What to invest in

Does anybody have any ideas about what coins to invest in.They would be for my children and possibly when they have children.I invest cash for the kids but would like to invest in something physical as well.I am not talking huge amounts of money, just would like any ideas of what type/ country would make a good investedment for the future.
Thanks Andrew

 

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1)world gold can be bought near melt in many instances,

2)many think the coin market is at a peak right now and that investment in coins should be done at a later time after the prices have come down some,

3)finally if you really want to invest, the coins that perform the best historically are key dates in superb condition (not cheap).

Good luck!

P.S. I am NOT a qualified investment advisor.

 

I would suggest that you NOT invest...you collect because if you collect what you like you can't go wrong....but when you invest...you can go wrong.

If I say that silver if going to go to $100/ounce and then you invest all of your money in silver...and it doesn't go up...it goes down...you wouldn't be happy with me...so all I can say...is to collect...and collect what you like.

Speedy

 

I'm in about the same situation you are trying to accomplish the same thing while having some fun. If the goal is primarily investment, gold coins seem best (meaning safest, not necessarily most profitable) to me when they can be obtained within 25% of melt value. Bullion coins will be closer to melt than this, and coins with some numismatic value will cost more, but this is a small enough premium to tie them closely to the performance of the metal over time instead of the (possibly but not defintely) overpriced coin market, yet leaves enough scope to buy a lot of different domestic and foreign coins. The same thing can be done with silver coins when you can buy them within about $5 of melt value per troy ounce. But I'm also not a qualified investment advisor. Heck, I'm not even a qualified coin collector.

 

The mystic

Andrew,
If you figure out what to invest in
Please let the rest of us know
There are many kind of collectors
Most do it for the love of it

If any of us really knew what to invest in
We would all be wealthy by now.

But as the gun owners are accused of saying (parapharasing)
You can have my coins when you pry them out of my cold dead hands.

Not really good investment advice, but how many of us feel about collecting.
Maybe some day my coins will be worth more than they are today but that is a benefit to the "fun" I have in the search and obtainment of the coins I am after, Now.

Good luck

 

I agree with rggoodie. I collect coin for the fun and love of it, I invest in stock market.

 

im still new to this stuff so correct me if i make an ass of myself

silver isnt a bad choice, esp if you can find junk silver (beat up old coins) for spot value or very close to it. silver is affordable so it can be bought any time you get a little extra money lying around and you can play with it for that good 'ol scrooge feeling from the Christmas Carol lol.

silver peaked this year at around 7.55/oz about a month ago and is down to 7.01/oz atm. try to find it as close to spot as possible IE flea markets, antique stores, or jewelry shops and you may make a killing. i remember reading that the US mints used to melt silver for people ( trade dollars) in the 1870's i dont know if they are still willing to do it free ,for a price, or at all.

i believe that the standard for silver is in pure bars so if you can do your homework and find it cheap, AND get someone to melt it you may be able to make it a good investment choice.

remember buy low, sell high. and TRY HARD not to pay those spot +markup prices or at least lower them as much as possible

spot prices
http://www.kitco.com/connecting.html


i found a few silver halves at antique stores for 2.00 each , at 7.00/oz silver goes to about 5X face value so i made 50c each. dont forget tax or s&h though.

if you must do coins, like they said before, get PROFFESSIONALLY graded high grade key dates or even current MS70 coins. i was watching a live auction on ebay last night and a 2005 MS70 penny went for about $500 (theres a 20% auction fee added to that ) so if you find them cheap then buy and hold onto them. when investing patience is always the key.

 

If you are buying strictly for investment potential, and doing it on a limited budget or over a period of time and not really interested in the coins buy gold and silver bullion and put them away. They are priced according to the market and are absolutely stunning to look at! You can pick up silver Eagles in any quanity for less than $10 each (current issue) and gold will run from $48 (1/10 ounce) up to around the $450 for a full ounce. You have other options with the 1/4 ounce and 1/2 ounce as well. I would also recommend, over a period of time, that you pick up nice examples of various U.S. coins such as Morgan or Peace dollars or a few other coins of the U.S. past, in what ever grade you desire, in an effort to provide a little history and value through the U.S. coinage program. Your kids and their kids will have the opportunity to see, feel and hold a half cent, large cent, two cent piece, 3 cent piece, 20 cent piece and on and on and on! Go at it like building a family museum, so to speak, and all of you will find much enjoyment in what you have started and there will be value in what you have created for your family. Good luck and do hope all of you fall in love with the hobby!

 

You might but I don't think so...most dealers will give $2.00 for Silver Halves...so you still got a great deal but if you sell them to a dealer and not a collector you might just pull even.

Speedy

 

i meant in an investing sense. remember patience is the key to investing ( and knowledge of when to sell). i saved 50c. in the long run, when i decide to sell, compared to the halves i paid 2.50+ for, i made an extra 50c here. its just the way i see things

 

I'm not 100% sure but wasn't bullion confiscated once...I'm talking about gold bullion?...couldn't that happen again...and if so I would think it would be better not to have bullion.

That is one reason I try to tell people to collect NOT invest...many investers lose...some come out ahead...some don't pull through...the coin market is funny and at any time it could go down...it could go up but everything will someday come down.

Speedy

PS--and collect because to LOVE to collect...not to make $$$

 

In the last year and a half, I saw silver approach 8.00 per ounce and then drop back to 5-something. Now it's 7-something. It seems to be more cyclic than steadily increasing. I was thinking about the possibility of trying to time the cycles if the cycles were reliable enough: buy at 5-something, sell at 7-something, then buy at 5-something.

If you assume a finite supply, I would think that the only thing that would change its price would be inflation or monetary devaluation. That is, it doesn't "grow" in the sense of a stock that is tied to the very real growth of a corporation. If that's true, it is doomed to cycle and not keep steadily increasing in value.

On the other hand, I've read that the world's supply of silver is drying up, which would cause its value to go up.

There are people here much more authoritative than I am on the issue who can provide better insight into the matter.

 

The biggest difference between gold and silver is the mere fact that silver actually gets USED in many ways and NOT recovered. Most gold hangs around for an eternity. Many will argue the fact that if gold should, lets say double in value, it will pull silver along with it and if gold does double we should expect silver to hit $30 to $35 per ounce. If my old fashioned math is still correct I would think silver would be the better long term investment when you look at percentage of increase? I do try to buy a little bullion, gold, silver, platinum and now palladium, every now and then when I have extra cash to spend or coins that I really don't need for my collection as a little slush fund in the event I need a few bucks sometime in the future. Another real beauty of this is I just can't go out an blow my extra cash on something stupid if I keep it tied up in bullion or coins. Don't have to mess with the banks or their hours and there is basically NO PAPER TRAIL!!! I like that very much! Win, lose or draw it is all up to me when to buy and when to sell and I like the opportunity to have a little fun now and then without paying someone else to do the same thing with my money! Worked out really great these last 8 to 10 years and I just wish I had started it sooner in my life.
For what it is worth my little 3 year old has been buying coins with money he has accumulated from gifts and the help of Mom and Dad and has quite an array of coins, commemoratives, mint sets, proof sets and silver and gold! Can't think of a better way to get him hooked on collecting and show him some worth with his money. Mom and Dad can finance all the other junk until he grows up!

 

I believe silver is undervalued. Most silver mining companies can't make a profit on $7 silver. When a commodity sells below the cost of production, it either has to rise in price or the world has to decide they don't want it anymore. Throw in inflation as a bonus. So in my opinion, silver will go up in price, perhaps a lot. But it's easier to know what will happen than when.

I don't worry about gold confiscation. When Roosevelt confiscated gold it was being used as money and there was a lot more of it in circulation than today. And even he exempted numismatic coins. There wouldn't be much of a point to it now.

So gold and silver coins are a very enjoyable way to participate in the potential price rise [with no guarantees of course]. I mean, you could just stack up a lot of those 40 pound gold bars in your basement, but they get dusty and tend to be in the way all the time.

 

Thanks

thanks for the reply,I do love collecting coins.I just would like to invest differently than via the banks.I invest for the kids, but thats a bit boring.I do have a lot of silver bullion bars, maybe i will just periodically buy some more.

 

crystalk wrote:

"The biggest difference between gold and silver is the mere fact that silver actually gets USED in many ways and NOT recovered. "

I agree with crystalk. I have always been a silver fan. There is a net deficit of new silver mined/recovered vs silver used. The deficit is made up by drawing on silver
stocks (on hand). The US used the last of it`s silver stocks a year or two ago and has to buy on the open market to make all those shiney new silver eagles etc.

 

read this

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_04/hommel080104.html

i read another article that said we mine around 7 times more silver than gold but we still see it worth 1/60+ of what gold is worth.

 

oh ya and silver is down to 6.85 atm

 

This is a question that comes up often - what coins make a good investment?

My answer would be something like this:

Coin investing is financially tough and incredibly risky. There is no simple answer, because successful investing, even in numismatics, is not a product you buy, but a process you apply... that sounded a little suess-ish.

In short, you need to educate yourself more than an average collector and the average dealer, because you need to anticipate their purchasing trends - you need to know what they want before they do. Not an easy thing, when you really think about it. Before you can expect to make a sound investment choice for the future, have you researched what the smart moves 'would have been' a year ago - two years ago - etc.? What are dealers stocking up on - what coins have prices now, that are already inflated?

If collectors are encouraged to 'read the book before you buy the coin', coin investors should read three or four - in half the time.

See, the question causes a little bit of a catch 22. If you can make good coin investments, you know enough that you don't need to ask the question. And if you need to ask the question, there is no answer that will help.

 

Well Rick what a joy you are,I find your answer patronising and disrespectfull.