dangelo

Communists. 

I agree on the buyer beware warning 100% ...
There is a specific auction in the UK I see on saleroom online that is doing this for sure - I see coins go up to way past their bullion and numismatic value in the bid amount alone, so adding fees whould be stupid prices.  But, then in the next auction - the same coins are there again!  Either the house or seller is bidding them up, then they are "selling" but in fact no one is paying those stupid prices and the same coins appear in the next sale again.  Sometimes this lasts over several sales until one idiot who is a real bidder puts a bid on and wins, then the coin is finally sold.  I've seen this happen on a variety of coins over and over again.  But it's not widespread - it seems to be the same few auction houses doing this - what I would call a fraud and scam to be honest.
Examples - generic canadian maples & US silver eagles - "selling" for 40.00 each and terrible condition britannias (covered in milkspots which should be only worth spot price) "selling" for 40.00.
Something else I see is coins "selling" at GOOD prices - hammer goes down "SOLD" at maybe -20% under the market prices BUT next auction - the same coin is on sale again!  If it's not made the reserve it should hammer down as "PASSED" not "SOLD"!  But I think these cases are fake bids, house bids or seller bids who are winning by mistake and then the coin has to go back in the next auction looking for a victim.
I think it's a good idea to watch a few auctions for each auction house before you decide to trust them, at least you will get an idea of what the selling prices are like and you can see any trends in coins re-appearing over and over again and of course on the live videos - you can see some of the dishonest auctioneers inventing phantom bids "I can go straight in at X pounds!"  and also hesitating for so long before bringing the hammer down if it's a fake bid... sometimes pausing for a minute or two and almost begging someone real to put the final bid on and speaking all kinds of cr*p like "very rare one this"  "last chance"  "is that it?"  "only this price for this"  "you could get double this price at the market" and all the other desperate and dishonest phrases you could think of...  the best one i heard is an auctioneer shouting how RARE coins are that have mintages of 1 to 3 million and only a couple of years old and how you will "not find another one"... etc...
 

They stacked silver heavily during the "opium wars", which annoyed the British Empire and resulted in gun boat diplomacy and the taking / founding of British Hong Kong.  This didn't happen long ago and revenge is still in progress, the Chinese / CCP export billions of dollars of hard chemical drugs (amphetamines, spice, bath salts, meth for example) out of factories in Southern China to the world and take hard currency in return.  It's a similar story with many export items that do nothing other than harm the countries who import (endless plastic c**p & face masks for example).  The Chinese "belt and road" is an empire inspired corruption initiative to gain control and influence and natural resources - they get hard currency and shares in over priced projects in many countries in East Asia and Africa.  The Chinese stack precious metals, but also snatch up commodities / natural resources including mines. 
When it comes to individual stacking it's likely to be mostly China Mint stuff, but I'm sure they have a lot of old bullion and numismatics that they have stacked over centuries.  Aside from PM's and commodities it's worrying that they are snatching up food supply and water supply sources and logistics channels (sea and land).  Just like Bill Gates is the largest land owner in the USA and has bought the power to control and influence food supply, the Chinese are getting into a similar position.  If you control the worlds food supplies you have the power over life and death and unlimited wealth.  So yeah, the Chinese are stacking rice essentially too.  Did I mention Pandas?

They stacked silver heavily during the "opium wars", which annoyed the British Empire and resulted in gun boat diplomacy and the taking / founding of British Hong Kong.  This didn't happen long ago and revenge is still in progress, the Chinese / CCP export billions of dollars of hard chemical drugs (amphetamines, spice, bath salts, meth for example) out of factories in Southern China to the world and take hard currency in return.  It's a similar story with many export items that do nothing other than harm the countries who import (endless plastic c**p & face masks for example).  The Chinese "belt and road" is an empire inspired corruption initiative to gain control and influence and natural resources - they get hard currency and shares in over priced projects in many countries in East Asia and Africa.  The Chinese stack precious metals, but also snatch up commodities / natural resources including mines. 
When it comes to individual stacking it's likely to be mostly China Mint stuff, but I'm sure they have a lot of old bullion and numismatics that they have stacked over centuries.  Aside from PM's and commodities it's worrying that they are snatching up food supply and water supply sources and logistics channels (sea and land).  Just like Bill Gates is the largest land owner in the USA and has bought the power to control and influence food supply, the Chinese are getting into a similar position.  If you control the worlds food supplies you have the power over life and death and unlimited wealth.  So yeah, the Chinese are stacking rice essentially too.  Did I mention Pandas?

Nice share...

~Gold & platinum tigers look good, silver is too "Disney cartoon".  I wonder what over Tigers are coming for CNY 2022 in silver

Nice share...

~Gold & platinum tigers look good, silver is too "Disney cartoon".  I wonder what over Tigers are coming for CNY 2022 in silver

Hi all,
I've been on here a couple of weeks and this is how the slippery slope started for me...
I've been collecting bank notes, coins and stamps for years just for personal pleasure. The niche themes I collect are merely things I like and I do not expect to get rich from this or even have any intention of selling anything, but I suppose some items in particular might be pretty rare.
I have no idea why exactly, but earlier this year I randomly thought it would be cool to just own a bar of gold! Something chunky and shiny to behold!
Anyway, after I found out how much a 1kg bar of gold actually costs (and how small it is!), I just as suddenly decided that maybe a 1kg silver bar might be more realistic
But then I put myself off the idea after seeing how the price of silver has varied over the past couple of years. Oh, if only I'd splashed out at the start of the pandemic instead of spending that first week worrying about potentially more important things, like where I was going to be able to get some bog roll from! But months later, I just couldn't bring myself to buy a hefty bar of silver knowing that it would end up being almost twice the price as it was a year earlier.
Okay, so that didn't last long and I decided to buy one anyway. But hmm, where should I go to buy a quality bar that is guaranteed to be genuine? My spidey senses guided me towards the Royal Mint website, which I often frequent but for some reason had never bought any bullion from there before.
Okay, this looks quite straightforward.... WAIT, WHAT? These prices don't include VAT? Laugh if you must, but this was the moment I discovered about VAT on silver but not gold (but somehow I was still not quite in a position to convince myself to buy a 1kg bar of gold, no matter how much I'd be "saving").
Then I discover the world of prices that change while you are literally looking at them. It does down a bit. It goes up a bit. It goes down a bit more and I decide to take the plunge. Oh my word, it feels like such an archaic system. I have to transfer money to a special pot on the website, and then hope there's still enough money in that pot to be able to buy the thing I want 30 seconds later? Madness! It seems like other bullion dealers have mastered the art of accepting payments by card, and some of them offer the same products for less. Oh well, I'm committed now, so I upload my money via a dusty debit card (which I literally only use when a credit card is not accepted).
Unsurprisingly, my online banking app suddenly requires me to approve the transaction by furnishing the cloud with some biometrics. It's actually the very first time I've ever had to do this (not including systems I've tested before), but it seemed like a pretty slick process and after approving the transaction I immediately get a text message from my bank to tell me that my card has been blocked and that I need to confirm who I am. WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ME APPROVING THE TRANSACTION?! I try to confirm who I am, but by this stage I'm starting to have doubts about that myself.
It only took a few minutes to sort out, but I had to make the payment again, by which time the price had gone up by a stonking fiver! Oh well, let's go for it.
Two days pass...
The bar arrives. It was impressive to hold but I fear that merely touching it has infected me with some kind of bug that makes me want to buy more shiny things made out of silver. Has anyone else experienced this? Should I seek help?
So that's how it all started. In the run up to buying that bar, I had of course discovered @BackyardBullion on YouTube (how is it possible for one human to make so many videos about silver) and that of course led me to this forum. I have since bought stuff from a few people on here and directly from other bullion dealers including Chards (only mentioning this because @LawrenceChard seems a bit of a legend and personally I think it's great to have people like that taking part in this sort of community).
I have to go now, the F1 highlights are about to start  

Some other 1oz bars to compare...

Pass.. not tempted.  Don't want the risk of them turning out covered in milkspots after a few months.  I heard the robin hoods have issues and about 60% of my 2020 brits are spotted now with no explanation.  I didn't have issues with 2021s yet but I'm now avoiding RM silver products until the issues seem to have calmed down.  I'm a pessamist.

As it's ebay, this is what you might get:

🙂

Ages ago, I asked Doug (our on-call flasher) to create a visualisation of a Maid Marian coin.
This is what he came up with:

i think it could be more popular then the actual RM design. 🙂

New Metalor Kilo Silver Bars
We recently bought a quantity of "new" Metalor kilo silver bars from a well-known European dealer, instead of direct from Metalor, and these are some examples of what we received:

 

As you may imagine, we are currently in discussion with them.

Thanks for the replies everyone. Looks like I may well have paid way too much for what it is - but I’ll chalk this up to inexperience on my part and perhaps; not being familiar with the rep of this mint and perhaps getting a little sold on the ‘do goodie’ part that’s the ‘Humanium’ brand! 
Thankfully I only sunk about 25 - 30 into this so it isn’t a huge loss - I’ll live and I’ll learn ha! 

I'd avoid these too tbh, I agree with the other posts above.  In addition I avoid made up commermoratives, like for what would have been Diana's 60th birthday - if you think about it they just make up anything and there are unlimited excuses they can come up with for issuing "limited" coins.  I also see most of these are base metal with no real value, but selling at prices as if they were precious metals.   I see boxes and boxes full of these for sale for 20 to 30 quid on the secondary market, but I bet these were sold for hundreds and thousands when new.  Having said that, if there are designs anyone likes then maybe the best thing to do is pick them up super cheap by the box load on the secondary market and never buy new.  Not an investment - just maybe something that appeals to you
Sustainably sourced & dolphin friendly tuna still contains dolphin meat...  an analogy for fair mined gold perhaps...

And the other mark is the makers mark I think and I can't easily find that one, maybe someone with a book or database of makers marks from the 1820's could find the maker.

I agree on the buyer beware warning 100% ...
There is a specific auction in the UK I see on saleroom online that is doing this for sure - I see coins go up to way past their bullion and numismatic value in the bid amount alone, so adding fees whould be stupid prices.  But, then in the next auction - the same coins are there again!  Either the house or seller is bidding them up, then they are "selling" but in fact no one is paying those stupid prices and the same coins appear in the next sale again.  Sometimes this lasts over several sales until one idiot who is a real bidder puts a bid on and wins, then the coin is finally sold.  I've seen this happen on a variety of coins over and over again.  But it's not widespread - it seems to be the same few auction houses doing this - what I would call a fraud and scam to be honest.
Examples - generic canadian maples & US silver eagles - "selling" for 40.00 each and terrible condition britannias (covered in milkspots which should be only worth spot price) "selling" for 40.00.
Something else I see is coins "selling" at GOOD prices - hammer goes down "SOLD" at maybe -20% under the market prices BUT next auction - the same coin is on sale again!  If it's not made the reserve it should hammer down as "PASSED" not "SOLD"!  But I think these cases are fake bids, house bids or seller bids who are winning by mistake and then the coin has to go back in the next auction looking for a victim.
I think it's a good idea to watch a few auctions for each auction house before you decide to trust them, at least you will get an idea of what the selling prices are like and you can see any trends in coins re-appearing over and over again and of course on the live videos - you can see some of the dishonest auctioneers inventing phantom bids "I can go straight in at X pounds!"  and also hesitating for so long before bringing the hammer down if it's a fake bid... sometimes pausing for a minute or two and almost begging someone real to put the final bid on and speaking all kinds of cr*p like "very rare one this"  "last chance"  "is that it?"  "only this price for this"  "you could get double this price at the market" and all the other desperate and dishonest phrases you could think of...  the best one i heard is an auctioneer shouting how RARE coins are that have mintages of 1 to 3 million and only a couple of years old and how you will "not find another one"... etc...
 

I have never worried about, or given much thought to how thick a kangaroo is.
According to some "expert" on Quora:
"Yes, kangaroos are intelligent animals. They display their intelligence by bouncing around on their hind Limbs and keeping their front limbs free so they can smack their opponents in the nose."
Sounds to me rather like Blackpool Promenade most weekends. 🙂

Starting this thread to see what cool coin and bullion watches are out there. 
I think coin watches look great and would buy a 1oz gold one or even a silver crown watch or something.
I got my first gold ingot watch years ago on a business class onboard shop for a bargain price.  And a second one recently in an auction also for a bargain.  The ingots are drilled so would be under 1g if you ever extracted them, but I still like the concept
Here are two gold ingot watches to start.  Love to see what you have - share in the comments? 

If I found this I'd probably turn the garden to some kind of archaeological dig site from Indiana Jones and start excavating in search of more treasure

Starting this thread to see what cool coin and bullion watches are out there. 
I think coin watches look great and would buy a 1oz gold one or even a silver crown watch or something.
I got my first gold ingot watch years ago on a business class onboard shop for a bargain price.  And a second one recently in an auction also for a bargain.  The ingots are drilled so would be under 1g if you ever extracted them, but I still like the concept
Here are two gold ingot watches to start.  Love to see what you have - share in the comments? 

Agree half sov/month or full sov every 2 months.  But unless you have firm control of your emotions and can resist shiny stuff, i bet you end up buying all kinds of gold and silver outside of your plan (evil laughter)

If I found this I'd probably turn the garden to some kind of archaeological dig site from Indiana Jones and start excavating in search of more treasure

Starting this thread to see what cool coin and bullion watches are out there. 
I think coin watches look great and would buy a 1oz gold one or even a silver crown watch or something.
I got my first gold ingot watch years ago on a business class onboard shop for a bargain price.  And a second one recently in an auction also for a bargain.  The ingots are drilled so would be under 1g if you ever extracted them, but I still like the concept
Here are two gold ingot watches to start.  Love to see what you have - share in the comments?