Low premium generic minted rounds or bars, nothing which is legal tender in any country. Nothing which comes in a capsule or is 'numismatic' in any way. 'Second Hand' silver is fine. I also like the occassional Lunar, Kookaburra gilded etc. but I usually only buy one of each.
For those who are sitting on silver bars, difficult to sleep well in a big drop like the current situation, because metal is metal, and weight doesn't change. On the other hand, there are still decent premium on older un-circulated bullion coins, such as Perth Mint's lunar and older Chinese Pandas. Besides, you can turn a legal tender coin into junk metal, but you cannot turn junk silver into legal tender. That's why I insist purchasing bullion coins which are 1)affordable low premium, 2)well known, and 3)limited production, such as Perth Mint's lunar.
True, but what's the point of having legal tender? It's not like you're ever gonna use it for its face value :/
No standards on cast bars, Police won't get too serious about someone producing tungsten filled bars, but it's a big matter if you produce a fake country's legal tender, that's for sure. Besides, with naked eyes, easier to identify fake coins, but not fake bars. One fake bar in your entire stack is going to cost more than the premium you will pay extra for all other coins.
Some good points raised but I don't agree with all of them... It's true, you can turn legal tender into junk silver but not the other way around. You could melt a legal tender coin and sell it for junk silver prices if you wanted to (apart from any legal issues) but I am not sure that is a feature I would be prepared to pay a higher premium for. Also, not being Legal Tender does not necessarily equate to being 'junk'. junk is usually used to refer to old coins or jewellery and more often than not the metal is not .999 silver. Also cast bars are not the only option if you reject legal Tender coins, you can get minted bars, machined bars, minted rounds, shot and probably a few more formats. On a side note, all my junk silver started life out as legal tender. As to standards...I am sure Perth Mint has some standards for their poured bars, they might not be government standards (but being part of WA they might be). Despite this I would have no qualms about buying from them. I would not buy backyard hand pours as you are right, they would have little to no standards or accountability. Legal Tender has been counterfeited throughout history, and is still counterfeited today. They are getting better though if you have a fake next to a genuine coin you can usually tell them apart just by looking at them. However they may get to the point where they are not as obvious and one of those in your stack will hurt even more than a fake bar. The additional legal standing of Legal Tender does not offer you any protection from buying a fake, it just reduces the liklihood of you coming across one. The intricacy of the design often associated with the higher production quality of Legal Tender coins (and often the weight) is what is stopping people from being able to pass the fakes unnoticed. A really good quality of fake instead of the low quality rubbish we are seeing at the moment could sit in your stack for years if you didn't test it properly, legal tender or not. From the Royal Mint's website http://www.royalmint.com/discover/uk-coins/counterfeit-one-pound-coins Around 3% of Legal Tender Pound coins in the UK are counterfeit, about 44,000,000 coins, does that sound like the police are doing much to protect people from getting counterfeit coins, or that people are afraid to counterfeit them because of the penalties? And that is the English police hard at work on English counterfeiters on circulating English legal tender in the shops. Can you imagine how much Australian Police can be bothered about Chinese counterfeiters making Canadian coins for the collector market? At the end of the day we all have personal preferences and we can rationalise why we like one type of silver over another and come up with any number of reasons why one type is better than another. With your Legal Tender you are paying extra for an additional service, like insurance, the promise that it is made to a certain standard and that it is illegal to counterfeit it. If you find you have a counterfeit and you hand it into the Police and tell them that you bought it in good faith do you think they will replace it for you with a genuine coin? Mount a SWAT team raid on the dodgy dealer who sold it to you. Or will they just confiscate it and promise to look into it for you. Will your insurance company offer to replace the counterfeit item as it was sold to you as legal tender? To me there are too many strings attached to legal tender and not enough incentive. Sure the pictures are better, though some people seem to like PAMPs, sure there is more money to be made selling them to collectors, sure it is nice to have a bit of a collection yourself. But... if you sell to a dealer you will probably lose most if not all of the extra premium you paid. And I don't like the idea that the government can hold any claim to my silver at all, and I know I am straying into the realms of the tinfoil hat brigade but if the government says my 1oz of silver is worth $1 and their bronze aluminium coin is worth $1 then if they swap one for the other I haven't lost out any purchasing power. Other mints are making more effort to protect the consumers than Governments are. While the Government expects the threat of legal wrath to deter counterfeiters other companies are actively adding security measures to their products to protect us from fraud. This can be as lame as a special holder or a serial number or as advanced as a new minting technique with latent images and augmented reality, QR codes or whatever. I would put more of my faith in those products, these companies need to keep our business and our trust. The Government doesn't have to work hard for our trust or our business, they can just take it directly out of our pay packets. Anyway, I have a mix of everything, including lots of legal tender, I have nothing against the stuff but I have one of each of the different pictures I want for my collection, to give as gifts and to speculate on the prices rising (Four coin Year of the Snake set anyone???)
