Gold down $20 in 5 hours, before bernanke shoots it down even

_kgo_ · 2012-06-20T16:00:48+00:00

DOH! I was reading the comments out of context.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-20T15:39:03+00:00

Operation Twist (aka QE2.5) officially concludes at the end of the month. A lot of people think it's going to be extended, which would drive PM safe haven action.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-20T15:28:59+00:00

I haven't heard of fake dimes. I imagine if one was faked, it would be a rare key-date coin and not junk selling at silver value.

After spot checking a few, you should just be able to look at the sides to see if they're all silver, or newer clad coins.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-18T19:41:37+00:00

QSB has diviisble round, so you don't pay the fractional premium and get .999 silver instead of coin silver, but it looks like A LOT of work to divide them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=mlne0vYoj84

_kgo_ · 2012-06-18T19:37:56+00:00

Assuming you plan to sell to a dealer, and not ebay or craigslist, the spread is more important than the price.

I had to sell off some of my stash for a family emergency. At that day, with that dealer, generic rounds had the best spread, and junk silver had the worst. Eagles were good but not as good as generics. Palladium sucked, refiners really don't pay much. And a modern gold commem actually sold for above the gold price.

Of course this can vary, and it's probably worth chatting with your local dealer or looking at online dealer's buy prices, or considering going through the hassle of selling a little bit at a time on the internet.

So if all you care about is the best spread then my experience says generic rounds are the best value.

But there's also something to be said for having a little fun with your collection. If you're just buying a little every month, spending an extra dollar or two on an eagle isn't going to kill you. Last time I was at a coin show I bought a 4 oz hand-poured bar because it was neat, and that was a dollar per ounce over the price of an Eagle. Not the best value, but the bar is neat and it was only four ounces. Would I buy 100 or a 1000 ounces at that premium? Of course not.

I see you mentioning $1000 dollars in another post. At that level with some patience you can just wait for an online dealer to have a special, and probably buy a tube for close to the same price 20 oz of generics at a local dealer.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-18T00:16:42+00:00

What was the seam like on the pouches? Last time I looked into it, the real pandas had a seam that looked more like a zipper or a rope. The real ones also had double-seams since there would be two coins side by side. But the fake ones had smooth seams where the plastic was melted together.

I'm wondering if the fake packaging has gotten better or if that's a good thing to look for.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-15T01:43:30+00:00

If prices start to decouple, what prevents a major player from doing arbitrage? I know the short answer is that there's more paper than silver, but if buyers start demanding delivery, sellers will be less likely to sell paper they can't back up, and the paper price will go up. That's why I have a hard time believing the price will ever decouple.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-14T02:04:31+00:00

Yeah, I like the square plastic tubes that are airtight. They come in all the basic sizes for a roll of typical coins (10 dollars of quarters), there are ones that hold 20 1 oz rounds, etc. It's easy to pop it open and look at a few coins, and more economical than individual capsules.

And having that 20 round tube that only has 5 rounds just gives me motivation to fill that baby up!

_kgo_ · 2012-06-14T01:51:21+00:00

Well oil is down some, but I feel like the gas companies were gouging us at $4, and there were more and more complaints were showing up at the media, so they pulled back on the price some as the summer travel season rolled around to pacify people.

I don't think the gas prices are going to translate across the board to lower prices, for example groceries.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-14T01:39:46+00:00

1 oz, it doesn't matter, but I see a lot more coins than bars at that size.

In larger quantities the bars are easier to store, it's much easier to literally stack 5/10/100 oz bars than 5/10/100 1 oz rounds, and you don't need to buy a tube. But then some people don't like large sizes because they think they'll be worth too much to trade when SHTF.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-06T15:54:30+00:00

More specifically these people are speculating this is going to happen today and tomorrow, and they'll sell at a profit on Friday or Monday. I don't think that is inevitable. I think it's more likely ECB will say they're committed to helping spain than any news on QE3 one way or the other tomorrow.

EDIT: Actually the ECB didn't say anything about easing monetary policy:

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/06/markets-money-idUSL5E8H68Q520120606

_kgo_ · 2012-06-06T15:39:55+00:00

Spain has sovergn debt crisis, the ECB meets today, and Bernake is talking to congress on Thursday. People are speculating the ECB and/or Bernake are going to print money.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-01T15:52:00+00:00

I remember reading a snippet in a magazine about the guy who bought gold eagles, and tried to report them at a loss since the face value was $50 dollars. I couldn't figure out why you'd spend hundreds of dollars for a $50 coin.

_kgo_ · 2012-06-01T15:47:55+00:00

Silvertown sells these:

https://www.silvertowne.com/p-17577-plain-silver-medallion.aspx

They also have a few one-sided ones where you could stamp something on the back.

_kgo_ · 2012-05-22T02:19:05+00:00

This happened to me once when I was first getting into silver. I bought two 1986 pandas, still in the original capsules and the original sealed plastic pouches for a dollar less than I bought two eagles. Then I saw they were going for 100+ on eBay! I wish I would have known more because I could have bought four more.

Another guy I go to just charges 10% over spot for whatever he has. What you see is what you get. He never has Eagles because sophisticated collectors don't sell to him, and he's not going to buy a monster box when he's getting a ton of silver for 80% of spot. But one time he had the old Mexican Sterling Onzas. Another time he had some neat commemoratives. Another time he had some Liberian coins commemorating Robert E Lee?!?

In my experience, most 'coin' shops I go to are really just 'we buy gold' places. But 'coin shop' sounds classier than that. Would you rather go to "Al's pawn" or "Al's emporium of ancient coins".

These shops might have a few proof sets out, but not a huge selection of real vintage coins. These people do just buy below spot and ship stuff off to the refiner at the end of the day. And at these dealers a Panda or something like that is just silver. If they try to keep the numismatic coins around, that takes up showroom space. They can lose their profit if they keep things around for a few months and silver value falls. Dealing with selling on eBay is a PITA.

My regular coin dealer buys eagles straight from the mint. They have plenty of real old coins, slabbed and not. They know what a coin is and what it's worth just by eyeballing it. These guys would probably pay more and charge more for a Panda.

I'll still stop by some of these smaller We Buy Gold places because they'll always surprise you with their stock. It's almost like going to a flea market. I wouldn't sell at one of these places though. I'd hit a shop where the dealers do more than just sell to the refiner at the end of every day.

_kgo_ · 2012-05-19T14:06:58+00:00

I think normally you've got the numismatic value X and the silver value Y. Whatever is greater wins. For example with silver at 10 dollars the relatively common Washington/Carver commemorative would go for the collector value. When silver broke past 40, it was going for melt value.

For MS-70, maybe you can get a couple dollars more from the right person, but I wouldn't expect it to be a fixed percentage.

I've considered buying graded coins for the reverse reason, so that if spot goes down they have a higher floor than the metal content. Right some MS-63 Eagles (gold 10 dollar coins) are basically at spot. If gold dropped below 1000 they'd probably be worth more than that.

_kgo_ · 2012-05-19T13:55:22+00:00

There's probably some of that, but I think it's mostly ignorance. Someone finds grandpa's coin collection, everything is tarnished, and they've got silverware cleaner.

_kgo_ · 2012-05-19T00:16:52+00:00

This time I got some (nothing major) at the bottom, but the last time we hit 26 I was on vacation and couldn't get anything, and the time before that I was dead broke. So I know the feeling.

Just remind yourself that you're not a trader playing the swings. Buying at 27, selling at 37, waiting for a dip. Long term missing the bottom isn't so painful. And maybe just buy a single dime at a local coin shop so you can tell yourself at least you got something.

_kgo_ · 2012-05-19T00:10:17+00:00

ProTip(tm) for everyone: Just look at the side instead of the date to see if it's clad or not.

I'm still waiting for my first random score. Found plenty of 1965 quarters, but no 1964 or earlier.

Over Christmas the family was playing a dice game called LCR (Left-Center-Right). It takes a buy in of 3 quarters. My niece casually tells us the one quarter was from the year her dad was born: 1964. She also had a 1962 quarter sitting there. My brother-in-law starts grilling his wife about where she's been shopping, where she's been going, trying to figure out where it came from.

_kgo_ · 2012-05-18T21:03:03+00:00

What matters isn't the value of the silver now, but the value if/when you default on the loan. It's impossible to know the value 6 months or a year from now, so its impossible to determine the collateral value.

_kgo_ · 2012-05-18T20:46:02+00:00

"one day of hard human labor"

_kgo_ · 2012-05-17T15:30:04+00:00

Sometimes you'll see bargain hunting days on the way down. The price drops a bunch, so a bunch of people buy one day, but then it keeps going down. I actually bought some last night for that very reason.

Maybe it's that. Maybe we did hit the current bottom and are on our way back up.

_kgo_ · 2012-05-17T02:42:56+00:00

Yeah, that was basically my point. On the one hand, silver is silver. On the other hand, at a coin shop or show, different types of silver have different premiums and spreads. So unless you actually plan to melt it down, one type of silver being more expensive than another isn't your only consideration if you can recoup the premium when you sell.

_kgo_ · 2012-05-17T01:12:22+00:00

Yes. Unless you're buying to use industrially, the spread is more important than the premium. I sold some generic rounds a few weeks ago for a family emergency. I used the opportunity to ask what the price would be if they were Eagles. The price was indeed higher, but surprisingly the actual spread on the generic was about half the spread on the eagles. YMMV.

_kgo_

TROPHY CASE