How/Where To Buy American Silver Eagles (Mint Or Online?)

The US mint currently only sells proof issues of silver eagles through their website. Bullion (circulation issues) are sold to the public on a secondary basis through several large dealers that have large bulk contracts with the mint. These large dealers will then sell them off to smaller dealers as well as directly to the public. I would recommend APMEX which is one of the bulk dealers that gets them directly from the government. You might find cheaper coins on smaller dealers websites, though the premiums on silver eagles are quite large. The cheapest premiums I have found have either been buying in bulk from a large online supplier or from small time local dealers.

Hope that helps some,
-XoG

With US mint you only get the current year ASE, at a large markup above spot. True, ASE's (any year) can be had on ebay for less, but you have to find out if the seller is reputable or not (and has a good return policy). Also, keep in mind that bids can jump up to prices where you'll just end up be better off buying from the mint or someplace else. With the two grades... your probably refering to the proof and uncirculated ASE's. Proofs have a mirror-like background, and uncircs look alot like the bullion versions.
I'm sure more people can add on to what I have said.

Oh and BTW, Morgans weren't minted in 1911, from 1878-1904, and then finally just 1921. :)

You can also find them for sale at local coin shops and coin showsm just fyi.

And,

Les

Where to Buy?

Many places such as online stores, ebay, coin stores, US Mint, coin collectors, bullion collectors and even a jewelry shop.

Types?

You have basically two types and they are different to a degree. You have the proof and what I like to call bullion. They are both the same design but the proof is a coin with the mint mark W and goes through a minting process which gives it a full strike appearance and uncirculated. This is just keeping it simple so you know there is a difference between the two. They also come burnished but I don't want to complicate things for you starting out.

Price?

This gets interesting because most of the time you will pay a premium on top of the spot silver price at the time you purchase. You can figure most of the time between $3.00 - $4.00. Of course the closer to the spot price the better the deal is.

A proof will always have a larger premium than a bullion American Silver Eagle.

The there are what is called Key Dates and they demand more money over the spot price. An example would be the year 1996.

Grading - Price will also increase on the grading of the coin. The higher the grade the more the American Silver Eagle will cost. Without getting into greater detail these will be in a package called a slab and will show a grading on the cover.

I might of been too brief and missed something but I think I have given you a short crash course to start your knowledge.

I will fill in that there's also numismatic magazine like Coin World that many dealers advertised ad's, and there monthly issue also includes price guides for many different type of coins.

There you can find out prices from competing dealers for ASE, and among other stuff like Morgan dollars.

OH!

While I find magazines nice, I think you can find more info and learn more just reading through the threads here.
It will take you years by my guess. Just search and you will find. There is an amazing amount of info just on this forum and the people are awesome! You wife will see you slowing going crazy and she'll be good with it... Least mine was... Have fun with it!

dbrown,

Coin World have a digital subscription for $10 a year, and beside all the ad's there are interesting articles and facts that for myself, its worth the price. I can also access the archive of all past issues and price guides.

Perhaps your local public library has Coin World newspaper, try them out first and read some past issues.

If you get a subscription, you can have both the proof and collectors versions shipped straight to you. As for the back dates, you can get all of them on ebay with a little patience and some good sniping. If your shop has good prices on them, then thats a way to go.

The other thing to consider is do you want raw coins, or graded? Graded carry a higher premium. But if you want better condition coins, thats the way to go IMO.