If you google for "buy silver eagles" you get this. Since this is how most people do product buying research they think it applies just as well for precious metals.
The current price of silver at these places can be confusing. You can either pay anywhere between $38 and $58 for the exact same amount of silver! Below is from JM Bullion but Apmex and most other places are the same. And if you ask most people (or read most articles) on where to buy silver from they will tell you Apmex or JM Bullion or your local pawn shop.
While these are all choices, they are not very intelligent ones. First off what you are looking for is just 1 OzT silver bullion coins. Completely ignore options which assign extra value because the coins are a tiny bit more shiny. Coin collectors care about that but those using bullion metals as a store of wealth should absolutely ignore value implied because of some fake rarity factor that takes a coin expert to gauge.
Also, while it might be fun to know the history of bullion coins, it adds nothing to the intrinsic value. Too many places tell you that the value is enhanced by the pretty engraving and the rich history which might have inspired it. Those messages are directed at economically ignorant people with the goal of playing on their emotions. I just hate shit like that and I despise those who do it. The economic value of silver metal is completely dependent upon its industrial importance and its scarcity. The dollar cost, however, is also determined by how much confidence people have in fake paper currency.
Nobody but me explains it like this because, to be honest, there are very few engineers who understand economics to the degree that I do. So let me provide a little more color to these cut and dried engineering (i.e. logical and facts based) assessments.
Bitcoin has no industrial or economic use. It's popularity is completely based on its scarcity and the flawed marketing story that scarcity = value. This is of course not true and it is why bitcoin will eventually go the path that tulips did in the 1600s. Long after people brush bitcoin mania under the carpet of economic embarrassment, silver will continue on as a store of value. While bitcoin may, for all anyone knows, go to a million before it goes to zero, silver cannot go to zero because it has industrial value. It's as simple as that. We use silver for many things from jewelry to electronics. Solar panels and EVs will use a bunch of it over the next decade. And silver is fairly rare. The CEO of First Majestic silver, Keith Neumeyer, recently stated that today, silver comes out of mines globally at a ratio of only 8:1 over gold on average.
So now you know why silver has value: It is fairly rare and hard to come by and it has industrial uses. But the COST should not be fully attributed to the same reasons. Silver bullion coins always carry a premium over spot. Part of that premium is minting and distribution cost. But the degree of premium is greatly affected by the measure of confidence in the paper currency that they are purchased with.
In other words, when common people get worried about the long term viability of fake government money, they go buy silver coins. That creates a demand in the coined metal over the spot price. The spot price is a function of its mining cost (input costs), industrial value and other market forces.
If a company needs silver in order to build and deliver its products, it will approach silver manufacturers (AKA miners) and offer a price. If there is no stock to be had, industry will raise the bid in order to entice the miners to sell to them instead of the other guy. This is exactly what happened to palladium, another of the PGMs (Platinum Group Metals). Palladium dipped to $160 per OzT back in late 2008 and now goes for $2338 for the exact same thing today. Most people have never even heard of palladium so the demand here is not "palladium stackers", etc. It's all industrial demand. As industry changes so will demand. I would expect palladium to pull back as internal combustion engine cars decline because the big industrial shortage here was as an emissions catalyst in a catalytic converter. But battery electric vehicles (BEV), which are coming like a storm front, don't need catalytic converters. They will however need high electrical conductivity and low thermal resistance provided by silver.
OK so forget numismatics. At the same time you want coins in nice shape. Coins that are bent, excessively worn, fire damaged, etc. will be more difficult for you to pass onto the next guy when time comes to spend them so you should just avoid buying them in the first place. Now, if they want to sell them at spot silver price (melt value), that's different. At the melt level, silver is silver. But if they want to sell them at coin prices then they have to be coins in new looking shape. Since it is so easy to buy brand new silver coins, why pay anything more than melt value for something that looks like the coins below?
I will also say that I prefer 0.9999 silver AKA "four 9 fine silver". But US eagles on 99.93. If you want 99.99 then go for the Canadian maple leaf and the Australian Kookaburra, both of which are 1 OzT of four 9 fine silver. Both three 9 and four 9 fine silver coins each have exactly 1 OzT of pure silver. With four 9 you get just that, 1 OzT of silver. With three 9 fine you get 1 OzT of silver and then 0.7% (in the case of silver eagles) of copper. Alloy coins wear better if used in daily trade. But pure elemental silver is better for selling back to industry for use as conductors, catalysts, etc. and for them the fineness might matter in their process whereas anyone will take 4 nine fine silver.
OK with all that, compare today's price for silver from Monex which you can see below. So why is the price (one price, not 20 variants...) lower than the lowest price from Apmex, JD Bullion and all the other commonly discussed places to buy coins (I don't even mention pawn shops - pawn shops are places where smart people buy stuff that stupid people and criminals sold to the pawn shop last month)?
Simple: Monex only sells bullion coins. No numismatics, no guaranteed year, no rated coins. Just new coins. And they also have a minimum order quantity that they call "a unit".
1 unit of silver is 100 coins, so multiply the per coin price by 100. 1 unit of gold coins is 10 coins. 1 unit of platinum coins is also 10 coins. In other words, they are kind of like a wholesale dealer. This is where the smart money shops. IF you don't have enough money for one unit, save up until you do. Is it really that difficult?
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