Featured Anyone else notice the price of silver right now?

Well, I bit the bullet yesterday and drove to Indy, to melt 102.6 lbs. of common flatware patterns and some miscellaneous hollowware. Mostly Wallace, gorham and international. His 9% cut of spot price seemed to offer a better deal than the auction options including eBay which started with the sale tax this year.

 

@Daniel G Forgive my asking but did you actually bring SILVER PLATE flatware to melt?

I know a refiner who sold me good usable silver plate flatware that I sell for replacement just because he did not accept plate for smelting. He maintained that the cost of electricity used for removing silver plate was higher than the recovered silver was worth. He only accepted sterling and 800+ grade for smelting.

What was your experience?

 

I did not have any silver plate, Liz. I had two small pieces of hollowware that were marked “sterling” but I had doubts. One tested at 14% silver content. The other 93.1%. I separated all knives for their processing ease. He tested a platter that weighed about 6.5 lbs but was please to see it come in at 93.9% silver. Everything weighed in and he estimated proceeds to be around $30,000. He said it would take 3-4 days and I could lock in silver price anytime in the next year. Overall, everything went very well.....so far.

 

@Daniel G Thanks, that wasn't clear to me in your initial post. It just seemed like such a huge lot of "silver" so couldn't tell. Hope all continues to go well for you.

 

Yes, when I told him that I was a “collector” and had over 500 lbs, he insisted on telling me that I meant “ounces”! Lol

The remaining 400 lbs are too nice/valuable to melt (tiffany olympian, audubon, chrysanthemum and english king patterns, jensen cactus, acorn and dolphin patterns and buccellati empire) plus some lesser premium ones like francis i, grand baroque, s kirk repousse, etc.

 

@Daniel G That makes sense, thank you for clarifying. Re fine and sterling silver: I carry some on my site but has not sold any lately although the prices on some of it are lower than current smelt values. Oh, well, I'm hoping the folks who already own some, need replacements or round-outs of services will eventually find them

 

I really struggled smelting this stuff. Many of these pieces offered great aesthetic value, imo. Best of luck finding a home for your pieces, liz!

 

yer not alone....but you are also keeping the better pieces....for now....so that's something !!!

 

Precious metals have continued to go up over time, in my personal history, for over 70 years. Never a bad investment. Always something to find a small place for. Definitely better than bonds, stocks, other things. Ya just have to live long enough. LOL

 

gold over $2000 uS...4 the 1st time ever !!
I never though I'd see the day..........

 

My father had a device to reclaim silver from x-ray developing solutions. Before he started, he asked the administrator of the hospital if they were interested in trying to reclaim it. They weren't, so he began in the late 70's and kept it up through the 80's.

 

@Iowa Jayhawk - what's the date for your retirement party? Or did you really mean 'can' and not 'will'?

 

Silver at $26.91
Gold at $2042.50

Wow! Wish I would have bought more a few years back. Procrastinating on assembling that gold type set wasn't a good idea.

http://www.coinflation.com/gold_coin_values.html

 

I have a friend who makes money playing the precious metals market, but he's in for the long haul. Not only did he buy silver back in 1984 or 85, but he actually took it with him when he traveled because he didn't trust putting it in a safe deposit box or leaving it at home! And, yes, the Hunt Brothers were hoarding silver back then.

 

A few years back? Silver was at $12 ozt just 4 months ago!

 

I tried to get some when it dropped precipitously earlier this year but found that the premiums wanted for physical silver were close to $7 an ounce when the spot price was $12. I balked at paying the $19 an ounce most of dealers were asking when paper silver was trading at $12. Never have seen the gap between the paper markets and "real" in-your-hand silver be so large.

 

That is an incredible spread. There are Silver ETF’s (like iShares Silver Trust) that provide opportunities to get you into the market without physical possession. Also, precious metal investment is available through some sector mutual funds. That being said, the volatility in this market is extreme right now.

 

Silver at $28.11
Gold at $2055.44

 

I occasionally buy silver (when it seems cheap) and sell (when it seems high). I do it via junk silver US coin bags. Calling around, I was able to find a local shop that has reasonably small buy/sell spreads. My last purchase was Aug 2018, and calculating the silver content, and the silver price that day, the premium over spot silver was a little over 3%. For relatively small amounts, this works ok. If I was doing big money, I'd consider the ETFs mentioned earlier. But it's a more fun to have it in hand. The premium mentioned by @Joe2007 is crazy. There should be other better local options than that. Another thing to consider is state laws regarding sales tax. In my state, fortunately, there is no sales tax on silver and gold bullion, and junk silver is considered bullion.

 

Precious metals have really been acting strangely over the past 6 months likely due to all of the economic uncertainty. There is perhaps some collusion/market manipulation going on at times in the paper markets. The premiums on physical silver are normally fairly modest but earlier this year they went through the roof. All the local coin dealers I know were having to pay substantially over the spot price of the metal to be able to have inventory in stock.

For example if spot price was $18 per ounce of junk silver (90% coinage) they were having to pay $20 and then would resell at $22. This normally doesn't happen and many times they buy slightly back of spot and then sell either at spot or slightly over spot depending on the quality of the coins in the junk silver bin. I recently got a small amount of junk silver at the silver content (melt value).

Unfortunately my state, Ohio, now has sales tax on coins and bullion again after repealing it for several years.

Anyone interested in coins and silver; I highly recommend Daniel Malone's videos on YouTube. His channel name is CoinHELPu.