am not terribly concerned that we will see any major collapse in gold and silver prices. Everyone is nervous because of 1980 and 2011 - but those were NOTHING like this bull market. They were pure speculative bulls and did not have the fundamentals driving them like this one does. We will all be fine. KEEP CALM, AND STACK ON.

 

Exactly!

 

Yeah for sure. They really prey on desperation, people in financial distress, looking for quick payout. I know a "coin dealer" who is knowledgeable and honest. A unsavory character came in with a bunch of Krugerrands. He told the guy, I have to take these in back and test them. In 5 mins police showed up, long story short, case of "stolen property"
So hopefully rightfull owner got his coins back.

 

Biden made the biggest mistake by not giving Ukrainians long range Tomahawks, HIMARs, other lethal aid from day one of Putin's invasion. Had NATO Alliance acted right away, Russians would have been defeated. However, now 4 yrs, killing badguys at a 8-1 rate, they will defeat Putin in 2026/27/ Russian economy will collapse
Reason precious metals are finally in vogue, "its the only real money" Paper/ plastic/ BITCOIN are not.