Cavorting At A Local Coin Show

Well maybe not cavorting in the true sense of the word but I had a great time at a small, local coin show recently. And small it was with less than 10 dealers present. But most had impressive inventories to display (it wasn't just a bunch of Morgan dollars, Mercury dimes and Silver American Eagles). It just goes to show that even small coin shows can have value for coin collectors and investors.

I took time to examine some old silver coins, most notably a Capped Bust 1827 silver half dollar in About Uncirculated condition. It is a great coin for serious collectors but for the asking price of this coin, I could purchase just shy of 15 Silver Eagles or Silver Maple Leafs which is more to my liking (confirming my casual investor status). This 1827 coin will have to be someone else's treasure to have and hold.

I am less of a fan of silver rounds and tend to favor government-issued silver bullion coins. But I do make exceptions for silver rounds at a good price BUT they must have good eye appeal. As luck would have it, I found some nice rounds at a good price (in the low $20's with the spot price at just over $20.00) at this show...

This first silver round is modeled after the U.S. Indian Head Quarter Eagle and Half Eagle minted from 1908 through 1929 (none were struck from 1917-1924).  These gold coins set a U.S. precedent in that the figures (a.k.a. devices)  and lettering were sunk below the coins' surface (incused) as opposed to other U.S. coins in which the "devices" were and are raised from the surface of the coin.  The silver round's obverse closely matches the gold coins' obverse but the reverse of the silver coin differs from the gold coins as it identifies a private mint plus the weight and silver fineness of .999.

I was not familiar with the issuer of this round, the Golden State Mint, so I visited their web site at GS Mint. They have a number of interesting silver and gold rounds and bars (of various sizes) with a $500 minimum purchase. To their credit, they have survived the many lean years, having been founded in 1974. Next I did a quick Internet search for "Golden State Mint Reviews" and "Golden State Mint Complaints" with nothing alarming showing up. They look like a good company to do business with but please be aware: 1) I have absolutely no affiliation with this company and receive no compensation for any purchases by anyone; and 2) I am not recommending that you do business with Golden State Mint without doing your own due diligence. You are responsible for your own decisions regarding the purchase of precious metals.

Another silver round I picked up at the show is also modeled after a U.S. gold coin - the 24-karat (.9999 fineness) American Buffalo which began production in 2006 (and this gold coin was modeled after the historic buffalo nickel minted from 1913-1938). The silver round's obverse closely matches the gold buffalo's obverse (just missing a date) but the reverse of the silver coin differs from the gold coin as it specifies the weight (one troy ounce) and silver fineness (.999) among other lettering differences. The Silver Buffalo was also purchased at a good price in the low $20's.

To my way of thinking, silver rounds that are modeled after well-recognized

and popular designs (24k Gold Buffalos, Morgan dollars, gold Krugerrands, $20 Saint Gaudens, etc.) stand a better chance of being favored over lesser known (and less attractive) designs when it comes time to sell. In addition to the purchased silver rounds, I was able to pick up some nice Barber and Standing Liberty quarters, a 2014 Australian Saltwater Crocodile 1 ounce silver coin and my first Maria Theresa thaler (a historic but not so rare Austrian coin containing .7520 troy ounces of silver) but that is the subject of a future post.

Changing gears, are you familiar with the IRS reporting requirements when buying and selling precious metals? The good people at JM Bullion have put together a helpful Infographic if you are unfamiliar with these requirements or need a refresher. You can find it at JMInfographic Its purpose is educational and shouldn't be considered financial advice. Of course you are responsible for any capital gains tax on profits from sales even if your transaction(s) don't require dealer reporting.  

At the time of this post, spot silver is at $19.45, Silver Eagles month-to-date are at 1,510,000 and the year-to-date total is 27,613,500.

One last note, I have published my ebook "The Last Canadian 80 Percent Silver Coins - A Buying and Selling Guide " on Smashwords so it is now available on Apple iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Oyster as well as Kindle and a few more. You can see the Smashwords listing at  Canadian Silver Coins . My other ebooks, "The Last 90 Percent Silver United States Coins - A Buying and Selling Guide" and "A Guide to Buying and Selling Peace & Morgan Silver Dollars" are still available on Amazon only.

Thanks for reading, keep the faith. 

Pausing A Vacation To Shop For Silver

After surviving most of the brutal winter of the upper midwest, I was more than ready for the warmer weather of AZ and NV. Las Vegas was our first destination for some gaming and relaxation. I made a special trip downtown to check out the GOLD To Go machine at the Golden Nugget. If you are unfamiliar with this gold dispensing ATM, you can see more details plus a picture here. The gold choices for purchase were 1 gram, 2 1/2 gram, 5 gram and 10 gram gold bars ranging in price from $87 to $517 (spot gold at the time was approximately $1330.00). Also available were a 1 oz. gold bar priced at $1525 and a 1 oz. gold eagle at $1555 (nearly a 17% premium). The last coin available for purchase was a silver eagle for the princely sum of $49. That was a bit of a shocker as spot silver was under (but flirting with) $22. If the silver eagle offered were a proof coin, the $49 would be closer to the going price but I didn't see that advertised. I decided against making any purchase.

The next vacation stop was Laughlin, NV. Whenever I am in Laughlin, I always make sure to stop in (usually more than once) at the coin shop across from the Golden Nugget Laughlin (Laughlin Jewelry and Collectibles) to discuss prices and trends. Their price for silver eagles were much better at just $26 each with silver maple leafs even less. One of my purchases was a 2014 silver panda. This is a beautiful coin and I didn't mind the $30 price. But at that price, I won't be stacking silver pandas as the silver eagles and maple leafs are cheaper and more popular in my world. Of course silver rounds can be purchased for even less than those two popular bullion coins but I tend to favor government issued, government backed coins. And unless I fall into a really good deal on silver rounds with an attractive design, I'll usually pass on these.

Here are the Silver American Eagle totals so far for March, 2014 from the U. S. Mint: 2,921,000 one-ounce silver coins which, added to January's number of 4,775,00 and February's 3,750,00, brings the number for 2014 to 11,446,000 silver eagles.

Sales of my 3 ebooks on U.S. and Canadian silver coins have been steady. It appears people like what they are reading but are not inclined to giving reviews. If you want to see short descriptions of each, you can do so at a special web site I have set up for them at Silver Investing Guru.

Thanks for reading. 

American Silver Eagles - They're Back!!!

After an extended vacation, American Silver Eagles are back in production (Kitco discusses it here). As you may recall, the U.S. Mint suspended production of 2013 silver eagles back on December 9th in order to make way for the 2014 silver eagles. It's a good thing this four weeks plus halt coincided perfectly with a time of low demand/low interest for these bullion coins - NOT! What it did do is raise already healthy premiums even higher because investors really like and want these coins (this was the subject of a recent article on the Bloomberg site which you can see here ). So the buying continued during the weeks the U.S. Mint meticulously changed the dies from a "3" to a"4". Hopefully they were also able to stock up on blanks (planchets) during this time so investors can enjoy several months of uninterrupted production and sales. Here are the 2013 silver eagle totals in case you haven't seen them before. 

U S MINT  Silver Eagle Sales  2013

January        7,498,000; February      3,368,500;
March          3,356,500; April            4,087,000;
May             3,458,500; June             3,275,000;
July              4,406,500; August         3,625,000;
September   3,013,000; October      3,087,000;
November   2,300,000; December   1,200,000

Total        42,675,000

The Canadian counterpart to the American Silver Eagle, the Silver Maple Leaf, has a new look for 2014. The addition of radial lines from the center of the coin outward plus a micro-engraved security mark on the reverse of the coin make for a stunning silver bullion coin. More info and detailed pictures of this coin appeared on the Coinupdate web site and can be found here. Counterfeiters will be hard-pressed to master these new security features. It reminds me of the battle between the safe manufacturers and safe crackers in years gone by. No matter what the manufacturers did, the safecrackers always found a way to break in. Finally, at least one manufacturer came up with what they felt was the ultimate solution. They incorporated a vial of  nitroglycerine inside the safe so that anyone trying to punch their way in would have their ticket punched permanently in a very explosive way. No report on how many lost their life this way.

Thanks for reading and keep the faith.  

Looking For Cheap Silver At Coin Shows

Before getting to the main topic of this post, a free promo for my newly revised A Guide to Buying and Selling Peace and Morgan Silver Dollars has been scheduled for November 7 and 8, 2013. If you have a Android phone or tablet, iPad, iPhone, Mac, Windows PC or Windows 8 tablet, BlackBerry, or Windows Phone and the free Kindle reading app for your device, you can download this eBook for $0.00 on these two days only. It is written for the casual investor of Peace and Morgan dollars as well as those persons who already may own some of these coins and don't have a clue as to their worth. I hope you are able to take advantage of this free 2-day promotion.

One of the things I like to do when attending coin shows is to look for the one-off silver coins and bargain with the dealer for a good price. As you might guess, these are coins that are not well known which means the demand is low to non-existant and the dealer is willing to bargain so s/he can concentrate on the popular, higher-demand coins. One such coin I found recently is a 1993 20 Crowns silver coin from the Turks and Caicos Islands commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. The obverse features the image of Queen Elizabeth II and the reverse has the image of an astronaut (Neil Armstrong) stepping on the moon from the Lunar Module. This is one of the more attractive silver coins I have seen and I could get it at the current spot silver price with no premium.

So far, so good. I found an attractive silver coin for a good price. But there is a potential problem with this coin without doing some homework. And that problem is that nowhere on this coin are markings to indicate the silver purity or troy weight. Without seeing a .999 (or .9999) purity marking plus some kind of weight designation, I could only assume it is a full one-ounce pure silver commemorative coin. So I asked the dealer to "prove" it was what I assumed it to be. And he was able to by showing me the coin details in a huge reference book he had on hand. So I bought the coin.

At the next coin show you attend, keep your eyes open for deals like this. The dealer I bought this from is a one-man show whom I know and trust. But I still wanted the assurance of knowing the coin was as I expected. If a small dealer like this can have the resources to identifying a wide range of coins, whoever you deal with should be able to also. If not, go elsewhere. Once I got home, I took out my handy Neva Pocket Scale and weighed it just to be sure. It weighed 480 grains (gr.) and 31.1 grams (g.) which is what I expected to see. On a more precise scale I would have seen 31.1034 grams. As you probably know, One troy ounce=480 grains=31.1034 grams=1.097 avoirdupois ounce.

The October sales of Silver American Eagles stands at 3,087,000. For the year so far the total is 39,175,000. Don't look for the premiums of these popular bullion coins to go down anytime soon. The US Mint has notified its Primary Dealers that all sales of Silver Eagles will be suspended for 4 weeks beginning the second week in December. Guess what that will do to the premiums. I hope you have yours.

Happy investing.

Ready To Board The Silver Investments Train? Be Sure You Watch Your Step!

More bad news on the counterfeiting of precious metals. This time it's the popular 10 ounce silver bars where a dealer in Michigan recently had a customer come in with two 10 ounce Engelhard silver bars which were obvious fakes - at least to the trained eye (the bar at left is legit - the real thing). Too bad as these are still quite affordable for many people that invest in or are ready to invest in silver - the poor man's/poor woman's gold. They now join the list of fake Silver Eagles and one ounce silver bars (silver or nickel plated with brass cores)  reported earlier this year. In the "old days" most counterfeiters were targeting the more profitable bars and coins where the huge profits were such as the tungsten filled gold bars(now including even 10 ounce and one ounce gold bars) and common Morgan dollars made "rare" by altering the date or mint mark. Now the prudent investor has to be suspicious of almost all silver and gold products unless they invest in safe ways. Whoever in the world is making these fakes (wink, wink) is doing a good enough job to fool the average investor and even some of the more sophisticated investors.

The best solution, of course, is to deal with only reputable dealers that not only know fakes from the real items but are actively on the lookout for all types of counterfeits that are known to exist (plus will make things right if there is a problem). If you like to frequent coin shows, you can invest in an inexpensive gram based scale to take with you to check potential purchases if you have doubts. Of course you will have to know the various weights of those purchases you want to make but that is not too difficult from online sources. As far as eBay and other online auctions selling precious metals - buyer beware.

As you can see from my last post on this blog, I have been ignoring it in favor of my Kindle eBooks. In addition to publishing another eBook, The Last Canadian 80 Percent Silver Coins - A Buying and Selling Guide, I have re-published The Last U.S. 90 Percent Silver Coins - A Buying and Selling Guide which is now almost twice the size of the original edition. And I am currently revising A Guide to Buying and Selling Peace and Morgan Silver Dollars to expand it as well. If you are interested in reviewing any of these eBooks for free in exchange for a review of the book(s) on Amazon and Goodreads, please contact me thru either the GoldInvestingSimplified.com or SilverInvestingGuide.com web sites.

Happy (and safe) investing.  JA

Silver Eagles Off to a Strong Start in 2013

At the time of this post in mid-January 2013, sales of Silver American Eagles stand at 5,132,000 with lots of month to go. This is on course to mimic 2011 and 2012 in which January was the most productive month for Silver Eagles at 6,422,000 and 6,107,000.

The mint ran out of 2012 Silver Eagles in mid-December so buyers had to wait until January 7, 2013 to get their hands on additional coins, those bearing the 2013 date. So that 5,132,000 was achieved in less than half a month.

Dealers are reporting great demand in not only silver Eagles but silver Maple Leafs, 10 and 100 ounce silver  bars and 90 percent silver coins. If you are running into a shortage of silver pieces to buy, you might have better luck shopping for silver rounds and one-ounce silver bars. Anything with a Engelhard or Johnson Matthey stamp or hallmark is a plus.

Other options are lesser known government issued silver coins such as the one-ounce silver Mexican Libertad. Upon first seeing this silver coin, I thought the obverse was the reverse and vice versa.  It is the reverse that features The Angel of Independence (a reproduction of the one that stands atop a victory column commemorating Mexico’s War of Independence) with two volcanoes (Popocatépetl and Iztaccihuatl) in the background. The obverse displays the current coat of arms of Mexico surrounded by the historical Mexican coats of arms.


 The Mexican Libertad comes in both gold and silver in various sizes beginning at 1/20 of an ounce but I like the one-ounce silver coin as it has the heft and feel of a "real" coin, not the clad coins we usually have to deal with day in and day out.

In my last post I mentioned my first eBook on Amazon titled "The Last U.S. 90 Percent Silver Coins - A Buying and Selling Guide" which can be found at Last 90 Percent coins

I have just published the next in the U.S. Silver Coin Series titled "Tips on Buying and Selling Peace and Morgan Silver Dollars". In this eBook I expand on the Peace and Morgan dollars to include more grading information, where wear marks first appear and even a bit on cleaning these coins (with warnings about doing so). Priced at just $.99 you can find out more at Buy/Sell Peace and Morgan Dollars

Thanks for reading. 

The Last US 90 Percent Silver Coins

Before focusing on the main subject of this post, I want to mention a nice silver coin found at a garage sale. I attend a fair number of garage sales but very few that have silver coins. After seeing the ad in our local paper with a mention of silver coins, it was worth it to me to drive a little distance. Seeing that item listed in a garage sale is always taking a chance since there are a number of situations you can run into. The ideal situation is when you can find some really nice silver coins and get them at a bargain price because the sellers don't understand what they have. There are other times you may find silver coins but they are way over priced and you may break even if (when?) silver hits $100 per ounce. The worst case is when the seller thinks they are silver and valuable but you find out they are neither silver nor valuable.

What I ran into was some nice silver coins that the seller knew the value of and had them priced a little over their true value based on the current spot silver price. There were some Roosevelt dimes and Standing Liberty quarters in fair condition but what caught my eye was the coin you see at left - the first U.S. commemorative coin. Officially called the World's Columbian Exposition Half Dollar, this coin features the bust of Christopher Columbus on the obverse with the image of his flagship, the Santa Maria above two
hemispheres, on the reverse. A total of 950,000 were minted with a 1892 date and 1,550,405 were minted with the 1893 date so they are not especially valuable. This 90% silver coin is considered to contain .3575 troy ounces of silver if circulated and is worth approximately one and a half times it's intrinsic (silver melt) value if the wear marks are minimal. If uncirculated, this coin contains .3617 troy ounces of silver and can be worth several hundred dollars in the higher Mint state grades of MS65 or higher. I didn't get a deal on it but paid less than $20 and am happy to get the first commemorative coin that the U.S. issued.

Now onto the subject of The Last US 90 Percent Silver Coins...

Back when I was selling gold and silver for a large precious metals dealer in the midwest, it was not unusal to receive calls from individuals who had inherited a number of coins for which they hadn't the slightest idea of their worth and wanted help. With the large variety of old US gold and silver coins, it is no wonder the average person is confused as to their value.

And again, I am aware of more than one situation where finders of old silver coins took them to their local bank to convert them into the only money they were familiar with - paper (fiat) money, thereby allowing the bank to cash in on the silver profits that should have rightfully been theirs. Too many people don't understand the true value of pre-1965 US silver coins.

Finally, in my last encounter with a traveling buyer of gold and silver (who had set up shop at a local motel for 2 days), he mentioned that he was buying Morgan and Peace silver dollars for $15 apiece. The average person bringing in some silver dollars were probably thrilled with that price. The problem is who ever brought in silver dollars to this buyer should have been getting more like $21 or $22 each based on the spot silver price at the time. He was screwing them out of about $7 per coin.

So I decided to write a quick reference book to counter the lack of knowledge about pre-1965 silver coins. Titled "The Last US 90 Percent Silver Coins" it is now available on Amazon.com as an eBook for the various flavors of Kindle plus iPad, iPhone, PC, Mac, Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone 7 with a free Kindle Reading App.

Priced at under $4 it has in-depth information on the Roosevelt Dime (1946-1964), Mercury Dime (1916-1945), Washington Quarter (1932-1964), Standing Liberty Quarter (1916-1930), 1964 Kennedy Half Dollar, Franklin Half Dollar (1948-1963), Walking Liberty Half Dollar (1916-1947), Peace Dollar (1921-1933) and Morgan Dollar (1878-1921). You will find it at The Last US 90 Percent Silver Coins if you want to take a free look at the table of contents plus the first chapter to see if it is right for you. I plan on expanding it in 2013.

At the time of this post spot silver is at $34.24. up $2.08 (6.48%) in the last 30 days and $3.19 (10.30%) in the last year. So far in November the U.S. Mint has produced 3,059,500 Silver Eagles which is 32,007,500 year-to-date. They should be able to top the 2010 total of 34,662,500 but it will take some doing to top the Silver Eagle total for 2011 of 39,868,500.

Silver has made some nice moves up since the election and it would be nice to see that continue.

Thanks for reading - keep the faith.