Essendie

Honestly, there are a lot of great people here, but I'd start by having a look at members like Tn21. Obviously it depends on what you are looking for & your budget, but if you are a beginner just looking for one coin to start, I have just made my second purchase from him. He's polite, dispatches fast & I was very happy with the first Britannia I got from him (which is why I came back for another.) There are other traders who are selling whole tubes at a time, but my budget doesn't stretch that far. I'm not a premium member yet, I want to get Christmas out of the way before being that tempted. It is a bit of a pain wading through the pages of sales threads to find the ones that are still open & visible to non members, but there can be nice things to find (I got a couple of lovely Valiants from someone else recently) If you look at members who sell or buy things, they have a rating under their names. The more positive ratings, the more people you already know have traded with that member & been happy. You don't need to rush to buy though, take some time & ask yourself what it is you are trying to buy silver for? Are you collecting beautiful things? coins that you feel have historical significance? for the long or short term? bullion to resell? Will GCT become an issue in the future in whatever your plan for your precious metals is? You need to work out a budget (I've seen enough things I'd have loved to buy to get a nice house in a posh part of the country in just the past few months, & something else shiny turns up pretty much every day), start watching the prices & reading up about stuff. You need to find out how to spot fakes & learn how to do that yourself so you can feel more confident in what you buy. You need to think about how you are going to keep records of what you buy & where you are going to store it. The precious metals will still be there when you are ready to buy some. Who knows, prices may plunge next week & stuff could be even cheaper than this week (or of course, the opposite could happen). Precious metals are a slow game, so there is no massive hurry. My dream coin is a Lydford penny, which would have special significance for me. For the rest, I collect writers & scientists, plus general bullion which I hope will insulate my money from the deflation it seems to experience as cash. Everyone else here has their own completely different targets they are working towards, with massively different budgets. Figure out who you are & go from there. Be warned though, precious metals are almost addictive. There is something about having a really gorgeous coin of your own that brings out the Gollum in you!

I have a few things I want to cast myself (not bar, things for me to keep), which is what I'm planning on getting a little furnace for. I have no plans to sell things I make as I'm really not customer friendly - I shut down my workshop mainly because I couldn't face dealing with one more customer. They drove me up the wall. Guess I'll have to buy silver to melt. Thanks @BackyardBullion

I get sent random things which includes junk jewellery from time to time. By that I mean mostly new chinese sterling silver (marked S925) with cz or mossanite, sometimes plated with gold or other stuff, the sort of cheap jewellery that sells for less than £100. I have been thinking of getting a little furnace next year, would it be okay to melt, or would the mishmash of metals mess it up? Is there anything else I can do with it? I only get sent a few bits a month, but it keeps turning up & adds up over time, so what to do with it is a problem that's not going to go away. None of it is anything I'd consider wearing as it looks nasty.

So, just me then going WTF & thinking you meant the coin type of Britannia?

To be fair if you look at the state of Mick Jagger, would anyone buy it if he was identifiable on the coin?

If you give me the money for it I'll buy it 🙂

I think I need to give up my dreams of a life of daring museum heists. It's the only way I'd ever have a stash that big! I don't think I could melt them down though, if it was me. Better delete that balaclava from my amazon basket.

I like the 1/4 oz & chose to get those instead of sovereigns. I started with 1/10oz gold coins, now on 1/4oz. I think the sovereigns are a horrible colour & you can get some really nice 1/4oz coins. There are Tudor Beasts in 1/4oz at the minute which I think look pretty nice as well as the Britannia. For liquidity I'd rather have 4 x 1/4oz than 1 x 1oz because if you only need £500 you don't have to cash out a whole oz. If I bought in ozs, I would end up buying a new gadget or some Lego & the 'extra' money would be permanently lost from my gold stack. It's also much easier to get the money together for the smaller bits of gold, so while you do pay a bit of a higher premium, you can more easily get the next coin. If I'd waited until I had enough for an ounce to buy my first gold coin, I'd still be waiting. Instead I have an ounce already in smaller coins & have just gone over that too.

Do you think they will really be melted down? So much history 🥺

Wow. I wish I could visit a coin shop. I don't think there is one in the entire West Country so I've never got to see a display of coins. (Did see a couple of wildly over priced Britannias in a pawn shop window once, that's the closest I got!)

Done it. You should get Dragon, then you can stride around the room dictating to get your words down without effort.

Gordy, I have to say it. I love you. It's MINE now!

Well, that was a let down. If it doesn't have a writer or a scientist on it, I couldn't care less about £2 coins 😞 Thanks though, it won't let me in to see that page.

I like the Valiant & the Royal Arms better than the Britannia, but don't see them about often either. It's a shame - I got a 1/10 gold Royal Arms earlier this year, tried to get another one but they had sold out.

They would never commit to delivering anything that fast!

Site won't let me in. Just says they are preparing to launch their latest product.

If you don't mind me asking, what/where would you search to find those sorts of coins? I've never seen or heard of them (which isn't saying much as I'm a newbie to this world, but still)

Oh, I actually do know what the 'slivers' are. If you buy digi-gold, they describe it as buying allocated 'slivers' off a great big bar they store in their vault, so you can never ask to have the amount of digi gold you own as physical gold, although in theory that is what you own. You can only sell it back to them if you want to get your money out & then you can transfer the money out of your investment account back to your bank account (or use it to buy their physical bullion products & have them posted to your house). So, they mean your digi gold (or silver, or platinum) You can buy it in amounts starting from £25 at a time (don't know what the upper limit is but it's more than I have. You probably have to phone them & have an account manager if you are loaded), so even people who can only dream of buying gold an actual oz at a time can work up to one £25 at a time. You pay 0.33% buying fee, 0.5% + VAT p.a. storage fee (billed quarterly at the end of each quarter) & 1% sales fee. It is also liable for CGT.

Don't even SAY that. You're going to give me nightmares! This is bad enough 😞 I've been sticking to mostly British coins purely because they aren't CGT liable.

Thanks 🙂 My plan for next year is 2oz gold & 1kg silver. I've nearly got enough for the first 1/4oz of gold already. I feel like I have picked up so many interesting coins (most are stack ones, but I also have a small list of coins I want to keep forever & got a couple of those, but no rare ones as of yet) in just one year - it's hard to believe this time last year the only coins I had were the change I kept to tip deliveroo & taxi drivers.

You need to style it out, tell people it's intended to look like it's old & battered after being used in wars etc... Give it a moody name & sell it for twenty times it's spot price value.

Wish they still used proper paper. I've pulled out old business receipts plenty of time to find I have no clue what they might be & some of them have faded away within months. What's the point of telling people they have to store them for 7 years when you are lucky if you can read it 7 months later?

Where did you get your kit please? I used to create a lot of lost wax bits to replace on old longcases etc.. in brass, but used to send them to a little foundry I can't get to any longer (not even sure they are still there). I have some bits I'd like to cast for a project & now you've made me want to have a go.

Today I bought my first ever 1/4 oz gold coin (just a 2023 bullion Britannia). I got 1/10th oz coins before and a 5g bar. When it arrives (plus my Silver Forum 1oz round) I'll have reached my targets for my first year stacking in both gold & silver with 1 month to spare. That was 1oz of gold & 1 kilo of silver. First purchase was last December. I'll be doing my best Gollum impression over 'my precious' little stack & breaking out the hot chocolate when they arrive 🙂

Don't Chards have enough coins already? Save a few for us little people. (I was secretly hoping they were going to release a series of bullion Chaucer related coins. I suppose I got the first 3 letters right)