Hi all -- Tomorrow I'll publish my article comparing silver online dealer prices in North America. In the meantime, you can check out the Google spreadsheet here. I notice a lot of people overpay for metal, hence the article and spreadsheet. The prices were gathered on New Year's Day, when silver trading was suspended for most of the day, and the spot price hovered around 15.45 USD. The point of the spreadsheet is not to provide right now prices, since we'd need live feeds or APIs to do that in an automated way. Rather, the point is to show relative prices, comparing dealers to each other at a time when the spot price was stable. These relative prices are consistent beyond New Year's Day. SD Bullion and Silver.com consistently offer the best or near-best prices for most items, especially coins like the ASE, Maple Leaf, Britannia, and Kangaroo (I call these the Four Eyes countries, which is the Five Eyes minus New Zealand). The spreadsheet includes those four coins bundled into Order 1 (one of each coin), with shipping added. It then punches through the free shipping threshold of most dealers ($99) by showing some six ounce orders, then 10 ASE, 20 ASE, a monster box of ASE, cheapest 10 oz bar, 10 oz Royal Canadian Mint bar, 10 oz Britannia (which are a great value right now; low premiums), cheapest kilo bar, and a Freedom Girl round. With the exception of the Freedom Girl, I skipped rounds because the brands and mints vary so much by dealer (or they have anonymous mintage), and they're not as prized as coins and bars. Freedom Girl was designed by artist Heidi Wastweet, and I think it's one of the most beautiful round/coin designs I've ever seen. I earn affiliate commissions from some dealers, but I let the chips fall where they did regardless of affiliate opportunities -- for example, Silver.com has no affiliate program, but they did very well and you should always check in with them (and SD Bullion) when you shop around. I still have some minor clean-up to do with the spreadsheet, but it should be quite usable in its current form. As you can see, some dealers don't offer all four of the above-mentioned coins. Some don't offer specific year, or current year coins -- they just sell random year, which is going to be secondary market (previously owned). I put NA in those cases. It breaks the spreadsheet's computation for Order 1, but that's fine – the computation should be aborted for any dealer that can't actually fill the order, though I wish I could figure out how to replace the error message with NA. Thoughts? Feedback? Let me know what you think. Perhaps there are other orders I should include, or other dealers?
Only relevant for US. Rest of the world without free shipping and factor in currency conversion, taxes and charges etc -these prices are purely academic.
Of course, I said it's for North America (US and Canada, not just US). I'll release follow-ons focused on Oceania and Europe, as well as gold in North America and the other regions.
Some of the dealers listed in your spreadsheet are actually mints (Silvertowne, Scottsdale, etc.) and I think the parameters you chose for comparison don't really address their value proposition. Have you considered comparing the cost for 1 oz, 6 oz, or 10 oz of silver in any form (bars/rounds, etc.)? Personally, I have found Silvertowne to have good deals (special sales) on their own minted silver bars from time to time that beat most everyone for metal/dollar value. Another potential point of comparison amongst dealers is the payment options that are available. Some accept credit cards (same price as cash or not?). Some have specific requirements on when they accept wire transfers versus checks. Some accept PayPal or even bitcoin.
Good points. I'll run a comparison between the dealers who are mints or have their own mints. That would be a good way to get Monarch involved as well. I'll do a separate spreadsheet for them. All prices are wire/check prices. I'll note this in the article. In all cases, dealers charge more for credit cards and PayPal. In the article I touch on how you can approach wire/check prices by using a cash back credit card.
here is a website, where you can find price comparison from USA, UK, Australian, Asian and European dealers as well as deals and sales https://trustedpmdealers.com/compare-prices
Interesting. That website is missing lots of dealers, and the prices aren't accurate. When I click the buy button, the price at the dealer's website doesn't match the price on TrustedPMDealers. And it only has 13 dealers, whereas my spreadsheet has 21. It's missing major dealers like Gainesville Coins, Golden Eagle Coin, BGASC, BOLD Precious Metals, Bullion Exchanges, Silvertowne, and Golden State Mint. Of course my prices aren't accurate anymore either – they're the New Year's Day prices. But they're not meant to be a live feed, but rather a comparison tool showing which dealers tend to have the lowest prices (I ran price comparisons several times in the months before New Year's Day. The dealers with the best prices didn't change – they are SD Bullion and Silver.com, sometimes BOLD, Bullion Exchanges or BGASC). Setting up an accurate live feed seems difficult. There are a few websites with live feeds, including comparesilverprices.com
have you checked all the coins? Of course there are such dealers as mentioned above and even more. You say that the prices aren't accurate - well, they are constantly bouncing and there is a difference in cents at pm spot at that site and at dealers's websites. Look for instance at 2018 1 oz silver Krugerrand - there are offers from Gainesville, Silvertowne, BOLD, Bullion Exchanges, Golden Eagle Coin and 13 more. If some offer is missing right now sooner it will be added. https://trustedpmdealers.com/compar...th-african-krugerrand-silver-bullion-coin-999
