A wile back I purchased some 72% silver Mexican peso's It's a nice enough looking coin size weight feel comparable to a typical 1 oz it has that nice soft look that exemplifies Mexican silver . Yet just for curiosity I showed it to a Pawn shop who buys at spot & was surprised by what he said ..... He would never buy them he said only pure Or 90% . He said the refinery he sells to does not want them . Considering I have some low silver content American currency also & I realize there is a market for it now and the Mexican peso @ 72% Still if situations ever got REAL are low silver content coins a coin no one would want if the SHTF
Here in the land of Oz we have 50% silver coins an in hyper inflation SHTF situation I firmly believe someone is more likely to accept a 50% silver coin than a piece of paper with some numbers and ink on it.
cash is king in any scenario except a true SHTF scenario (e.g. major war / armed conflict ) even in the various floods cyclones here in QLD cash was King. and our notes are not paper ;p
You would probably get better value for the coins by selling them to collectors now and converting the money into 999 pure if you are looking to sell to dealers or use in SHTF situations later on. I like the 72% Mexican Pesos for their size and design but I doubt many people would be familiar enough with them to want to use them for trade.
I personally quite like them and was looking at them on eBay. If it was possible to get bulk lots without the huge premiums I'd probably buy a few ozs just to add some diversity to the stack. Same with junk US silver coins. '66 50's and Australian pre dec will have to do for now I suppose.
We have bought several bulk lots of very fractional very low silver content (10%) un pesos that we got at spot back when silver spot was lower, and they are easy enough to liquidated now well above what we paid for them. We've sold some here and there at a nice profit because such inexpensive coins (approx $1 USD worth of silver each) are easily sold at over twice that amount, and higher if their condition takes them into the numismatic category. In a SHTF scenario they'd potentially be very useful since each coin is about the size of a US half dollar but has about the same silver content as an 80% Canadian dime. Local Dealers operate by their own rules, it's good to know what they are but I wouldn't take it as a gauge of overall liquidity. Low purity silver is bulky and heavy though, so that potentially presents other challenges.
I do think its funny anyone thinking that silver / gold would have any real value in a true SHTF scenario a lump of silver in a true SHTF scenario i.e. what is going on in Syria currently and recently elsewhere in the world does not feed your family, or protect your family or wipe your arse. In these types of scenarios basic necessities of life would be the true cash / currency of the day not a lump of inert metal e.g. food, guns, ammo, alcohol, cigarettes, toilet paper, fuel, water would be king especially if you are cut off from supplies and dont know when / if you will get more. and hypothetically if you did find someone to trade you goods for your gold what type of value do you honestly expect to get from it you wont beable to look up the USD value and demand that, you are not in the barging position here. I.e. you have 10oz bar of gold and were in the desert dying of thirst would you trade that bar for a botle of water or keep your gold?
I can't say I disagree, but if one can have all of the above on hand, as well as some metals, why not? In the meantime I do so enjoy having some shiny in various shapes and sizes to play with.
sure you could be prepared and have all that at hand enough for months like some preppers -- most people dont and that is ok as the likely hood of that scenario happening is extremely small in most western countries. You should only need 2-3 days supplies of water / food on hand which would cover most scenarios you will experience here e.g. extended power outages from weather, floods / bushfires The fact you like silver and gold and want to speculate is the main reason to own silver / gold is in an economic down turn not a SHTF scenario like everyone seems to try to keep pointing to like I said above if you were dying of thirst or hunger trapped in the middle of a warzone that bottle of water / can of food you might consider cheap for 10oz of gold.
I have some of the 10% coins and although they were cheap I just can't get a decent shine on them. Usually when you soak a coin in Cloudy Ammonia and give it a quick polish with sodium bicarbonate they come up like new but not wit these ones, they look pitted and tarnished across the surface. In Venezuela they are having their own financial SHTF. Hyperinflation is reducing the local currency to being worthless. If you have silver coins to pay with then you will be able to work something out with the local shop keepers. The shop keepers still need to sell items to stay in business but they don't want to accept local currency if it is devaluing too fast. Workers have to spend their wages the minute they get them just so they can keep their buying power. A commodity such as silver would be useful to both sides of the trade and therefore better than the local currency or US$ which might be hard to find or expensive to buy. Even in countries that aren't suffering hyperinflation, countries such as Belarus where the government devalued the currency by 50% overnight. People were rushing out to buy anything that might hold its value, toasters etc. or whatever they could get hold of before all the prices were updated. Holding silver then would have kept some of your buying power intact. I think there is a case for holding onto silver and gold coins, life still goes on and you still need to pay bills and buy food.
Yes, in our experience once the 10% silver 90% copper coins "go rusty" there's no way (that we know of) to get them back looking like silver, but for whatever reason a good percentage of them never go rusty and stay silvery, some blast white, some with amazing toning etc. I enjoy all of them from brown copper penny looking to blast white. You can fill a pirate chest of them without having too big a dent in the wallet.
SHTF scenario is little to harsh . Here in the states Racial tension fights have occurred & if it's an indication of what it would be like nation wide - well coins will not save your life . Guns might at-least till you exchange gun fire then it's any ones guess . But Hyperinflation yes
The trouble with using Mexican Pesos for barter etc. is that the silver content varies across the series... 90.3% 80% 72% 50% 30% 10% http://en.numista.com/catalogue/ind...stados+Unidos&v=1&m=silver&a=&t=&dg=&w=&g=&f= Needing a chart with dates and compositions on it means mistakes will be made!
Sticking to the 10%ers insures that most if not all mistakes would be in your favor LOL But seriously, I think I'll be grabbing a few reference books to keep with the low purity silver coins we grab at or below spot when we can, this one for example: https://www.amazon.com/World-silver-coin-value-guide/dp/0915262460 I doubt it has images to go along with all the coins, but I will look for a book that does.
Looks like a nice book to add to the collection. I had a spreadsheet that I was filling up with coin info as I was going along. Each time I got a new silver coin I would add it to the list along with its weight and purity. I just type in the day's spot price and it updates all the coin values. Far from comprehensive but it is amazing how quickly it fills up with world junk coins. I have a couple of books for different countries but they are full of base metal coins as well and you have to go searching through it to find anything.
Good thing with the Peso I have is it says 72% and 20 grams https://www.providentmetals.com/mexican-100-pesos-silver-coin-1977-1979.html ----------------------- This is a nice coin BTW https://www.providentmetals.com/2012-1-oz-mexican-silver-libertad-coin.html
One of the reasons I figured it was nice coin originally , the listing of fitness Kinda wondered why the American 90% did not list I think the pawn shop guy was over reacting the coin says what it is and push come to shove can be melted
