Silver Really Worth Investing In?

My dad hunted for rocks and stored them in glass jars. He bought part of an old tourist ruby mine, which he visited annually for at least 15 years. After he died we hauled the jars of unidentified rocks to the landfill and found a buyer for the mine, at about 1/3 of the price he paid for it. We never found his little ziploc bag of tiny ruby chips, which had an aggregate value of about $25. Counting the cost of the trips to the dump, the loss on sale of the mine, the cost of the annual trips to the mine, and converting to 2016 basis, his rock hunting hobby cost in excess of $100,000. But it was his hobby. If he had spent the money golfing it would have cost about the same, with as little to show.

I have the same collecting genes, but decided a long time ago to collect things that were small and valuable. I stack coins, but I like to pick and choose what I stack. My heirs will get better value from those coins than we did out of dad's pile of rocks.

I agree with the others in that I don't look at my modest silver holdings as an "investment". I am not a stacker but I do collect world bullion coins and look forward to the start of the new year. So far I have picked up the 2016 Kangaroo, Lunar Monkey, Panda, Elephant and the Benin Lion. When it is available I will pick up the 2016 ASE and a few others I will need to keep my sets current that I started 4 or 5 years ago.

I do this because I enjoy it and baring a future major financial obstacle my collection of bullion / coins will just get passed down to the next generation so I don't worry about what is worth today vs the future.

Have some fun! And