Paging Precious Metal Bugs… Have you bought from….

[Coronita]

1. Just wondering of if any of you have bought from “Bay Precious Metals” on eBay. If so, what’s your experience?

I’ve been sticking to Apmex for everything and so far so good.. But this appeared too good to be true from Bay Precious Metals….

http://www.ebay.com/itm/331605540262

Because it’s only like $40-50 above spot for Platinum, and there’s nothing else out there showing platinum only 40-50 above spot. (closer to $100-150 above spot for platinum).

2. The other question if I have is for silver bugs out there. Have any of you guys bought from the Canadian Royal Mint’s $20 for $20, $25 for $25, $50 for $50, $100 for $100, and/or $200 for $200?

Apparently, the Royal mint makes some 99.99% silver coins that have a face value for $20 CAN, $25, and $50, $100, $200 respectively that can be purchased at the same denomination. Granted that the actual silver content is much less than 1 ounce and the price you pay for the silver content is way above spot price for silver. But the coins are legal tender in Canada. So for example purchasing a $20 coin at $20, it’s at least can be used as $20 CAN, irrespective of the actual appreciation/depreciation that might happen with silver.
Thoughts?

http://www.mint.ca/store/buy/20-for-20_coins-cat610001

[The-Shoveler]

You don’t seem like a money metal person flu LOL.

Anyway I have been buying a little silver below $15.

I don’t think I would put more than a few percentage into it myself but that is just me, (maybe if it gets below $10 I would be willing to add more aggressively).

[Coronita]

[quote=The-Shoveler]You don’t seem like a money metal person flu LOL.

Anyway I have been buying a little silver below $15.

I don’t think I would put more than a few percentage into it myself but that is just me, (maybe if it gets below $10 I would be willing to add more aggressively).[/quote]

Lol. I did buy silver at around $0.86/ounce above spot prices but the problem is most of the silver isn’t legal tender, so I’m thinking it’s value is completely dependent on how the metal does (which frankly I think it’s going to go up from here on out). Most of which would be around melt value.

What was appealing to me about the coins from the Canadian mint is that they are legal tender so they are at least worth the face value of what is printed on the coin. Andthey can be bought at face value, unlike say a 1 ounce gold coin with a $50 face value but costs $1300!!! Whatever appreciation happens in silver would be a nice to have. Not to mention the coins look pretty cool. The actual silver content is about 1/4 of an ounce (7.96 grams of 99.99% pure silver.) So… purely from a cost per ounce perspective, it’s way over spot….

So for example , if silver prices crashes and burns, I could still spend the $20CAN that I bought with $20CAN say at Whistler when I go there to ski 🙂

And yeah, I had to talk to the banks and get some safe boxes. Storing silver is a pain sort of.

[moneymaker]

If the actual silver value was closer to the coin cost then I would call it a hedge bet. I’m guessing they make the actual silver content way lower than 1 oz so as to deter people from melting them down when silver goes up. Even when silver was $50/oz it would not make sense to melt a $20 coin down to get $12.50

[milkspot]

I have purchased from Bay Precious Metals two times. They were small purchases … fractional bullions coins. That’s how I usually do it, start small, build some trust before making bigger purchases. So far so good with them.

[Coronita]

[quote=milkspot]I have purchased from Bay Precious Metals two times. They were small purchases … fractional bullions coins. That’s how I usually do it, start small, build some trust before making bigger purchases. So far so good with them.[/quote]

Thanks for the feedback. Good to know.

I’m currently putting apmex to the ringer. All my purchases have been fine up to this point, except the last coin I got was an american eagle. It showed up with a big tarnish spot in the center. I didn’t think gold would tarnish that quickly, it probably has to do with the other metal content in the eagle (since eagle’s arent 99.99% pure, but alloyed)

[scaredyclassic]

Buy mercury dimes.
Easy to verify.
Stable premium over spot.

[OwnerOfCalifornia]

1. Never used that retailer. Platinum: for believers in PM ‘ratios’, I guess platinum is a good buy right now.

2. I’ve seen these but never thought about buying them. Kinda intriguing…I guess you can think of them as a zero-cost waaay-out-of-the-money call option.

[gzz]

I had no problems with both BPM and ApMex via eBay.

I think RCM’s “20 for 20” is kind of gimmicky. They are also known to not properly clean their dies, resulting in “milkspot” on their coins. Google image for examples. Ends up effecting about half of all Canadian silver coins, some quite badly.

Recently there was a deal where major seller was doing 5oz sunshine bars for about $81, which worked out to Spot + 38 cents with free shipping if you used a cash-back credit card.

I am excited to receive my first 100oz silver bar soon, I think silver is the way to go right now, and it is just more fund to have a big hunk of precious metal compared to the amount of gold for the same price (about 1.25 oz).

[gzz]

The platinum coin you linked to would be about $25 over spot if you used a 2% cash back credit card. That is a good but not amazing price.

[Coronita]

[quote=gzz]The platinum coin you linked to would be about $25 over spot if you used a 2% cash back credit card. That is a good but not amazing price.[/quote]

Have you been able to get platinum at or below spot?

[Coronita]

[quote=gzz]I had no problems with both BPM and ApMex via eBay.

I think RCM’s “20 for 20” is kind of gimmicky. They are also known to not properly clean their dies, resulting in “milkspot” on their coins. Google image for examples. Ends up effecting about half of all Canadian silver coins, some quite badly.

Recently there was a deal where major seller was doing 5oz sunshine bars for about $81, which worked out to Spot + 38 cents with free shipping if you used a cash-back credit card.

I am excited to receive my first 100oz silver bar soon, I think silver is the way to go right now, and it is just more fund to have a big hunk of precious metal compared to the amount of gold for the same price (about 1.25 oz).[/quote]

Funny you should mention about milkspot… I got a tarnish spot on one of my Golden Eagles I received recently. I was a little hesistant to send it back, but after talking to apmex, they exchanged it no questions asked.

[gzz]

Never. 20-30 over is the best I have seen, but it isn’t a rare deal to see it.

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