Precious metals

[Lanky Yankee]

Are people buying more silver coins or ingots? I know silver has a value but which is better for investment purposes. I looked at the sites above and saw some differences in price for the same weight.

[jansman]

You are looking at the open market. Each dealer will have purchased stock at slightly different prices, and then ( where silver is concerned) there is VAT.Every dealer has to make his mark up to stay alive, hence different prices.

Precious Metals are a LONG TERM investment. It is said with any kind of investment not to spend what you cannot afford to lose. PMs defy that rule somewhat. Gold ,silver and platinum tend to increase in value either steadily or with a bang, depending on the economy. At the moment the Global Economy is dodgy, so investors put money into precious metals as they HOLD value at the very least.

If you are prepared to buy now and sit on them, when you come to sell, you will, more than likely get your money back at the very least.At best,which is likely, you will gain.

[raz]

I've switched to silver from gold over the past few months simply as the price of gold is above £20 a gram atm and silver is around the 30 pence mark,when gold gets back around the £15 mark i'll switch back to buying gold as the coins are vat free and im trying to get as big a bang for my buck as possible.. im not buying PM's for bartering (although i do see that as a viable option in some scenario's) it's more of a safer pension option for me as governments seem to dip into the pension funds every time they overspend

[Arzosah]

Hi Jansman, yes, that silver recyclers place is good for that - it lists the coins according to their age, so the break between 90% plus and 50% is very clear (though I can never remember the years, so its really crucial for me to keep an eye on that page ).

The silver Britannias look a good deal if you buy enough - that would be pension money I'd use, not income. The thing that always confuses me is where to sell, when the time came? Ebay, one by one? Back to the original broker house? Do people have a strategy for that?

[Holomon]

I've been buying silver for a few years, I'd love to say with any sort of strategy but usually when I remember or get some unexpected money in.
As well as that, I have some "online" money that I've been investing and moving around for quite a while. When it goes up I spend some, move some of it into savings, buy some more silver (if I remember ) and re-invest the rest. I'm lucky that one of my friends runs a private equity fund company and has a great track record, so rather than having to read the financial times and keep track of the markets I tend to just listen to him.

[jansman]

I am like you lot I guess. Mine is a pension strategy. Like raz says, every time the country is broke, the pensions get raided. Regarding selling, I will worry about that later. We now have the web, and ten,twenty or more years from now there will likely be another way!

[itsybitsy]

Hi Jansman, yes, that silver recyclers place is good for that - it lists the coins according to their age, so the break between 90% plus and 50% is very clear (though I can never remember the years, so its really crucial for me to keep an eye on that page ).

The silver Britannias look a good deal if you buy enough - that would be pension money I'd use, not income. The thing that always confuses me is where to sell, when the time came? Ebay, one by one? Back to the original broker house? Do people have a strategy for that?

I'd go back to a broker house in the UK, I think!?

[Toddie]

The "silver over gold" tendancy here is quite suprising. I ever thought if i was to invest into metals it'd be gold, purely because it's gold - the more valuable out of them.

It might be worth spending a few bob every 3 months or so.

Thanks for bringing this up. I never really properly considered putting money into metals. But thinking about it it'd be much safer in metals than in the banks.

[jansman]

Silver is very affordable right now, which makes it very accessible. I do collect some ( a lot actually) junk gold, jewellery etc. There is a school of thought though, that suggests silver will become an ever more finite resource because of our hunger for electronics. There is an industry in the third world based around ' mining' landfill and retrieving PMs in electronic circuit boards,silver being the major constituent.

Thus it follows that the scarcer it is, the more it is worth.The percentage increase for silver recently has been somewhat greater than gold.The main drawback of course is that silver takes up more space than gold.However, whatever you may store PMs for, SHTF if you had to trade with it, silver one ounce coins would be easier to do business with than the same weight of gold! In fact it would be easier than even a 1/10 ounce gold coin.

[pseudonym]

Are people buying more silver coins or ingots? I know silver has a value but which is better for investment purposes. I looked at the sites above and saw some differences in price for the same weight.

I'm buying silver coins, for varying reasons:

Familiarity.
Coin of the realm.
Size.
Stackability.

All work both now and if TSHTF.