Main reason why i haven't bought a 5kg bar... I cant save that much, the urge to buy wins so i end up buying smaller stuff over the month. 5oz/10oz coins, rolls of 20, etc.
Your only human.After all a guy that lives in Ballsdeepsville has bigger issues to attend to. Are houses cheap there?
ironwood, your crystal ball (or your balls) is as good at predicting the future as anyone else's. That's a fact. I've been thinking about a big bar. But the problem is, should the economy collapse and anarchy happen, what are you going to do with it? What the hell are you going to be needing that will cost that much? I think most of our daily needs can be handled with small silver (maybe gold) coins, which can be used to buy food, medicine, fuel, ammunition, and the other practical things we'll be needing when the governments go bankrupt and out of business. I have some Mormon friends who have some big silver bars. They couldn't find a place to stash them, so they painted them black and are using them in plain sight as door stops in the house.
Im saving for a big bar. Ill have to buy it with small coins and bars since I save in silver. I'm also saving for gold via my stack of small coins and bars.
I would consider the liquidity as being a more important factor than price per ounce. After being in the game for a while now my thought that goes behind each purchase now is how will I go about selling this later on (since this is the other half of the equation, you only buy so you can one day sell) There are Pro's and Con's to different sized bars, if you think about what a realistic price for Silver will be in say 3-5 years time then you may find that even a 5kg bar may be out of the price range for most individuals so the potential buyers will be limited. Not saying you can't off-load it in the future, however the avenues for off-loading will limit your choices which may lead you into undesirable sale conditions. [Large Bars i.e. 12Kg+] (Short Term) - Days to Weeks Large bars are best used for Short term trading if you want the physical security of no counter-party-risk as they provide the best bid/ask spread due to the limited Barring costs involved. (Mid Term) - Months to Years I would say for the Mid Term say you want to keep some Silver for a few years to capitalise on future prices then you may be better off paying a premium for smaller bars/coins. Even though you may end up with less ounces there will be more potential buyers when prices are higher as you will be holding something that is in the price range of more investors. The few investors that may still be looking for large bars when prices are higher will be looking to by a large stockpile and will not be interested in the odd one off bar. Shortages historically seem to always start at the bottom end as this is where most new investors start and is also where the premiums in shortages are felt the most. (Long Term) - Years to Decades They are also good for Long term storage where the likely hood of needing to find a buyer at a whim is not as essential. Large investors also go for these large bars due to the amount of capital they are looking at investing. I do have Large bars myself however my Silver is either in large sizes (100oz+) for the long term i.e. 20 years. Or in smaller form of 1 gram to 1 kilo for the 1 - 5 years period. My preference now is for 1oz Coins and 10oz Bars as I'm looking more for adding to my speculative pile. If you see any of the 1kg Bars minted in the late 70's you will notice that most have Serial Numbers marked on them like the large bars today, that is because a 1kg Bar in the late 70's was considered a Large bar just due to the high price of Silver at the time.
The question I pose is, how would you verify a large bar to ensure it is all AG? Is it too big for an XRF, or not?
Once bars reach a certain size they are too big even for ultrasonic testing - I'll have a look at some 5kg and 15kg bars in stock during the week to see how effective it is. At that size though, you can measure and calculate volume for a "dry" specific gravity test - just needs some knowledge of how to calculate volumes of truncated prisms. See this video for how thin XRF can test :/ http://forums.silverstackers.com/topic-27287-ultrasonic-thickness-testing-of-a-fake-silver-bar.html
