Your most memorable buy

[Ouija]

Personally I'd just start paying it down as quickly as possible. Cut back on as many expenses as you can and plough it all into the card. Analyse your spending for a week or two and you'll be surprised how much is 'wasted'. I know some people with big card debt and a few thousand in the bank because they like the feeling of having it there... Even though it's costing them $300+/m.

You lost what, $10k? Not the worst thing to have done, could even have gone the other way and you'd look like a genius! We've all made money mistakes but as long as you learn from it, all can be forgiven

You get it - You are awesome, and I think we can all learn something here.

Hey, Kids - Don't max-out the AmEx, just because you can - as generous as they are, they will eventually want their money back.

 

[Skyrocket]

I started stacking past two and half years when silver had come down from it's high so all my buys are memorable. Some proofs I got are my favorite though.

Silver is going to skyrocket big time this year or next when GFC comes so do not despair. It will come good investment for sure. My crystal ball says so.

 

[Ipv6Ready]

My most memorable is a free 50c round here in this forum.

I don't recall what I was bidding on anymore (lost the auction anyway), but I stated that it was my first bid on the forum and the seller sent me a round 50c and paid for postage as well.

It was few months after joined, I have forgotten who the member is, but I am sure it was a Tasmanian member.

Anyway thank you

 

[Flyinfree]

My most memorable buy is also my most embarrassing.

A couple years ago, I received an American Express Blue Cash card with a $30,000 credit line, and promptly decided to go all-in on silver, when the price was $24.

Placed a large order with APMEX, and had the shiny goodies delivered two days later.

Now I am making minimum payments on the interest, and sitting on a pile of $16 silver.

Secretly hoping that the world turns upside-down (just for a couple of days), so I can cash-in, and get off this silly treadmill.

There you have it I already know that I am a fool so please don't be too harsh on me.

Well, you are not the only one here.

A couple years ago when AUD was around 1:1 with USD, I paid $25~35 on silver rounds. Now......Silver sitting at $16~17 USD and I still paying $25~35 AUD..........Damn it.

The only lucky thing is I bought 1.75 oz gold at $1200 AUD/oz (around 1100 USD/oz at that time) and now bring me some profits.

 

[Flyinfree]

I wasn't criticisizng the silver buy (plenty of us have similar stories). I meant you're significantly compounding your simple mistake and could easily lose the same amount again by making only the minimum repayments.

I know, House - but what should I do now? Pawn it all for spot - and be left with nothing, but debt and no physical metal??

I have the feeling that I am not the only one in this situation, and there will probably be more comments and attacks, as the other members around the world wake up in whatever time zones they live in - and I suspect that this forum will welcome this little bit of interesting chatter.

Pay off the credit card ASAP or transfer credits into your long term home loan at lower interest rate (ignore it if you got 0.01% pa to pay).

After that, try to get another $30K to buy silver!!!!!!!!!!! it will bring your average cost from $24 USD/oz to around $20 USD/oz.

 

[Aureus]

Ouija,
there may be a couple tools that revel in misfortune, but, for the most part, this community is sympathetic.
Maybe your honesty will help prevent someone else from making the same mistake.

 

[mmissinglink]

Ouija,

I meant no disparagement at all by what I'd written. I'd say the same thing to myself had I done that with a credit card.

I actually admire your openness. I have, at times on public forums including this one, admitted to things that I'd done that in hindsight were a result of not good thinking. So I'm no better than you or anyone else.

I honestly do hope the best for your financial situation and I'm confident that you already see this choice you described as a learning lesson.



.

 

[Jislizard]

I was thinking of my favourite purchase until I read this thread and now I reaslise my most memorable one is an eBay listing I screwed up because I was in a hurry.

Back in about 2007 you could buy silver for spot on ebay and often under spot if it was pre decimal junk silver. I got really into it, silver was about $14 to $15 from memory. I bid on a ton of auctions, just set up a sniping program to bid on every silver auction that was running. I lost loads of auctions but the few I did win were all around spot.

I set up a spreadsheet to do the calculations for me, put in the amount of silver, the spot price and the postage and it would tell me how much to bid on each auction.

I was in a hurry one night and I was playing around with the formula when I saw a sealed roll of American Silver Eagles up for auction. This was something different from what I usually bid on. Pure silver not 50%, a whole tube, not just a handful of different coins, American not Australian, premium product not junk and it was late. So I plugged the numbers in and it told me to bid $622, which I did. Not surprisingly I won!

Instead of linking to the spot price of $15/oz I had linked to the cell with the number of grams in a troy ounce (31.1) So I was bidding over twice the spot price for common ASEs. I worked out they cost me around $36 each.

I still have them, for a brief period I would have made my money back on them if I had sold them but that didn't last long.

I am kicking myself for messing up the auction and I am kicking myself for not selling them when silver peaked and I am kicking myself every time I see them in the safe.

Mind you, they are not my worst purchase...

Back when silver was fast approaching $50 it was getting harder to find silver. I won one auction for some junk silver but as the price of silver kept rising, the seller told me he couldn't find the coins and refunded my money only to relist them the next day. There were also photos of people queuing up at bullion dealers to buy physical and most websites had a two month delay in delivering the product. Great Days!

I had been keeping an eye on RAM Kangaroos but no way was I paying $35 for $15 worth of silver. As the price rose $35 looked like a good deal after all but you couldn't find any left to buy. As was the case in those days, if anyone found a supply of silver they would buy everything they wanted and then post a link to what remained on this forum. Some kind soul published a link to a Coin Club Website where the members were selling Kangaroos for $50 each and seemed unaware that they were now basically selling them for spot. I jumped on the link and bought one of everything they had. Then posted on the forum again. They were sold out really soon after that. Pretty much the very next day silver began its decent.

I figured I at least had some numismatic silver but at the next coin show I went to I could pick the same coins up for $40, so I made a 20% loss on each coin, fortunately I only bought one of each.

And I bought 23kg of 50% silver at spot price of $26. That also went up in value but I was in my accumulation phase at the time so I had the pleasure of watching that drop to $18 after it hit $49. The plan was to sell half at $50 to cover off the original purchase and essentially make the other half 'free'. Just didn't quite make it.

Although I didn't take out a loan to buy the stuff I could have put the money into my mortgage repayments and they would easily have had a better return than silver, I just have to hope for another meteoric rise in spot to break even.

Maybe you could sell half the silver for whatever you can get for it and pay this straight into the credit card to lower your monthly payments. Hopefully you have some interesting pieces that would sell for more than spot price.

 

[Desire_Silver]

I am newer; however, I love all my silver at this point. Sadly, I have not found that must have coin or my favorite type yet. I have never fell on a hidden gem with tons of unexpected value. I find myself looking at silver dollars (Morgan, Peace) and admiring the coin often, even though I only have three. A few additional types of coins (half dollars, cents) have been attractive, but I haven't dabbled in them yet as I try to limit my coins as I learn.

In short, I like all my coins, but can't say one is my favorite or most memorable.

 

[Killface]

Don't max-out the AmEx, just because you can - as generous as they are, they will eventually want their money back.

I'm not so sure I'd use the word generous!!

As a friend of mine told me years ago, credit providers love people who can't pay off their debts, it means they keep making money off you forever

Ouija, PLEASE take House's advice (and that of any adviser you could ask), make it your number one priority to pay down that debt. If you like looking at a $30k stack, imagine how much better it will feel owning it. The longer you pay interest on it, the more it has cost you.

But thanks for sharing, it is very interesting to learn of others' experiences.

 

[hihosilveraway]

Most of my silver are American Eagles, bought over the past 4 years for anywhere from $18 to $33 an ounce. I don't have any regrets about these purchases for a couple of reasons: the price of silver is 100% manipulated by Wall Street and the financial repression cannot go on forever; there is considerable peace and confidence that I traded FedReserveNotes for real money; the silver acts as an insurance policy if (more likely when) the world as we know it turns chaotic; the days of the petrodollar empire are numbered, and a Eurasian gold-backed currency of some type will eventually emerge; silver is a finite resource in a world that keeps demanding more silver for industry and wealth protection; the COMEX will someday be destroyed, and the zillions of ounces of paper silver will be redeemed for fiat dollars hyperinflating by the day...this isn't crystal ball, these are trends in our world today....as to my most memorable buy, it wasn't silver, but an 1855-O New Orleans gold dollar at my local coin store which had just been sold by the heirs of an estate for next to spot price...no one who looked at this coin including me thought it was anything but fine or maybe very fine...so I had it graded by NGC a few months ago and it came back AU 53, because all of the strikes that year were weak...I paid $275 and it's worth nearly ten times that amount.

 

[Topherclaus]

My only purchase which I'm not happy with is my gold Kinebar, which was one of those "have to have it" purchases from the moment I saw one. I asked here and searched Australia but simply couldn't find them, so I bit the bullet and bought one from Apmex for a price that was a bit more than I'd typically pay over spot, but not ridiculous (I honestly don't remember how much, kind of trying to forget) but the postage cost a pretty penny on top. When it arrived I was horrifiedto see that the packaging on the face side of the bar had been rubber in a lot of tiny spots which completely detracts from the image. I spoke to them about it and they offered a refund on return but the postage alone basically makes that a pointless move. Someone might buy it off me for something over spot when the time comes to sell.

 

[tolly_67]

Best buy....2 ounce Kookaburra for $15 back in about 2006....old bloke didn't realise the price of silver had risen. Bought it at a coin fair along with some rounds at about $5 a piece.

 

[neonuke]

I have a few memorable purchases.

The first time I got a round 50 was back in primary school, I swapped a Hong Kong bimetallic $10 coin for my friend's round 50. He told me his family had some at home and was willing to do a swap. I had never seen a round 50 before, and he had never seen a bimetallic coin before. When I got it I was enthralled! My 12 year old self thought it was the most fascinating thing to see a round 50 cent coin. Also at the time I had no idea what real silver actually was, it was only after I realised that the round 50 was 80% silver that looking back now I think I got quite a deal in the swap.

First silver purchase was a Perth Mint 1kg bar. Silver had come back down from the $49 high, it was still around $35 and oz at the time when I bought it. Had no idea where or how to purchase silver, and a google search lead me to the Perth Mint. Ordered directly from them, paid through the nose for the premium and shipping. It arrived a few days later, I still distinctly remember the strange sensation of holding something so dense in my hands. That bar has since long moved on, I swapped it on here for some numi coins, most of which have been flipped. Still managed to break even on the bar by flipping the numis, even after watching silver drop all the way to the mid $20s throughout the whole process.

Best purchase was a lot of predecimal silver on eBay. The listing had only a couple of photos of the lot, but interestingly there was a 1934/35 Commemorative in the mix. Knowing there are many fakes out there, and the photo not being very clear of all the coins, I pulled the trigger anyway on the ~$20 buy it now price. Received it a few days later and lo and behold, the 1934/35 Melbourne Centenary Florin was the real deal. Couldn't believe my luck.

 

[Flyinfree]

I have a few memorable purchases.

The first time I got a round 50 was back in primary school, I swapped a Hong Kong bimetallic $10 coin for my friend's round 50. He told me his family had some at home and was willing to do a swap. I had never seen a round 50 before, and he had never seen a bimetallic coin before. When I got it I was enthralled! My 12 year old self thought it was the most fascinating thing to see a round 50 cent coin. Also at the time I had no idea what real silver actually was, it was only after I realised that the round 50 was 80% silver that looking back now I think I got quite a deal in the swap.

First silver purchase was a Perth Mint 1kg bar. Silver had come back down from the $49 high, it was still around $35 and oz at the time when I bought it. Had no idea where or how to purchase silver, and a google search lead me to the Perth Mint. Ordered directly from them, paid through the nose for the premium and shipping. It arrived a few days later, I still distinctly remember the strange sensation of holding something so dense in my hands. That bar has since long moved on, I swapped it on here for some numi coins, most of which have been flipped. Still managed to break even on the bar by flipping the numis, even after watching silver drop all the way to the mid $20s throughout the whole process.

Best purchase was a lot of predecimal silver on eBay. The listing had only a couple of photos of the lot, but interestingly there was a 1934/35 Commemorative in the mix. Knowing there are many fakes out there, and the photo not being very clear of all the coins, I pulled the trigger anyway on the ~$20 buy it now price. Received it a few days later and lo and behold, the 1934/35 Melbourne Centenary Florin was the real deal. Couldn't believe my luck.

OMG, I can't believe it!!!!!!Just paid $350 on 1934/35 Commemorative to complete my Florin collection, cry on me~~~~~~