As I mentioned in another thread, I’ve recently been gifted a large chunk of my father’s scrounged silver coinage - I’ve been cataloging it and right now it has 114 90% silver Washington quarters, 5 90% half dollars (3 walking liberty, one Ben, one Kennedy) plus the better part of a pound of silver dimes I haven’t verified yet.
It amuses yet terrifies that today’s melt price (from the interwebs, so large grain of salt + cut for the middleman) means this is over two grand in silver. I should be done sorting the dimes in the next 48 hours, and was wondering if in @Gordon_G’s opinion if I should hold on to this longer (I can always use the money, but I don’t need it at the moment) or sell it soonish before people calm down.
Yes, it’s free advice, possibly worth what I am paying for it, and it’s my money to fold or hold, but the inner me keeps saying it’s a bubble (likely) and bound to burst (but when) so I might as well cash in while it’s at $110 + per troy ounce.
It’s free advice, but worth LESS than the zero you’re paying. Unless you listen to me and then run as fast as you can in the opposite direction!
A clickable at yesterday’s Yahoo thought 2026 would be a year for gold, not silver. But I doubt whether that clickable is worth more than you pay for it either.
I know nothing about the legality of melting U.S. coins, but I suppose you’d just sell them as is to a dealer anyway.
Irrelevant trivia: In 1941 London you could purchase 1 troy pound of silver for 1 pound of British paper money – the same price as a thousand years earlier.
I think nobody has mentioned the one important reason the silver price is rising yet: the temper tanTrump’s tariffs. True, he has not yet imposed tariffs on silver, but he has threatened to do so, so that many traders have moved the physical silver they used to store in London to the USA, so as to avoid possible tariffs they fear they would have to pay if they bring it in later.
The problem is that the main metal trading market is London, not the New York. Among other things they have a system in place for lending silver short term (overnight) for a percentage of the price usually in the low single digits. The cost of borrrowing silver overnight has surged to unprecedented levels, with rates increasing by over 100% on an annualized basis. This financing stress is both a cause and effect of the London silver market liquidity crisis, as higher costs discourage market-making activity while reflecting the extreme scarcity of available metal. The premium for silver in London compared to New York ballooned from a typical 3 cents to over 20 cents around october last year, indicating severe dislocation in global silver markets. The trend seems to have continued. I think this article is correct and interesting, even if from five months ago, which requires an adjustment in the prizes quoted: more than doubling for silver, 50% for gold (which in itself is crazy for such a short period of time):
You can try and sell it. The problem right now is that coin dealers have become very shy about buying as the refineries are in full production with .999 silver and don’t want 90%. Give a local coin shop a call and see what they offer. I sold most of my silver 6 weeks ago (70 dollarish) and kept all my 90% at their advice. They did call me back 2 weeks later and said the refineries were buying again but I kept it anyway.
Actually one of the two local locations that would facilitate the sale were in the local News this week, based on the extreme amount of business being done.
And I finished the counting/sorting 116 90% silver dimes (Roosevelts mostly plus 8 Mercurys).
I’m pretty risk adverse, so I think I’ll call ahead to the shop to see if this is enough for them to want an appointment, and otherwise I’ll plan a visit around the weather and probable wait times.
They don’t need an appointment for small sales. I’ve been in my local coin dealer when people were buying hundreds and thousands of ounces. If you were selling lots of bullion coins they would probably test every one but that goes very quickly. Just touch the probe to a coin and make sure the dial reads correctly. 90% is recognized by just looking at them.
Most 90% silver sales right now are person to person. Here is a trusted online site.
Immediate reactions that the dollar won’t be in the ICU with a DNR because Trump picked someone less crazed than he could have may not stick for long, as there is a realization that even if he actually tries to act rationally rather than sycophantically the dollar and trust in future US actions are going to at best have a long time in rehab. Yes, the hottest money will be cutting losses today, but after gold stabilizes and starts to climb back up, which I think will happen, the same folk will suddenly be calling this a chance to “buy the dip”. …
I acknowledge rationality has little to with anything, but the reasons for the flight to commodities, to gold in particular, and sliver in its wake, for the fear that drives that, haven’t actually changed much. Fear will come back, and fear of missing out on its bounce back will outweigh fear of loss.
ParallelLines – How has the price offered at your dealer varied in recent days?
As I mentioned earlier, silver has BOTH inelastic demand and inelastic supply. I think this helps explain the ferocious swings in silver prices. There have been swings before, e.g.
According to a (crackpot?) YouTube, annual industrial usage of silver has been about 200 million oz higher than newly mined silver for the last five years, depleting supplies at mints and the big exchanges like COMEX and SGE. Dealers are defaulting on deliveries. The “lease premium” – fee charged when a short-seller needs to meet a margin call – has soared.
With some effort I convinced ChatGPT to show me simultaneous prices for paper silver in New York (COMEX) vs physical silver in Shanghai. The latter was $19/oz higher than the former! (Kitco has a nice graph of “Spot Silver” prices – Despite the “spot” this is PAPER silver quoted at COMEX etc. Is there a similar graph for SGE (Shanghai) prices?) Is it true that China has imposed major restrictions on the export of silver?
I agree that the long-term outlook for gold is good. Paper money was already facing long-term problems unrelated to Trump’s stupidities. (I WISH I could say that crypto’s outlook is bad, but I worry that might be very wrong.)
I do NOT claim any expertise on financial markets. Some information is hard to get,and I’m embarrassed to report I listen to a possible “crackpot” on YouTube.
I stand by my linked article on post #23, it is long and not crackpot, despite being from a Chinese source tat is little read in Europe and four months old.
“system 2 mins Automatically removed quote of whole previous post.”
[I continue to be confused by the (“super-smart”?) interface here.]
Good article. And it leads me to believe that the YouTuber I watch is less of a crackpot than AI chats imply.
Silver’s supply is inelastic because there are few silver mines. Instead silver is a byproduct of gold, zinc and lead mines. Refining the silver is difficult, so an intermediate stage is sold to Chinese companies expert at the refining. And China then hoards the silver (though SGE inventories are also being depleted).
It was only recently that I learned that silver’s superior properties make it “essential” for high-tech electricals. (I suppose a cheaper alloy might be usable but with lowered efficiency. Is that off-the-table due to retooling costs?)
Reminds me of a documentary on the B-29 plane I saw as a child, long time ago. At the end of the war (or was it during the Korean war? It was really long ago – I guess it was around 1943-44) there were severe shortages of copper and the B-29 needed miles and miles of wiring, so some general with enough autority spoke to Fort Knox and claimed they needed 23 metric tons of silver to make up for the copper wires they could not find anywhere. The general reported that Fort Knox answer was: “How much is that in ounces?”
Allegedly they recouped most of the silver wiring after the war and gave it back.
(I don’t know the casualty rate for B-29s, but I’m afraid much of that silver ended up at the bottom of the ocean if that story were true.)
The story I’ve heard – (frequently, perhaps again in this thread) – is that the Manhattan project needed copper (or silver) wiring for the massive electro-magnets in the cyclotrons which were one way to purify U-235; the Treasury lent them silver since copper was essential for the war effort (especially the Navy).
Speaking of Manhattan and getting one’s precious metal returned, Germany has over 1000 tonnes of gold stored at 33 Liberty Street in downtown Manhattan – that’s more than $160 billion worth at the present price. (Countries often leave their gold in other countries’ vaults to avoid the expense and risk of moving it. In Germany’s case they may have wanted some kept safe from possible Soviet invasion.)
Some German politicians are now asking for the gold’s return. They’re worried the U.S. government might seize it arbitrarily, much as they’ve seized Russia’s electronic dollars. I don’t blame them.
I’ve heard
I am definitely NOT an advocate of billionaire’s greed. But IIUC they were playing by the rules, and those rules were changed in the middle of the “game.”
Politically I’m delighted to see non-productive financial speculators “victimized.” I intended the term just to decribe a cause-effect relationship, rather than making a value judgement.
They were too busy to answer their phones (lines outside the door) and I couldn’t make the time to go in person to talk to them prior to their reduction in hours for silver coin sales - they’re currently not taking any junk silver, and nothing less than 90%.
So silver is crawling back up after the bust @hajario reported, now up to $85.10 for bid. Since their silver coin hours are only before 3:30pm week days right now I’ll see where it is in a week or so when I can stand in line for a few hours.
