I'm a teenager. Therefore, I'm probably inexperienced, naive, and stupid. Nevertheless, I've decided that, with the idiot left-wing politicians here in the US, I should invest in something physical with a long history of reliability. No bonds, no annuities, and definitely no stocks. After seven months of collecting, I've acquired 31.7 ozt of silver and about 82.4 lbs of copper in many different forms, such as rare coins and silver rounds. So, I've begun to question which is best: Canadian Silver Maple Leafs or American Silver Eagles. Silver Eagles are the standard, at least here in the US (I can't speak for the rest of the world). They are readily available and widely accepted because they are backed by the supposedly trustworthy US gov't. They are .999 fine and have a face value of $1 USD. Many investors, like myself, pay close attention to the face value of the coin. The ASEs are denominated in USD, which means they are accepted as legal tender all over the world. A comforting fact if silver's value drops below $1 USD per ozt. Not likely, but nice to know. Silver Maple Leafs are also very popular here in the US. Before 2006, they had a significantly lower mintage, calling for higher premiums and more numismatic value. Now, the Royal Canadian Mint spits out Silver Maple Leafs like crazy, lowering the premium to better compete with ASEs and even private mint rounds. The newer Maple Leafs are now cheaper than many of its competitors. In addition, the purity is .9999 fine. ASEs are only .9990, of course. As for face value, it is commonly known that Maple Leafs have a face value of $5 CAD, rather than ASEs' face value of only $1 USD. This can be a wonderful advantage. Some people might argue that the value of silver could drop below $5 CAD, in which the Maple Leafs would be more valuable as "fake" money than as real money. It is not, of course likely that the value of silver would drop so low. Nevertheless, I propose a hypothetical situation: Imagine that Canada's government collapses or there's a massive economic crash or a widespread natural disaster. Imagine one or more of these occurrences causes massive deflation. In this scenario, you could imagine silver being worth perhaps $32 USD per ozt while it is $4.20 CAD per ozt. In this situation it would be advantageous to trade in your Maple Leafs at a bank for $5 CAD apiece, then convert the CAD to USD. You would then get over $38 USD per ozt without any haggling. Nice deal. That scenario is not too likely either, but it is enough to make me want the Maple Leafs more than ASEs. However, the ASE's face value can be a serious advantage as well. Imagine I am an old man with only a few days to live. I have my next-of-kin liquidate all of my investments and buy monster boxes of ASEs. Let's say I now have 5,000 ASEs. When I die, my next-of-kin inherits all of my possessions. For simplicity's sake, my only possessions of value are my 5,000 ASEs. To avoid estate and inheritance taxes, my next-of-kin can honestly say they inherited $5,000 USD. Imagine that silver is $150 USD per ozt. My next-of-kin inherited $750,000 USD and only got taxed on $5,000 USD of that. If the money was invested in Maple Leafs, the face value would be more like $25,000 CAD and much more costly to pay taxes on. These are just a few Pros/Cons I've come up with when comparing Canada's premier silver bullion coin versus the United States' counterpart. Any thoughts?
I'm not sure this adds up "Imagine that Canada's government collapses or there's a massive economic crash or a widespread natural disaster. Imagine one or more of these occurrences causes massive deflation. In this scenario, you could imagine silver being worth perhaps $32 USD per ozt while it is $4.20 CAD per ozt. In this situation it would be advantageous to trade in your Maple Leafs at a bank for $5 CAD apiece, then convert the CAD to USD. You would then get over $38 USD per ozt without any haggling. Nice deal."
In my opinion the ASEs and Maples are intrinsically the same value due to the relatively high mintage of both... BUT certainly, if I had the option of getting the Canadian Wildlife Series for a little bit more, I would choose those ones over the ASEs and Maples. OR if I were restricted to a choice purely between ASEs and Maples, I would probably go with the ASEs, as the milkspot issues aren't as bad (in my experience).
Hope I dont offend anyone but as far as I am concerned they are both boring junk silver coins and neither will do any better than the other or silver spot price +maybe a buck or two, you can probably get a better deal just buying rounds or bars from a reputable dealer. You may want to diversify and get into some other coins like pandas or lunar series (perth) espescially if you are planning on holding for awhile even if the premium is more,then in years to come you may have some coins worth quite a bit more than spot and you can keep the maples and ase's for juggling or something because who cares if they are damaged. I really do not see the debate in this.. You do have an interesting point in the inheratence tax that is good thinking I wonder if many people do that , but who know if people start doing that i am sure they will find a way to stop it or even tax it more...
I must revise my original posting; further research has shown that ASEs have a fineness of .9993, not .9990. The only long shot here is the cause of the deflation. If deflation were to get to the point where silver is worth perhaps $32 USD per ozt while it is $4.20 CAD per ozt, then a larger profit is practically guaranteed. For the aforementioned reasons (advantages of deflation of CAD & avoiding taxes with ASEs), I think I will try to obtain a lot of both ASEs and Maple Leafs. I will probably try to acquire more ASEs.
Y'know, I could push the tax envelope even further with rare coins. Imagine the 5,000 ASEs in my original example. Imagine that they were actually a collection of 1,600 Carson City Morgan Dollars. Some uncirculated, some rainbow toned. You could say that the inheritance was $1,600 USD. It could really be worth a million US dollars easily.
This way of thinking is extremely dangerous. TSA Goons Supervisor - "Yes Mr jcbaker you are right we shouldn't have taken them off you. Your Morgan Dollars however have been misplaced. Here, take this cheque for $1,600 to compensate."
Touch. In that case, I would probably ship them insured with FedEx and not take a chance. That's a good point though.
I hate to break it to you kid, but if you think there is any difference in the long-term destructiveness of the idiot-left wing and the idiot right wing, then you've been had. It's now all the same Kool-aid. Just one is red and one is blue. I used to hoard copper too. I realized it was taking up too much space. However I waited til the copper to silver ratio was in a good spot and then converted the Cu to Ag. if silver goes to $1 then we've got other problems, but that is a good observation. i don't think the Canadian and US dollars would ever decouple that much. Our economies are so closely tied. this is why you should have some of each. and, I as another "yank" welcome you to this Aussie forum.
I've previously run with both of these of various years, although don't hold either at the present, but just to throw my 50 cents worth in.. ASEs are a beautifully finished coin. Probably as nice as any I know of. The multi-strike makes for great detail in the design. Maples come from better refined blanks, but the strike is a bit ordinary, and not the finest image of HRH, just in my opinion. As far as face value goes, I agree with samboyellowsub, if we hit face value, we've got other problems. ASEs don't have the milk spot issues to nearly the same degree as Maples have, but neither has much premium value. Milk spots can be cleaned off fairly easily if it's an issue, and only reduces the lustre on the coin if the spotting is really severe (or the cleaning is done incorrectly). ASEs are harder to fake well, but then, any fake can be passed on to someone unfamiliar with the real thing. Which one? At the time of writing, Maples are marginally better value, but I do mean marginally. ST
I am with BB on this one. Aside from the dragon coins, I believe that PM lunar coins that are purchased in the year of issuance, are the best bullion silver coin investment. ASEs are extremely easy to buy and sell in the US, are recognized world wide and the sales/purchases are not subject to US 1099 reporting. Between myself and clients (mostly the clients) purchased around 20000 ASEs and no milk spots or any other problems. But ASEs will probably only have a premium increase that reflects increased minting costs. I only own a few Maples, but I do have several hundred Canadian Wildlife coins and they have been a much better investment than the ASEs. I just hope they stop trying to see if they can make each animal uglier than the last one.
Nothing apart from the fact that you can't easily get them at spot + X (where X is normal premium for coins) like other bullion coins (Wildlife series, Older PM Lunars in their release year). Paying $60 a coin kind of reduces any future potential gains whereas paying $35 would be fantastic.
I don't care about the design or the date on the bullion coins I buy. I don't buy many ASEs or Maple Leafs any more because I can get Philharmonics and Liberdads for a few cents cheaper. All are true bullion coins and have had very few changes to the basic designs for decades. That's fine with me. When I receive them I count them to make sure they are all there (they always are), and if I am bored I might slide a roll on a scale and weight them (no irregularities yet!). Then I take them out to the garden and bury them under the petunias never to be seen again until I want to sell them. Like most investers I do slip into coin collecting, but only for gifts or if the coin has a bird on it.
I only have a few ASE & CML in my collection, simply because the same design every year and high mintage as well. Plus the Maple Leafs are famous for the milk spots. In my opinion 2012 Chinese Pandas and Perth Mint bullion coins will have much better premiums in a long run than 2012 ASE or Can. Maple Leafs.
You forget that the CAD itself would become horribly devalued in such a scenario (meaning that silver cannot possibly get cheap in CAD terms if their economy tanks) - cross currency metal arbitrage is nigh impossible as long as open FX and bullion markets exist. Only thing that are produced locally to Canada (eg houses in Toronto) will get cheap in CAD terms
I've got more SAE's than Maples but I like them both for what they are: government issued bullion coins worth a buck or so more than rounds. The Pandas, Kooks, Lunars, Britannias, etc are what I think of as semi-numismatics and are usually worth significantly more than spot. I collect them too. My recommendation is to acquire mostly SAE's, Maples, Libertads, before getting more adventurous. Actually there are some SAE's that are in the semi-numismatic realm, the key coins from the 25th Anniversary Silver Set just issued a month or two back. In the shot below, the eagle with the little "S" stamped just above the "E" in fine, is selling for $250-$300 graded. A few Perth Mint coins below the Maple.
