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.