Silverlocks

The Knights set are my faves. Was it this year's secret santa?

@James32 - still got any 20 franc coins? @shawy2510, @Belmont, @CallumHSLimited. @Blinny maybe a punter for your 1/2s?

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About 4% over spot. Most of the major online vendors seem to have new brits around 2-2.5% over.

PM'd

Refreshingly nice pictures. Well done.

@Belmont - you might get some mileage from one of these.

I'd take anything from American youtubers with a grain of salt. Silver doesn't attract VAT in the US and spreads on it are much more sane, so it's much easier to stack silver cost-effectively there. Here in the UK the tax situation is very different.

Mostly gold, a bit under 15% silver by value, and largely collectibles (quite a bit of Perth Mint, Germaina, KOMSCO etc.) rather than straight bullion. The gold is much heavier on low-premium bullion, mostly sovereigns.

Rule #1 of buying silver in the UK - VAT really ganks the value of investment in silver. Buying and selling through conventional dealers will get you a spread of 30% or more, which makes it not worth doing this way. But . . . You can buy and sell on the secondary market at manageable spreads. If you keep an eye out here and the various other places where folks buy and sell silver, you can buy and sell at a far more sane spread. The going rate for 1oz coins is somewhere about £23 (give or take - maybe a little more with silver going up), and there are people you can buy from around this price point. Bars in the 10 oz to 1kg range are also worth buying at the right price. You need to understand your exit strategy, which is just a fancy way of saying 'How do I flog my coins?' With silver, buying and selling to dealers isn't cost effective, so your exit strategy for silver will have to be based off selling back to the secondary market. Therefore you have to pay attention to liquidity - i.e. what people will buy, and at what price you can make a quick sale. As a starting point, think of tubes of 1oz coins, and bars in the 10 oz to 1kg range. Take a look in the UK ungraded section for sales to get a sense of the going rate for these on the open market. Consider also buying gold in the portfolio, unless you really want to bet on silver going to the moon. The folks in that video are notorious for circulating clickbait about how silver is about to jump in price, and have been running this schtick for years now.

If only . . .

Sold as bullion to avoid disappointment.

If only I had a spare £1,700.

So you did buy the 2003 after all. It is a nice design - I may get some of the special reverse Brits at some point.

Some more dollaridoos - Koalas and Kooks This time from @arphethean 2015 Koala 2015 Kookaburra 2019 Koala

2016 1oz Kookaburra More dollaridoos from @Vern.

Another day, another dollaridoo . . .

Placeholder for a private sale between @Belmont and @Silverlocks - set up because you need a listing to add trading feedback.

Fat fingering the 'O' key, I think.

My phone wasn't really satisfactory - its camera really was a bit c**p and the clip-on macro lens wouldn't let it focus more than a few cm away, which made things a bugger to light. I took the plunge about a year or so ago and got a Sony A6400. The camera cost about £630 - I did consider getting a secondhand A6300, which would have been about £350. The macro lens cost about £180. When I was hunting about on t'interwebs the main claim to fame of the Sony was good support for tethering software. I think the packet of lighting gels I ordered from Lee cost more than the panel light I was using to light the coin did.

I had a nice cup of coffee while I was taking my pix too. I couldn't afford an iPhone so I bought a camera instead. Now I have little bits of lighting gel all over my desk.

Translation: 250 is a particular grade or part number of translucent plastic lighting gel to make the light from the source flatter if you shine the light through the gel. I've got some that diffuses the light less, which has a different part number. 4 stop filter is smoky grey coloured plastic that blocks 15/16 of the light going through. I found that blocking all the light with a bit of card made the shadows too dark and you couldn't see the detail. Some of the others I've done recently were with 1 or 2 stop gels, which block 1/2 and 3/4 of the light respectively, but I thought they weren't contrasty enough so I tried some 4 stop gel.

2017 1/10 Kangaroo 250 diffuser gel with some strips of 4 stop filter to give the device something to reflect.

Not really enough contrast on the obverse, but here's one in the flesh, as it were.

I think I prefer IRB's portrait to the Jody Clark one. Even though it's a tiny little 1/10 oz coin, the details are really sharp on the 1999.