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 Investing - Silver At $40.00 An Ounce

Silver reached the much talked about $40 per troy ounce on Friday - the highest it has been in 31 years. In fact, the spot price cruised past that figure and was knocking at $41's door, closing at $40.93 going into the weekend. As of this writing (early Monday morning CDT), silver is already up another $0.98 and stands at $41.91. Some say silver's price will not correct until it reaches $50.00.

This is good news if you already own (and have in your possession) a nice amount of physical silver but not so good if you are just starting to invest in silver. Silver is red hot now and finding a good deal is hard to locate. If you keep an eye on eBay auctions, you see some silver already being bid up to $50 per ounce and beyond. I have no recommendations on where you can buy silver cheap. Your best bet is to look for miscellaneous one-ounce silver rounds or possibly silver bars which have traditionally had a lower premium than coins.

So far in April, 750,000 Silver Eagles have been produced with the Year-To-Date total at 13,179,000.

Thanks for reading.