Opinion - The Best (And Worst) Silver Coins

dont think your link is pointing where you want it to.

The best are genuine key dates in great condition and the worst are those wannabies that stick to a magnet,They usualy smell like rice and fish

Good article. The ones that mention "mg" of precious metals are the ones that tend to hook the noobs. They have no idea what a silver coin weighs or just how small 1/1000th of a gram really is. I can just hear them now, "Wow! 71 mg! That sounds like a lot!". Nope, that is plating and rather thin plating at that. Many such coins or medallions are actually worth about $0.50 to $1 but are being sold to the unsuspecting for $20, $30, $40, and even $50 each. Holy cow, talk about the price of education!

It still surprises me that people buy plated coins for the price of real coins. I have a hard time faulting the sellers though because usually all the information is in the ad.

I did find the linked story on 90% silver a bit troubling though. Wealth wire constantly sends the message that physical PM's are the key to wealth. They then publish a story about how 90% silver is one of the best ways to buy that PM. However, in that article the author states he went to a local coin shop to take pictures of 90% silver. If 90% silver is the way to go why doesn't the author have some of his own to take pictures of?

There are a good deal of Canadian commemorative coins worth investing in though. But they are struck either in sterling or fine 9999 silver. It really comes down to education. The misleading advertising should be controlled but if those interested in "investing" can't take the 5min required to do a bit of background research, who's really to blame.

Psychology 101 teaches that about 10% of the population can be persuaded with a bit of effort (2.5% really easily). When you've got a population of 300 million, 2.5% of that is a more than enough suckers to keep these questionable companies afloat.

Indeed they do. They are also rather fond of the words "simulated", "gold filled", "silver washed", etc. The true meanings of these words will be obvious to a collector but may not be clear to someone who is just starting to collect. One TV ad I saw stressed the word "GOLD" many times in the ad but only mentioned that it was "plated" one time. They then go on to say how much GOLD has gone up in price, neglecting to say that tiny amounts, such as they are selling on their copies of real coins, doesn't have enough gold on it to sneeze at and much less than that IN it. Snake-oil salesmen have not changed their pitch much in the past 150 years, so it's not as if any of this is new.