I'm sure we have a handful of silver discussions so feel free to simply link me to a current thread
If I wanted to spend $2-500 on precious metals (not lead or brass ) is now a good time to buy silver?

If so, am I better off at pawn shops or any online dealer?

Am I delusional or was silver at $16/oz recently?

Silver was at $13 recently, peaked in the $40s before that.

IMHO:

Buy gov't minted coins. I like Canadian Maple Leafs. Buy from reputable dealer so you aren't buying very expensive lead. Online leaves a trail of course, but I trust a reputable online dealer more than the shady pawn shop guy. We do have 1 good coin dealer nearby, but he mostly likes to deal with actual collectible coins, not coins that are primarily for the silver content.

http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_1_75/1764323_Pike_s_Silver_Thread.html

Silver is 19 an oz right now, not great but not too bad (got to be +40 not that long ago).
I would say to take your time, LEARN, spend a bit at a time until you understand precious metals better. Bullion, rounds, junk silver, you need to understand it to spend your money wisely.
Super short verison for an America, just buy pre 65 junk silver, quarter or even better dimes, just whatever junk silver you find at the lowest premium (meaning the extra you pay over the actual silver content of the coin)
If you take your time, learn, then you not only have fun but make good deals too. I recently bought 5 Peace Dollars, paid almost spot price and ended up with a couple rather highly collectable coins. One of them I know I can flip for three times what I paid for on ebay in a few hours. Thats the kind of neat deals you sometimes come across if you learn your thing.
Now, silver being silver some folks weill completely overlook the collector/numismatic value. Big mistake. You may have "junk" silver literally worth thoudands of dollars and not even realize it. Also, I happen to have a lot of fun learning about this kind of stuff.
Yes, online would be where you get the best price these days unless youre good friends with your local PM dealer.
FerFAL

I'm waiting and buying ammo instead. Interest rates are near 0 and when they start hiking rates again metals will probably come down. Plus there's a 50/50 chance the bitch could win and ammo might dry up again. I don't see silver prices suddenly jumping a lot. I'd start buying a lot if it dropped below $10.

Lead historically does have a great ROI if you sell during a panic (every 2-4 years it seems...), and I have never known ammo to get cheaper...

Still cheap.  Consider the ratio of gold to silver is supposed to be 1:16.  Now look at today's "prices" and you will see how undervalued it is.  Keep in mind that we have no free market price discovery and that metals are manipulated through the sale of paper.

American silver Eagles or Canadian Maple Leafs are the best way to go.

In case of SHTF they will hold up far better than pre-65 coins since 99.99% of folks will just look at those as old coins.

I will disagree with a few and say to buy silver bars, 1 to 10 oz. The government minted coins cost a good bit about spot price and the bars do not. Honestly i have some of both but bars are the best bang for the buck.

Usually it is, but its not that hard to find junk silver at or even below spot. Thats's why I'm telling him to take it slowly.
Recently I got a roll of dimes for spot, shippined form Ireland,and these where mercury dimes with some nice early dates in good condition.
I at least would be pretty hesitant about accepting a 10oz bar or silver which may or may not be stuffed full of something else. With junk silver the chance of that is almost nil unless youre talking about conterfeit Morgans and Peace dollars, but thats more numistamitcs than silver buying.
FerFAL

I don't see the reason to stick with one type. I buy bars, government minted rounds, and pre 65. Each has benefits. The the pre 65 dimes are nice because of the smaller size.





 

Would not want to predict which way silver will go, but I felt it was a good idea to have a little silver on hand as a tangible asset.  

Decided that for me personally, junk silver is my preference, simply because in most cases it is not counterfeit, although that can happen if you buy mint condition.

Also agree that silver eagles and maple leafs are good if purchased from a reputable source, but at such time you may wish to dispose of your silver, you may want to think about the situation of sale. In my opinion you are more likely to find a person that will trust that junk silver is what it appears to be, while they may question the authenticity of a silver bar or round. If you are going to sell to a gold or silver dealer, then this would not be an issue. Only suggesting you think about the situation in which you may eventually sell the silver, and what will give you the flexibility you may wish to have.    

I stopped at a couple of pawn shops in the Huntsville area and they didn't want to sell any junk silver when the prices were down.

Sure, if they paid more $$$ than the current price, they don't want to lose money.

Buy from reputable dealers.  Plenty of fake coins and bars out there.  Thank you Workers' Paradise.

I wouldnt have sold it either. It was time to buy. Still is IMO. AT +$40 maybe I would sell some but just a bit and only to reinvest.
I dont worry too much about the price of silver, if I can afford more (cheap silver price) I buy more, if silver is expensive I buy less, but the thing in common is Im always looking to have more PM.
Precious metals is the kind of saved core asset I have for a worst case situation. If I dont ever need it I'll pass it over to my kids, along with th same philosophy of adding to the pile and only selling in a worse case scenario.
FerFAL

I understand that they wouldn't want to tie their price to spot when it's down, but they wouldn't even price it to me. I was willing to pay for the junk silver at a decent price allowing for them to make their profit and they wouldn't even consider it.  I found that to be an odd position.

I think once it's at 40, it's out the gate and hyper-inflation time for fiat currency.  It is very possible that we get a bifucated dollar here with a domestic treasury dollar and a Federal dollar for international trade.  China used to have a similar system back in the '80s with tourists using one form and the locals another.

It did get to 40 not that long ago, 2011. I see it getting there again eventually. You know whats funny? The silver I bought at 40 is still worth more today. (early date eagles in uncirc condition)
FerFAL

Read up a bit before you buy significantly.  There are different schools of thought.  Here is where I've settled in:

- Gov't coins are easily recognizable and tougher to fake.  Due to especially the former fact, I prefer coins over bars
- American Silver Eagles and Canadian Maples are the two highest recognizable coins in North America
- Canadian Maples ar .9999 pure with ASE's .999(3?) pure.  I like '14+ Canadian Maples with an additional security (hard to fake feature) on the coin
- Another major consideration - Perth Mint (Australia) Kookaburra coins.  These coins demand a little higher premium but increase in value greatly.  The 2008 is 250%+ the price of spot
     - The 2016 design is considered on of the very best right now.  You could stock up on those as they'll likely be worth double or more in a few years

Stepping back/Random thoughts:
- Be good on food, water, ammo before major silver investments
- Silver is a hedge for inflation, not a true investment
- Coins carry a higher premium but I like them better than bars
- I like gov't coins best
- For true SHTF that expects to recover you want to balance recognizable and have as many ounces as possible
- For irrecoverable SHTF silver is probably not a great buy but hard to know what scenarios will recover and what won't
- Certain coins go up in value much more than others

Ferfal308 - any trouble moving those dbl eagles out of Argentina and then Ireland to your present location?  I'm asking b/c Argentina has money sniffing dogs and would think they'd confiscate silver if they saw it.

Excellent points right there. I do think PM would be valuable post SHTF. History shows us that when empires fall and societies start over, they mostly do so basing their economies on PM. I was recently debating with someone else on another forum about the value of gold in certain societies, for examples Aztecs which famously used cacao seeds as currency. I looked into it and well, gold was worth a heck of a lot of cacao seeds! I ended up finding a very interesting price list of the time period. A gold statue was the second most expensive item on the list, right after selling your own child!


I left just when things were getting out of hand and yes, they had USD sniffing dogs. I was pretty worried because I had a lot of cash dollars, a 5.11 cargo pants pocket full of 100USD. My wife had another big wad of USD in her purse. I remember thinking that I could smell them, sure as hell a dog would have no problem doing so, easily. Fortunately I didn’t see any dogs that day at the airport. I know most of the operation was focused in the ports given that most people were moving USD to Uruguay at the other side of the river. Also, it had been all over the news with cameras showing how dogs sniffed people and the backlash may have caused them to step back a bit the operation for a few days. I know I had more than the allowed limit so I would have been screwed, maybe lost some of the money. Fortunately I just walked past security. I had the silver and gold in my backpack, and I remember thinking how heavy it was. That’s why I always insist on checking how heavy your PM are and how turning more of it to gold may make all the difference in the world.
If you are lucky enough to have that “problem”, too much silver, really consider turning more of it into gold which is far more portable and easier to hide in some of these worst case scenarios where you may either be forced to travel light or forced to hide everything you wish to keep (think eastern Urkaine checkpoints)
As for moving to Spain from Ireland no, no problem. Its within the EU, they hardly looked at my passport.
FerFAL

Wife unit made a good trade when she traded a bunch of silver when it was $48 and change. Traded it for gold, which hadn't gone up all that much compared to silver. When (if) it gets back down to ~16, I'll buy a bunch more. I've been trying to buy a few coins every month from the local coin guy. He's fairly close to on-line+shipping cost.

My philosophy:
- Silver is a good replacement for currency if SHTF. If not, it could be an inflation hedge.
- Gold is compact storage of wealth. If SHTF, you will have "hard" assets to use to recover from the loss of your dollar-denominated "assets" (that suddenly are worth nothing).

I do not currently have the recommended ~5-10% of my wealth/investment portfolio in PMs. I'm hoping to get to 5% in the next year or so. It's taking me a lot longer than I would have liked. Life happens...

ferfal308 - can you tell us what is going on in Spain?  High unemployment? Young moving to farmland to grow their own food?  Secessionist movements?

Officially a high roller

Ordered 6oz

You reckless bastage!

Hi, Ill probably do a video about this later. If I do I'll post it here as well.
Short version is yes, unemployment is high but not nearly as bad as claimed. You see signs in stores of people asking for employees, you hear of people finding jobs. The thing is there just too much people that dotn WANT to work, prefer to say collecting unemployment, or they have this mentality of working for a year or two then stop working, maybe even travel around. And then you have the worst kind, who collect unemployment, move to some other EU country and get a job there, while still collecting unemployment in Spain. Ive seen real 25%, it looks completely different. People get desperate for a job. They for lines  for every single one and you dont see signs of "bartender wanted" or "clerk wated".
Cataluña has a very anti Spain far left movement going on. Anti government, anti Chruch, anti capitalism. They do stupid things like organize gay parades in front of churhces, and when priests dont react against it they step it up a notch, with naked femminists basically assaulting them, rubbing up against them. Its pathetic.I dont think they;ll get anywhere with that though. The socialists already showed how idiotic they are, their leader resiigned and the current center/right president will stay in office for another term.
Other than politics and such life is pretty great here. I finally have my kids in a fantastic school (that was a bit harder than in Ireland where education is fantastic) but they now go to public bilingual schools. The good ones are nearly impossible to get in, massice waiting list, but once youre in its nice. We live in a part of town that is mostly expats from Finland, Norway and Germany. Pretty good people in most cases. In my gun range theres plenty of expats as well.
Growing food or having a flat in the city and a farm house in the country is pretty common. Even in stores, it mostly local and seasonal products.
FerFAL

Spain next with a priest's frock. Now, if they're old and saggy, I'm going to be the fastest man in Spain.

Silver arrived

An acquaintance recently had his house burglarized and about $20,000 in silver coins was stolen. He went to his insurance company and they will only cover the face value of the coins not the silver value. Be careful, check you homeowners. if your homeowners won't cover the actual value then you may want to get extra insurance.

Or get a really really good safe and a home alarm system.

Most insurance companies don't insure money.  It'd need to be a specialized insurance from what I've seen

this

<-- insurance guy

Usually there's $0 coverage for bullion

This.  I'm having a difficult time finding a company to insure money

The reason it is hard to get insurance on money is because it is so liquid. Most homeowners policies give you about $500.00 worth of coverage.
You get this coverage because an insurance company believes this amount of cash to be "reasonable".
But if you claim you had $10,000 in cash stolen, how do you prove it?

Bullion is just as bad, one U.S. gold or silver eagle pretty much looks like every other U.S. gold or silver eagle.
Bullion is not usually covered because it is not something that most people have.

Some bullion bars have serial numbers, but I don't think anyone keeps a record.
I have bought plenty of silver bars from coin dealers and never was the serial number looked at by the dealer,
and they would not have a record of who they sold it to anyway.

What about antiques? (old coins, numismatics)
My insurance company covered up to 500 bucks cash. Thats pretty low.
FerFAL

I've worked for two major carriers and I believe both were $200 limits.
Coins need to be on a rider like firearms or jewelry but they need to be collectible coins, not just gold or silver.

Just bought a roll os silver quarters, paid a few bucks under spot on an ebay auction.


Man thats low, it wont ever cover my 1878 Carson city Morgan dollar.
FerFAL

Homeowners insurance is a general policy meant to cover items that average people have in their homes.

If you want to cover collectibles, you should get a personal articles policy.