The High Price Of Silver Good Or Bad For Collectors?

Love it and hate it!

Love it because my existing collection increases in value, hate it because it hinders my ability to complete my sets.

I've been buying Silver Proof coins as bullion for years. The above is one reason why.
The refiners know the Proof coins are full weight with no circulation wear, unlike junk silver.

The other reason why is that common Proof coins might not even cost you any more than junk silver.
At one show a few years ago, I bought ten silver State Quarter 5-coin lenses for $125.
That was 10x face, exactly what junk silver was going for at the time.
Everybody else at the show was walking right past these never-circulated full-weight
Silver Proof Quarters @10x to buy worn circulated junk silver @10x.


Yeah. You can collect older One-Cent coins (which are being hoarded
for their copper content) or US Nickels (which some are hoarding for
their Cu-Ni content and presumed change of composition in the near future).

Just can't get away from that "metal value" thing...

DNA,

i started a franklin dansco last year, about half way through and am loving the hunt for raw gem coins for the set. now they seem to be right at melt for some quality MS64 examples

Same way they always have, based on how frequently they are encountered. Mintages have NEVER meant anything due to meltings, errors in counting, losses, and coins dated one thing but counted with the coins of another year. The only way coins can be judged as common or rare and valued is by how often they are seen.

I can see no beneficial effect at all from this current phase of melt-madness.
That giant sucking sound you hear as vast quantities of common and semi-common silver coins disappear down the chutes into the furnaces is actually the choking gasp of a vital hobby in its death throes.
Wherever there is a diminished supply of inexpensive items for beginners to enjoy, there are fewer beginners, thus less potential for matured hobbyists of the future. This will drag down the value of better coins by shrinking the future buying pool.
I'm wagering that very few on this forum plunged into the coin hobby green with a five figure bank account and an instant taste for bust halves, or whatever. No, you started with pocket change or grandpa's bureau drawer contents or the leftover tokens of a foreign trip made by some relative who was kind enough to donate to your cause.
It is of small comfort to imagine that sooner or later the values pendulum is very likely to swing the other way just as it did after the big silver 'hunt' of thirty years ago. Times are tougher now, meaning that hoards saved through the previous meltdown are now being shed. The mixed metal tokens and overmarketed special issues the gov't provides are not the substance of a serious lifetime hobby. It seems the cosmic forces are aligned against the simple hobby of common silver coin collecting, and there is little that can be done to halt the ongoing destruction.

So you, like many, started with 'junk' to get to 'collectible'.
Yet every week with silver UP, there is less and less 'junk' to lure in the enthusiastic beginner.
Now when l'il Tommy asks Grandpa if he has any old silver dimes or quarters lying around, the old man will confess, 'Well, yes, I had some two weeks ago if you'da asked, but I just sold 'em to the nice fellas at the hotel who offered enough to pay your tuition.'
True story? Or allegory?
I know I am biased in my opinions on this topic.
Because I come from a time when you could pull a complete Mercury dime collection out of circulation. In a mere two months of looking through change dishes in the school cafeteria. True story. None of us could afford the quarters and halves.

mysilveryears-

In 40+ years of selling coins, I have seen maybe one collector in 100 start with anything but cents. Silver coins have carried a premium most of that time, yet people still collect Mercury dimes, despite the great melt of 1980.

Heck, people still collect Jeffersons, and they've been melting warnix since the 60s!