The recent silver market

[Carolinian]

With tight supply, the premiums on silver are crazy. A $10 roll of quarters, or halves has a little over $180 in silver bullion content at today's spot price, but the best one can do today for random US silver coins in over $280 for that roll with one major company over $300. That is one heck of a premium. For halves, it is worse, $316 a roll for the one company that has any, although oddly they have Barber halves (pre-WWI) at $299 a roll.

I picked up a good bit of silver on the dip early last month, and am glad I did as premiums were reasonable then, too. When the premiums are up, the bullion companies pay well above spot when they buy, although I am not in the market to sell, because it looks like silver is going to keep going up. I don't buy from the bullion companies when premiums are that high, however.

I see the US eagle bullion coins up in the $46 range with bullion content a bit over $25, another huge premium over spot, but I have not been buying the bullion coins anyway.

While the spot price of gold has been up, the premiums are still not too bad there. Some of my favorite European gold monetary coins can still be bought about 6% over spot.

Any precious metal in coin form, or for that matter smaller bars will always be priced over spot, but when it creeps up too much over spot, it is not a good deal.

 

[Ralph Sir Edward]

With tight supply, the premiums on silver are crazy. A $10 roll of quarters, or halves has a little over $180 in silver bullion content at today's spot price, but the best one can do today for random US silver coins in over $280 for that roll with one major company over $300. That is one heck of a premium. For halves, it is worse, $316 a roll for the one company that has any, although oddly they have Barber halves (pre-WWI) at $299 a roll.

I picked up a good bit of silver on the dip early last month, and am glad I did as premiums were reasonable then, too. When the premiums are up, the bullion companies pay well above spot when they buy, although I am not in the market to sell, because it looks like silver is going to keep going up. I don't buy from the bullion companies when premiums are that high, however.

I see the US eagle bullion coins up in the $46 range with bullion content a bit over $25, another huge premium over spot, but I have not been buying the bullion coins anyway.

While the spot price of gold has been up, the premiums are still not too bad there. Some of my favorite European gold monetary coins can still be bought about 6% over spot.

Any precious metal in coin form, or for that matter smaller bars will always be priced over spot, but when it creeps up too much over spot, it is not a good deal.

Carolinian, what you are seeing is a slow domestic run on the dollar. Not a run on banks, but on the dollar itself. American people are wanting physical high value commodities, not paper or deposits. The tip-off is the higher values for US marked metals, over foreign marked metals. People are willing to pay a premium for physicality. For items that cannot be newly minted, the premium will stay higher longer than those that can be newly struck, as bullion will be converted into smaller units over time. It will take a drop in preference of physical over notional, for the margins to completely narrow. It's not something that happens overnight.

 

[Carolinian]

Foreign central banks have been buying more gold in the last few years, which means they must have some questions on the dollar, too.

Silver went over $26 an ounce today, and the premiums over spot are still just crazy high. I am looking more at European monetary gold coins these days, which still often carry reasonable premiums, even if the spot price is over $2,000 an ounce.

One I have always liked are the Austrian and Dutch ducats, which were trade coins once minted all over Europe in medieval times and used up until World War II in the Baltic (Dutch ducat) and Adriatic (Austrian ducat). They contain .1106 ounce of gold but are cheaper to buy than the 1/10 ounce modern bullion coins even though they contain more gold. The Austrian version has been restruck with the 1915 date since World War I and still restruck by the Vienna mint. The Dutch version was struck for circulation right up to World War II, and has been struck with current dates for collectors since the war, still using the original medieval design with a standing armored knight holding a sword and a clutch of arrows that has been used since the first Dutch ducats were minted in the 1500s.

One curious thing the last six months or so has been a reversal of which one is cheaper. Until then, the Austrian version was $10-$15 cheaper than the Dutch version but now it is reversed. I suspect, the Vienna mint may have run out of their last batch of restrikes, and when they run another batch, the relative values will go back to what they have been. The premiums also shot up about the same time on the Austrian 4 ducat 1915 restrikes which were once common at as low as 3% over spot, but now carry a higher premium than the 1 ducat pieces.

Yugoslavia also briefly minted its own ducats in the 1920s, but those carry a much higher numismatic premium. In the 19th century, the Dutch ducats were widely counterfeited by the Imperial Russian government at the St. Petersburg mint and they are hard to tell from the real thing. Most of my Dutch ducats are from the 1920s. On an order of Austrian restrikes last year, I had one bullion dealer include an original from the 1880s which has a higher numismatic value in the order, but the rest of my Austrian ducats are restrikes.

Dutch ducats popped up on one of the bullion dealers sites today, at a reasonable premium, but they only had one in stock, so I ordered than one.

 

[easyrider]

This is odd and will likely disappear soon but for the third time the National Debt Clock has a message that to me looks like a hacker is able to mess with it. The last message was a line out of Revelations right before the Hamas / Israeli war. This new one looks like a hippy with a sign that says he will work for gold but prefers silver.

Bill

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

 

[pedro47]

This is odd and will likely disappear soon but for the third time the National Debt Clock has a message that to me looks like a hacker is able to mess with it. The last message was a line out of Revelations right before the Hamas / Israeli war. This new one looks like a hippy with a sign that says he will work for gold but prefers silver.

Bill

https://www.usdebtclock.org/

Do you remember when the clock stated the United States was debt free for a moment ??