Monday, December 20, 2010

Silver Investing - Buying Silver From A Private Party

An ad appeared in our local paper offering some silver coins for sale. The list included 20 Silver Dollars, 10 Silver Eagles, five Walking Liberty Half Dollars and six silver one-ounce rounds. Asking price was $1100.00. If you want to follow up on deals like this, here is how to do it.

Basically, you need to find out how many troy ounces of silver that amount represents and multiply ounces times the spot price of silver. The difference between that figure and the asking price is the premium over the spot price you will be paying. Let me go through the process using the silver from the ad described above. The silver content of most silver coins can be found at Silver Coins.

20 (circulated) Silver Dollars at .7650 silver content per coin = 15.3 troy ounces of silver. 10 Silver Eagles = 10 ounces of silver. Six silver rounds = six ounces of silver. Lastly, five Walking Liberty Half Dollars at .3575 silver content per coin = approx. 1.79 ounces of silver. Total ounces of silver for these 41 coins is 33.09.

Now multiply 33.09 times the current spot price of silver. For your protection, you MUST know the latest spot price of silver. One source is at Silver Investing Guide. Since the current price is about $29 per ounce, the result will be $959.61. The difference between $959.61 and the asking price of $1100.00 is $140.39. By dividing 140.39 by 33.09, the result is approx. 4.24 which is the percent premium over spot you would be paying. This is a low premium. If the coins are in decent condition and you are confident that silver will be going higher (much higher according to some experts), this may be a deal you would like to take advantage of.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Silver Investing - Silver Hits The Big $30

A few days ago (12/6), silver hit and closed over $30 per ounce. It's been over 30 years since that has occurred. Now it has fallen back a bit but nothing to worry about for now. Spot silver at this writing is at $28.90 - a gain of $1.95 in the last 30 days and $11.53 for the year.

I have a few articles on the new America the Beautiful silver coins being released by the U.S. Mint tomorrow 12/10. These are five-ounce silver bullion coins honoring Hot Springs National Park, Yellowstone National Park, Yosemite National Park, Grand Canyon National Park, and Mount Hood National Forest.

There is a lot to say about these coins, how they are issued and rumors of the hefty premiums being considered. But the articles do a good job of explaining these topics. The first article is from Kitco News and can be found here. The second article is longer and comes from GATA (Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee). You can read it here.

Thanks for reading.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

Silver Investing - Silver Is The Place To Be

52.74%. That's the gain silver has made in one year (at the time of this post). Spot silver is at $28.73, is up $3.89 in the last 30 days and $9.92 in the last year (52.74%).

The U.S. Mint reported production of 4,260,000 Silver Eagles in November, the highest of any month in 2010. With the 42,000 already produced in December, the year-to-date total stands at 32,932,500 Silver Eagles. This market is not slowing down one bit. I hope you have some physical silver in your possession.

A few recent silver articles caught my attention that you may find of interest. The first is by Jim Wyckoff of Kitco News titled "Silver Bulls Powerful; May be Much More Upside Price Potential". This short but interesting read can be found here.

The second appeared on the CNBC web site and is titled "Silver Prices Surging on Near-Record Demand". That article can be found here.

The last is by James Turk (Free Gold Money Report) and is titled "The precious metals power higher". In this article he states "When gold and silver eventually become overvalued at some future date, you won’t “sell” your metals; you will “spend” them." You can find this article here.

Thanks for reading.