Precious Metals Speculation Harming Coin Collecting

I agree with the Duke on his melting comment. Unless the coin is so badly worn as to be significantly below weight, melting and recoining or rebarring simply adds significant costs to the transactions.

If the crap were to hit the fan (worse than now), I would prefer to have coined silver of known weight and purity, in small denominations for everyday transactions.

I would rather trust the 1960s silver product of the RCM or US Mint rather than a round from some refinery I've never heard of.

The precious metal bubble will pop in second half of 2011.

Silver has already gone parabolic and is tracing a post-parabolic reversal...you can pull it up over a NASDAQ 2001 chart to see how that goes...follow it in real time.

Oil, platinum and palladium are breaking down under major supports, only gold is still steady, partly because of runaway inflation in China and problems in Europe.

"Dollar is toast, as are all fiat currencies". You'll be right, only you would have been dead a 100 years by that time (think 22nd century...perhaps).

We had our inflation. It was 1995-2008. "Peak credit" has been reached, its collapsing and there is no way to reverse it.

The attempt at bubble re-flation by Bernanke in 2009-2011 worked on the markets and commodities, which have seen a massive speculative re-leveraging by the way...

Only problem...it did nothing for the real economy. Housing continues to plummet, unemployment continues to soar. Deflationary forces are massive.

People dont understand the monetary system and have misinterpreted the massive speculation and leveraging in the commodity markets as proof of "inflation".

The speculation has been driven by the perception that QE1 and QE2 constitute massive printing, which has to lead to inflation. However, this perception is now hitting a brick wall of reality. The Fed bought some toxic paper, supported the markets, shuffled some more paper, and in the end, did nothing of consequence.

"Dollar is toast". I know you hope to one day wake up in a Mad Max world, where everyone has thrown away their dollars and they barter for old silver nickels and dimes and the guy with the biggest silver sack is king. There is only one problem. The US government expects you to pay your taxes every year with US dollars, not silver dimes. And you better have those US dollars. Furthermore, thanks to Obama, you'll need more and more of them each year.

Funny thing about them US dollars. Few people seem to have enough of them. And that $400,000 home you used to own is now worth $200,000 and if you're still paying interest on that $390,000 mortgage...you're gonna be seriously short cash...and whatever you have will be going to the banks to pay interest on mortgage and VISAs, not into precious metals. That's the reality for majority of Americans and in short time, it will be for Canadians as well.

If you've put all your eggs in one PM basket...and silver deflates from $50 to $10...you may learn a thing or two about the monetary system.
But dont take my word for it...pull up a silver chart and NASDAQ 2001 chart side by side and see what happens in the next few months/years :).

You know this for a fact... We'll come back at the end of the year and see...

After reading your post, it is you who needs to learn a thing or two about monetary policy. I know quite well about monetary policy, that is why I know the dollar, along with the Euro, is toast.

After reading you post "peak credit" and "...massive speculation and leveraging in the commodity markets as proof of inflation", it is clear you have no idea what you're talking about.

Keynesian kool-aid drinkers like you who believe everything that CNBC and Bloomberg TV tells them as gospel always bring up the "Mad Max" scenario. I will be nothing like that. Half the nations on this planet have had currency collapses, they are still around, no Mad Max syndrome...

You just keep believing what you need to believe.

I don't think it is a question of if. Do you really think that someone in China buying any large quantity of junk Canadian silver coins is going to sit on them, or melt them into a more useful form?

If numismatic grade coins are being melted, then it will only be at the lower grades. What that will tend to do is narrow the price gap between the lowest and highest. It probably won't affect the higher grade prices too much.

Now, I'm kind of curious of junk NCLT. For example all those early 50/50 silver dollars that were made in MASSIVE quantities. 0.375 oz. ASW (~ $14) but you can sometimes get them on ebay for much, much less (I just got one for $7.50). If those could be bought in quantity, they would be melted. So, I make the assumption that they are being melted.

Give 25 years of that happening, what will be the quantities? Will a joke like the 1975 Calgary Stampede dollar suddenly become somewhat scarce and thus worth something more than BV?

Bowfin...first of all...I'm an MMTer, not a Keynesian.

Second, I'm a deflationist...which is about as a contrarian point of view as you can hold. Inflation is the view held by the masses and mainstream media (CNN, Bloomberg, etc).

You can run along with the herd and the masses...and stock up on precious metals, as advertised to the masses now by Citi, Goldman Sachs, Glen Beck....etc :)...as they unload...

Judging from your post...you dont know the first thing about "fiat money" or "monetary policy" :)...

Two hints for you: 1. Find out why Soros called gold the "ultimate bubble", and 2. Find out how much leverage is being used to drive up commodities.

Good luck with your PM holdings!

Very,very few coins get melted
What's the point?
Silver coins are recognized for their value much more so than "recognized" bars.
Bullion value coins can be bought and sold at virtually every flea market,jeweller,coin dealer etc.etc.
Not so easy with bars.

And they don't melt them
They're in business to make money not waste it
There is no money to be gained by melting silver coins