This past August is when I started silver stacking and purchasing silver bullion. So far I bought a few bars and rounds, and previously had a 1964 Kennedy Half Dollar (90%), along with a 1 oz Silver American Eagle. I recently watched a video and read about how junk silver is the best "bang for your buck" and has the lowest premiums when purchasing. Does anyone have any suggestions for me on how to buy junk silver? (Knowing how many ounces of silver is in certain coins?, How much over spot to pay for certain junk coins? Judging how many ounces of silver in a given face value?, Etc.) So should I start buying some junk silver to expand the collection? I'd really appreciate all your junk silver suggestions! Thank you.
now 90% is going below spot at wholesale, so you may be looking at about 12.5x FV talk to a few of your local coins dealers, they should have some basic for you dimes quarters and half 1964 and earlier 1000 FV bag etc or $100 bag Group buy ???
Go here for the old SS coin calculators: https://web.archive.org/web/2016052...rstackers.com:80/calculators/index.php?page=3 It lets you calculate Australian and USA coin values by Quantity and by Weight.
Junk silver coins now form the bulk of my collection. When silver goes up, people clean out their closets and you get a fair bit available. When the price of silver drops people just throw it back in the drawer and forget about it again. It has a limited market when you go to resell it, coin collectors aren't usually interested and stackers like pure metals because you can store more $$$ in less space. Preppers, people who believe the fiat currency is going to collapse and people who are sick of the high premiums for modern mint releases are about your only market. I generally like to pay between 5 to 10% on top of spot for these coins, much more and you might as well start buying pure silver. For the local coins like Australian 50% silver coins I would only go up to 5% above because they are plentiful. For world coins that are a bit more interesting to stack and look at I am happy to go over just to get some variety, not that I spend much time looking at them. If you offer a decent amount over spot, pay promptly, communicate well and give feedback then you may well be able to find a continuing source of junk silver coins. I have been very lucky to have made a few connections on this site who offer me coins before they advertise them on the site. Just don't be too fussy over what you get. Before silver went up in 2011 I was buying bulk silver, including postage, for less than the spot value from eBay. You could get round 50s for less than spot too. This might still be possible but not as often. Buying bulk from one place is usually cheaper than buying lots of small lots from numerous sellers, mostly because of the postage costs. You also get better value for money if you buy larger amounts. Check the varioous premiums on your 90% coins, the smaller coins might be cheaper than the same amount of silver in the larger coins, people like big coins so I tend to find the 3 pence coins are cheaper because they are fiddly and a pain in the backside. If you have a local market then you can always go down and look for coin sellers, tell them you are not after collector coins and only after junk silver, they probably have a ton of coins at home that they don't bother to bring with them every time because they are not good enough condition for collectors. Let them know what % over spot you are looking to pay and let them know you are not fussy over grade, denomination or country, if you are happy to take holed, bent or damaged coins then you might find a fair few of them, no one throws them away but no one really wants them in their stock either. Generally the higher purity silver the more you pay, so 92.5% coins are better value than 50% silver coins and you usually find the 50% coins are a bit cheaper. You will most likely want to stick to the USA 90% coins as they will be the most plentiful, dealers will probably have a lot of them going spare once they have been picked over for varieties and errors. Finding the purity of a coin is easy at a website like https://en.numista.com/ just put in as many details as you can find and it will find the coin for you with all the info. If you set up an account they will even work out the melt value in your local currency, which is nice, you can also use it to keep track of your coins and it does all the calculations for you regarding amount of silver, number of coins and melt value. Be aware that old coins with a lot of wear on them will not be the same weight as you see in the guide books. Not sure exactly but if you remove the dirt from them you will find that each coin is less than advertised on the website, multiply that by several thousand coins and you lose a bit of silver, I don't worry about it. It does take up a lot of space though but you don't have to worry too much about storage conditions, no need for 2x2s, coin pages, albums, capsules or handling them with cotton gloves to prevent finger prints etc. Just chuck them in a jar. PROS No special storage requirements Massive variety Low premiums Widely available No need to collect ongoing series or sets Might get a rare coin in bulk CONS Limited market for resale Take up more space than a similar amount of pure silver Dirty, scratched or worn Might get a cupro nickle coin by mistake, you have to check the dates.
Another pro: very few fakes, and many non-stacker people still recognise it as real silver from a time when money was worth something.
And if you do find a fake, they are usually worth more than the silver content of the coin anyway, collectors love them (not modern forgeries of old coins designed for the collector market, but coins that were counterfeited to be spent in circulation)
why do you want to calculate them, unless when selling them. I wanted a bag, it will take a while longer to build. my second hand bag were given by seller for free.
