Silver Eagles 32.50…..Silver at 18.50?

What’s up with the discrepancy?

 

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Supply and demand.

You can buy all the 1000-ounce good delivery bars you want at $18.50 an ounce, plus delivery and handling fees.

As long as there are enough people willing to pay almost double spot for ASEs, dealers would be kind of dumb to sell them for less, and will probably have to pay a good bit more than $18.50 each to replenish their stock.

 

Well Said, can’t believe people buy at those prices. Better to buy silver rounds or bar

 

Or foreign junk silver coins at ~spot (as I am doing).

 

No discrepancy...it's called spread ( ie premium)
Buy what you like.
People are spending the extra money for eagles and that's why the price spread is what it is.
I'm not buying at these prices.

 

Its called, the cost of doing business ! everybody has to have there slice of the pie one way or another..LOL

 

It's like that with many things. If plenty of people will pay that price, why lower it?

 

My dealer is paying up for them also. The premium is working both ways.

 

It's like the price of gas. The current price of oil does not support the $4.00+ price of gas right now. I just wish I could choose not to buy it like I can with Silver Eagles.

 

Lots of us have made that choice, by switching to more efficient vehicles or driving less.

Of course, that choice isn't equally available to everyone. I wouldn't have much luck hauling construction supplies in the Prius, and buying a new car costs a lot more than putting gas into an old clunker for the rest of its life.

 

But most of the time you will be underwater, the premium you pay
will always be more then you receive
even more so on so called generic silver.

 

Well, that is how "being a dealer" works. At least if you're one of those dealers who wants to operate at a profit rather than a loss.

 

The Treasury is actually under subpoena to answer this question. They are minting way less than demand dictates, but do not seem to care. However, the law clearly dictates more minting. So, just a classic case of more demand than supply on that particular coin, not anything to do with silver per se. However, just like always, in times of economic turmoil premiums go up, not to go down until PM becomes boring again.

 

Can you provide a good reference on this?

 

I can try later. It was a news story a couple of weeks ago. I am sure it was on my feed since I read coin stories. The article focused on the politics more, it did not say if coinage blanks were scarce like they were the last shortage, which would be a rational reason for not producing enough. I am not trying to say the Treasury is trying to create a shortage, just either there are blank shortages I haven't heard about or it is not a priority for them. I cannot think of a political reason to not want to mint them.

Point being, it seems, like always, economic turmoil increases demand beyond supply like it always does. I would be VERY wary of betting the premiums long term will stay where they are at. Give us 3 years of flat or declining pm's and lack of economic turmoil and they will return to the 35 year average. Reversion to the mean is powerful since the mean is usually the normal economic balance.

 

Yeah, looking back at what I said, it seems to imply that ASEs will always carry a very high premium. I don't believe that; if they had, I wouldn't ever have bought any. I think they'll always carry some premium over generic rounds, and probably even over junk 90%, but I certainly don't think these approaching-100% premiums are sustainable.

 

But my own opinion is that it’s all demand driven. The actual mintage for the last decade ranges about 20 mil to 40 mil each year. That’s a lot of coins.

But, like with Morgans, demand is extremely high even though the coins are the definition of common.

 

I'm not buying either, that's called buying on a pipe dream and I'm not doing it!

 

There's been multiple products pushed to next year from the supply issues and massive delays on many others including limiting sales.

There's plenty of supply, you can go online at any given time and buy numerous ASE bullion ones at any given time. You may not like the price but dealers wont lower prices as long as things are selling. If their sales came to a crawl theyd lower the premiums pretty quick or at least the big boys would

 

If there was the same amount of supply versus demand as previous years, then the premiums would not be up. Supply is always a function of demand, and I agree demand has spiked due to economic turmoil, imbalancing the market. Therefore, I reject the notion "there is adequate supply". If you pay high enough a price you can buy anything, that does not mean there is adequate supply for the market, because the very fact the price has gone up means there is NOT adequate demand for the market.