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Posted 01/15/2026 3:54 pm
This is a great thread!
I haven't posted much on the forum over the past year; this is partly because I was buying 90% in Rome in volume and bringing it to the u.s. a few times a year and trading for more 'interesting' metal. I stopped posting my buys because they became more mathematic and less numismatic . I have a different perspective because I dealt in two markets - Rome, Italy and the U.S.
I had a large stock of semi-numis stuff (AU Morgan, etc.) and piles of short-long term 90%. I've sold through nearly everything now and noticed a few things.
1) Morgan dollars were €30 here when silver was $20-25; when silver broke $40, Morgan's were 20% below melt... They stayed around €30. There was almost no correlation; except the coins became bullion in the eyes of sellers and buyers relatively quickly. Now, with silver at $90+, Morgan's are €60. I'll see where it goes but I'm not buying.
2) culled 19th European coins were selling for melt +/- 5% for 3-5 years. They weren't always an easy sell. I had to routinely contact past buyers and regular customers when I'd get a stack in a collection. Now, I get messages from past buyers asking what I have and if they can buy it. There's almost none of this around; I know piles of it were melted, but I'm hard pressed to find a single french or Belgian 5 franc (I had rolls of these for a while and every collection had loads)
3) sovereigns are the workhorse of European gold - in my experience;these were melted by the sack. I bought wholesale silver from a few dealers and they would show me their melt piles. I don't think there's a sovereign with a pre-charles king left! And Elizabeth s were melted by the kilo.
4) u.s. silver is nearly non existent. And, the coins I see I'm not buying. I don't know if it's a bubble or if it will go up/down/sideways but €24 '64 Kennedy halves just don't make sense in my mind when I was paying €7-8. I suspect there will be melts; material isn't sitting on shelves very long. It's moving somewhere and I don't thinks it's leaving shops at retail.
5)what I'm finding now ... Are odd weight European commemoratives, scrap (pocket watch cases), .800 religious medals, etc.
6) a lot more ancient (late Roman and byzantine) and medieval good has popped out of collections. I'm not interested in these because it seems like a new barrel of buried coins is found every week in Europe.
Anything decent isn't out for sale - either in a long stack, melted, or somewhere else.
Just some rambling.
I haven't posted much on the forum over the past year; this is partly because I was buying 90% in Rome in volume and bringing it to the u.s. a few times a year and trading for more 'interesting' metal. I stopped posting my buys because they became more mathematic and less numismatic . I have a different perspective because I dealt in two markets - Rome, Italy and the U.S.
I had a large stock of semi-numis stuff (AU Morgan, etc.) and piles of short-long term 90%. I've sold through nearly everything now and noticed a few things.
1) Morgan dollars were €30 here when silver was $20-25; when silver broke $40, Morgan's were 20% below melt... They stayed around €30. There was almost no correlation; except the coins became bullion in the eyes of sellers and buyers relatively quickly. Now, with silver at $90+, Morgan's are €60. I'll see where it goes but I'm not buying.
2) culled 19th European coins were selling for melt +/- 5% for 3-5 years. They weren't always an easy sell. I had to routinely contact past buyers and regular customers when I'd get a stack in a collection. Now, I get messages from past buyers asking what I have and if they can buy it. There's almost none of this around; I know piles of it were melted, but I'm hard pressed to find a single french or Belgian 5 franc (I had rolls of these for a while and every collection had loads)
3) sovereigns are the workhorse of European gold - in my experience;these were melted by the sack. I bought wholesale silver from a few dealers and they would show me their melt piles. I don't think there's a sovereign with a pre-charles king left! And Elizabeth s were melted by the kilo.
4) u.s. silver is nearly non existent. And, the coins I see I'm not buying. I don't know if it's a bubble or if it will go up/down/sideways but €24 '64 Kennedy halves just don't make sense in my mind when I was paying €7-8. I suspect there will be melts; material isn't sitting on shelves very long. It's moving somewhere and I don't thinks it's leaving shops at retail.
5)what I'm finding now ... Are odd weight European commemoratives, scrap (pocket watch cases), .800 religious medals, etc.
6) a lot more ancient (late Roman and byzantine) and medieval good has popped out of collections. I'm not interested in these because it seems like a new barrel of buried coins is found every week in Europe.
Anything decent isn't out for sale - either in a long stack, melted, or somewhere else.
Just some rambling.
