The High Price Of Silver Good Or Bad For Collectors?

depends is your pre 64 collection complete? mine aint and it will be slower going for me because I am starting to look for MS coins rather than junk grade silver but on the other hand some nice MS coins can be gotten for silver spot thats my hope for silver roosies and modern Commemorative dollars

The high price of silver is bad for genuine numismatist / coin collectors.

If you wish to complete a date set of Morgans, for instance, but you can't afford to go for top condition, the silver value of the coin is higher, which is disappointing if you wish to concentrate on the coins, and not just accumulate silver.

I think a nicely matched date set of Morgans in AU would look mighty impressive. If such a set was near completion when silver was less then $9 per ounce, you would be fairly pleased. Much harder to do that now.

Instead, there is now a greater temptation to sell just because of the silver price, and not because of the coins themselves.

One of the issues that I see will be with the modern silver proof sets. I was at a coin/bullion dealer recently and he had at least 1000 silver proofs that he was breaking to melt. That was before silver hit $30. I have seen and heard of many others doing this since then.

So if you currently have the silver coins I see the value increasing, but if you are trying to complete the sets it will be harder and more expensive.

I think everyone is right. It's a double edged sword; good if you are getting rid of the lower grade stuff for which you overpaid, bad if you're trying to expand you pre-64 collection. The average collector is probably not buying "extras" that they had at lower metal prices either.

The long-term trend is the steady erosion of numismatic premiums over melt value of coins. Position accordingly and it is not a problem.

Yes it is, at least for all modern series and only key dates remain for older coins.

The pessimist in me says this is bad. Less-serious collectors are probably abandoning the hobby and cashing in on their common-date heavy collections. This further drives down any numismatic premium (increased supply) and valuing many more coins at melt. As Conder said, this does not encourage people to start collecting, either.

The optimist in me says this is good. Serious collectors are feeling confident about what they have. To me, the key-dates no longer look so expensive when compared to bargains I made with common coins (that have doubled and tripled in value since purchase). Also, as rkp said, many are finally being compensated for those "mistakes" made in the past.

I like the high silver prices because the dealers want to get the stuff sold fast so they don't sort it much before it goes into the silver bin. Then I go through and look for the goodies. So far, I am probably 50% done with Barber halves, 40% with Barber quarters and all bought at melt price.

Even just for me on a personal level, it's good and bad.

When spot silver is high, I don't want to buy common-date coins and bullion.
The flipside is that the higher (bullion value-tied) prices of common items
make the better-date and key-date coins look like relative bargains.

When the best deal is the store is something on the level of a 1999 Silver Proof Set or an
MS-62 1899-P Morgan, this is good news and bad news (depending on your perspective).


Especially for any circulated silver coin series.
Starting a Dansco 7165 (for Franklin halves) is a bit of a daunting prospect when the 35 coins
comprising this series' circulation varieties have a melt value of $424.60 at the time of this post!