Buying silver

[rebelcop121]

I think gold and silver will be the next currency when the SHTF or such happens.

Unfortunately I let the wife talk me into selling off about 10k of my stash when we bought the new house. That was back when silver was under $10 and gold around $600. Now I'm back to the drawing board and having to start over with only a few ounces of gold nuggets and some silver ingots.

Buy guns and ammo or buy storable food and stockpile silver... Where's that Reader's Digest check when I need it?

 

[RavenLunatic]

New silver American Eagles are only $1.99 over spot at AMPEX today (less than $20). It is hard to buy any new silver coin for less than $1 over spot. Therefore, I don't think there is any downside to buying the Eagles at $1.99 over spot right now.

Not really. They pad thier price with very high shipping costs.

I put two silver eagles into my shopping cart. Shipping was over $12. (Actual shipping cost should be about $2-3.)

So, it's more like they are $6.50 over spot.

("$1.99 over spot" plus half of the $12 - $3.)

 

[Just Jim]

So you buy precious metals like gold and silver because the currency is about to crash right? So who is crashing the currency? What makes you think they won't call in the gold and silver so they can still run the government?

jj

 

[Gunner3456]

During the Great Depression the private ownership of gold was outlawed except for very small amounts. Citizens were required to turn it in and I believe they got paid at a government declared price.

Odd that this was during a crash. For more accurate details, Link

Nixon presided over taking the dollar off the gold standard - the dollar no longer backed by gold. This allowed the beginning of the printing of unlimited, unbacked dollars and set off the massive inflation and sky high interest rates of the late 70's and early 80's. (People won't lend money at low interest rates if the money will be worth a lot less when they get paid back. The interest rate has to cover the rate of inflation + a rate of real return.)

Ford presided over again allowing citizens to own gold.

If it happened before, it can happen again.

 

[dave]

Try putting 13 in your cart. 13 is the cuttoff for the $12.95 shipping. This brings you down to $1 per troy ounce to ship. 14-55 is $19.95. The key to making APMEX work out is to buy in larger quantitys. If you just want to buy 1 or 2 go to the gunshows or coin dealers.

Ebay is not a great source due to much the same deal with paying 3-4 bucks to ship. Some offer free shipping but look at how much 1 ounce of silver goes for. Ive seen many 1 troy ounce bars go for $25.00. Thats just nuts!!!
Unless you are selling of course

 

[RavenLunatic]

I agree, if you want to buy in volume, AMPEX is a great source.

 

[Blackfeather7]

I agree. But the OP said this:

I do agree though, that if you want to buy in volume, AMPEX is a great source.

The volume does not have to be that high. If you have the time to watch auctions and snipe bid at the last minute it might be true, but if you consider buying from APMEX as comparable to using Buy It Now on e-bay it isn't always true. Here is an example from today:

APMEX - 1 - 10 oz bar $179.30 + $12.95 s/h = $192.25 = 19.23 per oz.

The cheapest Buy It Now 10 oz bar on e-bay today is $200.00 including shipping = 20.00 per oz.

If you bought two 10 oz bars from APMEX today it would still cost $12.95 to ship and your cost per oz would be $18.58

 

[Gunner3456]

If you do a lot of Ebay bidding, you can go to download.com and get Auction Sentry Deluxe. It defaults to sniping at 30 seconds, but I set mine to snipe at 7 seconds. No way anyone can react to that. Link

It costs something like $13 a year to use, but it's the best imho and pays for itself over and over if you buy a lot on ebay.

It will also track auctions you're just curious about but don't want to bid. It will suck auctions from your "Watching" page on Ebay too.

$.02

 

[spider]

I have a bunch of broken and intact silver jewelry, at least 75lbs worth, I wonder how much it would catch me.

 

[dave]

gotcha beat gunner. esnipe.com 0.6 seconds automated!!! small fee for signing up but sure takes the human element out of it.

 

[Gunner3456]

gotcha beat gunner. esnipe.com 0.6 seconds automated!!! small fee for signing up but sure takes the human element out of it.

Two issues. First, it's online where you don't have as much control. Mine is on my computer. My computer places the bid, not an online site. Second, you can't cancel a bid within 5 minutes of the auction end where I can cancel any time before my software places the bid. Heck, I can just close the program or pull the plug on my computer.

Also, I can adjust my bid time as low as I feel safe that it will go through - a couple of seconds if I want. My software syncs its time to ebay's time 30 seconds before any snipe is placed so I'll be right on.

I've had this software for several years. It also shows me with a screen on my own computer all of the auctions I'm watching, all that I'm going to bid on and all that I've bid on, win or lose.

The one's in red I lost, the ones in green I won, and the white ones I just watched. I have no bids pending or they would be yellow.

The row "My Proxy" was the most I was willing to bid. "High Bid" is the amount it actually sold for. It will bid only as much as needed to win even if my proxy is much higher.

Under the row "bid group," I can set up bids on as many items as I want, put them in a bid group, and the first item in that group that I win cancels all other bids in that group because I only wanted one.

This is really a great tool.

Edit, Oops sorry for the threadjack....

 

[kerbyj]

As a miner and someone who is very interested in (well, obsessed with) precious metals, I can tell you all that silver is a great investment, as is gold. Either of these will serve you well come crunch time.

That said, what form you buy these metals in is based strictly on your goals.

If you are well off and your object is to protect your financial resources, your best bet is to buy 1 oz. gold coins or bars (or larger if you have the money). Even if the funny-money we call the U.S. dollar were ever to crash completely, your wealth is going to be protected.

If your object is to invest an amount of money with the hope of making a profit, either gold or silver is a good way to go. If you can afford to invest several hundred dollars to several thousand, you should choose gold coins or bars (from gram bars/coins up to ouncers). If you can only afford a small amount of money (say $20 here and there) and you're anxious to get your hands on the real metal, one ounce silver coins are the way to go (preferably Eagles or identifiable "brand name" issues like Engelhard, since these sell for a premium). If you play your cards right, you can turn a REAL profit on your currency from gold and silver, that is to say if their value goes up faster than inflation impacts your cost of living. (ie. If you bought gold back in early October when it was around $1000 an oz. and then sold it in late November when it hit $1200, you would have made a real profit because the price of gold rose much faster than the cost of living ever could short of a major financial crash). On the otherside, if you bought gold at $400 years ago and then sold at $1000 in October, you really didn't make such a huge profit, simply because the cost of living was also increasing and was able to catch up. (Of course, you probably didn't lose anything either).

Another thing I'd like to point out is that precious metals are a GREAT way to save money, especially gold, as it takes a bit of effort to raid your savings and convert it into spendable cash. You just can't suddenly get a wild hair and say "Hey, I'm going to buy that thing!" and then buy some piece of junk on an impulse and hate yourself later. Needless to say, though some risk is involved, it's a great way to save money effectively for when you might REALLY need it. (ie. Your house payment or rent is due and you just lost your job.) This can literally bail you out of trouble.

That said, despite being a miner, I do not recommend buying gold nuggets for an investment. For starters, there are a lot of forgeries out there and if you don't know what gold looks/feels like in its natural form, you won't be able to spot a fake. (I know miners who can't tell a good fake from the real deal). Secondly, gold in its natural state is not pure and different buyers will offer you different prices for the same gold. For example, my buyer actually pays me spot because he's recognized that the gold I'm pulling out has an unusually high purity, but a guy I used to sell to only paid me 65% of spot. And another guy paid me 75% on spot. It was all the same gold, out of the same creek and sometimes out of the same hole. A friend of mine on the coast took out a couple of really nice nuggets, each well over an ounce. Normally, nuggets this size demand a very hefty premium (usually double of spot), but over in his area, every place he tried to sell them was offering him only 50 to 65% of spot and one jeweler only offered him an insulting $400, which was less than 25% of spot. Needless to say, if you invest in nuggets, you can expect the same treatment unless you have a good relationship with your buyer, because most of them seem to be only out to dupe people.

Now finally, if you are looking at precious metals as a form of exchange during some sort of MAJOR long term crisis (ie. total dollar collapse, SHTF, etc.), just remember that you can't make change out of a Gold Eagle short of cutting it into pieces. Personally, I do hoard silver for exactly this scenario and I do so using the old 90% silver circulated American coins and though I really like Silver Dollars and silver half dollars (especially the Walking Liberty), what I really go after are Mercury and Barber dimes. These are essentially about a dollar bill's worth of silver (a bit more right now) and would make a good exchange unit for day to day use. I choose the Mercury and Barbers simply because even though there are plenty of 90% Roosevelts going around, the Roosevelt dime is our current dime and the only difference to most people is that they know the ones minted before 65 are worth more than ten cents. (Most people don't know how much). Needless to say, I'd really recommend the Mercury and the Barber as a basic trade unit because it's of small value (denomination) and because they do not look like the funny-money we use daily.

 

[Arkarayne]

There anywhere in the Rouge Valley to get some sterling converted to .999 without getting charged up the backside for it? alot of it is broken, old stuff, some i'm not sure is even sterling, but i'm kinda tired of looking at it in the bag its in, I kinda want it in tuck-away form. (ingots)

 

[kerbyj]

Smelting is a bit of lost art and you won't find anyone locally to do what you want and most of the smelters out there (regardless of where they are) are "trade only", meaning they work only with commercial clients. Some assayers used to do it, but these days we don't have any assayers locally.

Your best bet is to take that scrap into Burton's Rare Coin in Grants Pass, cash it in and buy rounds or bars. Gary and Jim are fair and won't jack you around. You might call them first and tell them that you are really just looking to convert your scrap into a more manageable form. Both are pretty sharp and can give you plenty of insight. (They are also pro-gun guys, so you can't go wrong).

To determine if what you have is actually sterling, MOST of the silver out there (jewelry, flatware, etc.) carries a hallmark that indicates its purity. Typically you will see a stamp like ".925" or a literal hallmark.

Check out ...

http://www.925-1000.com/

 

[coctailer]

Kerbyj,
Maybe you could give me some insight as to what ordinary sterling flatware is worth in an emergency.
If a person owns a 46-pc Set for 8, Dinner Size of this:

http://www.silversuperstore.com/towle/sterling_silver_flatware/el_grandee_silverware.html
Melt it down, trade it in for Silver Eagles, or use the individual pieces for trading in SHTF?

It's also useful for eating.

 

[kerbyj]

Coctailer,

Well that would depend on whether it's solid sterling or the so-called "HH" type or "filled" type. With the HH or filled flatware/dishware (not to mention plated), we are talking about items that may have a lot of weight to them, but that are not entirely silver.

As a general rule of thumb, with silver dishes/flatware, we are talking strictly melt value. (Though they would might fetch a lot more from a collector, but maybe not in this economy where more people are selling than buying).

As an example, the weight of an average .925 Sterling teaspoon is usually less than a troy ounce of silver. To a collector, in a strong economy, that spoon might be worth $50, but it's melt value (at the current price) might be only $10 to $15.

Now in an emergency situation (and I'd say we are pretty close to being there, aren't we?), I personally don't think that Sterling flatware is the best choice to rely on.

Here's why ...

If the economy and the dollar degrades to the point where it no longer pays for trucking companies to run their trucks, things are going to go downhill very quickly from there. (A trucker friend of mine on here has told me that this point looks to be inevitable in the near future). In this situation, dollars might be worthless and we could very well see the rise of more localized currencies, or more likely, exchanges for goods in precious metals or just barter. Some people claim that this would never happen here, but it HAS happened here in the past and even today, there are a growing number of local currencies/scrips in use in the United States today, the most famous being the Liberty Dollar. A partial list can be seen here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_community_currencies_in_the_United_States

I know of many just in the NW that are not on this list.

Historically, silver is a popular means of exchange to fall back on and as it is worth less than gold and easier/cheaper to purchase, many people are already relatively well prepared to begin using it in place of the dollar and some people (and some businesses too) have already begun to use it.

That said, many of these people do not know much about the various forms of silver and even some of the more informed ones only understand the value of silver when it is in coin or bar form. Most do not understand the differences in other forms of silver or how to identify/measure their purity and content. Judging by what I've seen at my local precious metal buyer/seller, the average person doesn't really have a clue about the metals that they hold. That's supported just by watching people sell their metals. Half are pleasantly surprised by how valueable their broken "junk" jewelry is, while the other half are disappointed that their "pure silver" flatware is actually filled (or worse, just silver plated!) and worth very, very little.

That said, in an emergency situation, I don't think that an item like sterling flatware is a good means of exchange. Most people will never understand its value, being unable to recognize which are actually sterling and which are just filled or Plated. To make matters worse, many are so clueless that to them, a piece of REAL sterling flatware is "just a worthless spoon", the same as a bunch of broken gold chain is just "a broken necklace" to them. To most of these people, they are going to only recognize any value in a coin or a bar. For the best results, I think you also ideally want those coins/bars to carry American imagery or the words "United States" on them. Funnily enough, you can have two 1 oz. gold coins, one minted in Australia and one in the U.S. and the average person will assume that the one minted here is somehow worth more and the one issued elsewhere is somehow less valuable.

Now were it me, if you are looking to hold silver for when the SHTF, I would try to trade that stuff off and obtain silver coins/bars of some type.

Though they carry a premium, I think Silver Eagles are a good choice, as is the old Silver Dollar. (Though worth less than the Eagle because they contain less silver, the Silver Dollar is a very powerful image in this country. Even people who are pretty clueless, recognize that they have a special value).

As I mentioned earlier, what I really like stockpiling are Mercury and Barber dimes. In addition to looking a lot different from our modern dimes, they have a low enough silver value to be useful to exchange for relatively inexpensive goods, such as a dozen eggs or a few rolls of toilet paper. Obviously, you don't want to be trying to obtain a dozen eggs and have to pay an entire Silver Eagle for them simply because of a lack of small change, so lots of dimes would be handy.

Hope that helps!

 

[tionico]

Ther advantage of esnipe is that, once I set it up, I can be anywhere and it goes to work for me. No cmputer of mine has to be turned on or connected to the internet. I've gotten some amazing deals while I was driving down the road, or flying in an airplane.... set MY top price, it does its thing when its time. If I don't get it for my max, I don't want it. All I need to do is check my emails for news from esnipe and eBay to see what i've won... and anytime within the next 48 hours or so works. I suppose the other would work well if I had a computer online all the time at home... but I don't. Both have their place.

I was amused to note that both Gunbroker and Auction Arms prohibit the use of snipe proxies on their sites... so to win some items there I've had to resort to playing the game manually... sitting online, refreshing every few minutes until its time, then hitting that button with five or ten seconds to go. With Gunbroker's fifteen minute rule, if the other interested party isn't actually online, I still get it. Sometimes I reach my max and I'm done, he gets it. But I've managed to scoop some awesome buys that way when others are asleep..... watched nearly identical items go for a few hundred bucks more than what I'd bid and won.... for a gun that, as far as I'm concerned, is in brand new condition.

 

[coctailer]

Ther advantage of esnipe is that, once I set it up, I can be anywhere and it goes to work for me. No cmputer of mine has to be turned on or connected to the internet. I've gotten some amazing deals while I was driving down the road, or flying in an airplane.... set MY top price, it does its thing when its time. If I don't get it for my max, I don't want it. All I need to do is check my emails for news from esnipe and eBay to see what i've won... and anytime within the next 48 hours or so works. I suppose the other would work well if I had a computer online all the time at home... but I don't. Both have their place.

I was amused to note that both Gunbroker and Auction Arms prohibit the use of snipe proxies on their sites... so to win some items there I've had to resort to playing the game manually... sitting online, refreshing every few minutes until its time, then hitting that button with five or ten seconds to go. With Gunbroker's fifteen minute rule, if the other interested party isn't actually online, I still get it. Sometimes I reach my max and I'm done, he gets it. But I've managed to scoop some awesome buys that way when others are asleep..... watched nearly identical items go for a few hundred bucks more than what I'd bid and won.... for a gun that, as far as I'm concerned, is in brand new condition.

Was this meant for another thread??

 

[Arkarayne]

Well, I'm looking to get into this world of precious metals, and I want to start small, litterally. ampex.com appears to be good for 1oz+ pieces and purchases, but,
A: are there places in Oregon to buy it locally, walk-in-walk-out,
B: Are there better places to buy small amounts online, grams, oz's, etc. (no or low minimums?)
C: is eBay even worth trying, without paying nearly 3-times-or-more the worth on grams and nearly 150% to double on ounces?
(seriously, i've seen $3-4 end bids for 55 cents in silver. some people are kinda...silly.)
Note: the cheapest i've been able to get a gram (a single bar) on ebay for (so far) is $1.45 (that was with shipping.)

 

[dave]

$1.45 shipped is great in the world of ebay for 1 gram. It takes over 31 grams to make up a troy ounce. So at that rate, you are paying $45 per ounce. The gram bars do have a value however. It always comes down to bulk buying to make silver a good purchase.
As youve seen on ebay, its a hot item. Most of the local coin shops sell silver ounces, eagles and junk silver.

My best advice is to not purchase any silver at all. Unless you can purchase 10-15 or more troy ounces at 1 time. This spreads the shipping cost to around $1 per ounce and gets you off on the right foot.

I try to stick to mints that are in the US and are well established. Like apmex or kitco.
Ive seen silver eagles on ebay going for $35-65 each. Silly ebayers!