An elderly relative has tasked me with going and purchasing an amount of silver, to be used in case of apocalypse. :smack: They wish to have it in the form of those little one ounce tablet thingies.
I am a fair dab at the internet, but know NOTHING about buying silver or gold (ingots?) and don’t care as much about price as I do about not getting ripped off entirely, or getting sold aluminum or something that isn’t silver. For most things, I can find review sites or places that rate sellers - but for this I have no background to even know what I am looking for to try and vet sellers.
We don’t live in a big city; we don’t have one. Otherwise, that would have been my first stop. The closest thing is the sketchy guy with the table at the flea market, and, uh, Nope.
seconded the suggestion to “go to a coin shop” – IF you happen to live in an area where that’s feasible. And if they’re not too much more expensive than shopping online. Depending on where you live, sales tax may add more than shipping, and as almost with everything online-vs-brick and mortar, the local shop will probably have higher prices in order to cover things like “rent” and “liking to eat dinner every night”.
With the disclaimer that it’s been a couple years since I bought anything, I can recommend providentmetals.com and gainesvillecoins.com as having been honest and reliable in the past with me. When I was buying from these sites, it was usually 10-20 ounces at a time (so… $200-$600 depending on what silver cost that month.)
There were a couple other online vendors I would have also wholeheartedly recommended – right up until the point that they went bankrupt and closed shop. So… I guess my best advice is to diversify – or at least spread out your purchases.
For other opinions:
http://golddealerreviews.com/ suggests that my recommendation of Provident and Gainesville is still shared by others.
It’s not me - I like my tiny-ass quantities of state-employee money in the bank, and don’t think the world is heading towards imminent demise. Uncle Moneybags is wanting to drop 2 grand on the little square suckers, which seems to me to be an awful lot - thus my paranoia about getting ripped off. No skin of mine in the game now, but if I fuck up, I’ll probably get written out of the will.
Thanks to samclem and yoyodyne as well. All help appreciated!
Random question about abbreviations, I thought I had correctly twigged that “PM” meant private mint, which I thought described places that make their own stamped whatevers that aren’t actual national or commemorative coinage - but I’ve seen it tossed around on the forum sniz linked as an … accusation? slur? questioning of legitimacy? towards individuals.
If we are lucky enough to avoid the apocalypse your looking at redeeming the ingots at spot price, the smaller the piece you buy the higher the premium over spot so I’d try and convince your relative to consider 10oz bars if possible.
I was noticing that, yeah. I’ll talk to him, but dunno how much use it’ll be - I already thought it might be smart to wait a few days after the stock market shenanigans to avoid potential price hikes, but he’s “on a deadline” …
On the plus side, I’m learning about a whole investment field I’d never have paid any attention to for myself, and doing it pretty much worry free! Now I just wish he’d’ve asked me to get some weird shit like Holy-God-expensive fingernail-sized bits of platinum (5 measly grams, good grief), or ingots of palladium (all your iphone innards are belong to me!) or a 5 pound brick of copper (wtf?)
I want to tell my coworkers I got a sugar-bag-sized brick of copper in my mailbox!
I will say some of those coins are awfully pretty, but what even do you do with them? Really expensive tooth fairy presents?
Was going to add that having spent the evening reading that other board, I’m now laughing heartily at myself thinking that his $2,000 is a lot of money to be investing in this sort of thing. There are discussions over there entailing more money than my entire lifetime’s employment, all combined. Some crazy stuff. Man I wish I was rich.
