The most liquid coins??

[goldmember44]

In your opinion, what are the most liquid precious metal coins? What coins are usually snapped up when they become available for sale on the secondary market, for a reasonable market price? (I don't mean stuff for under spot, or proofs at spot). 

To my mind comes certain sovereigns like 1989, 2016 and 2017, mostly. What else? Any silver or other gold? 

[Pete]

Gold sovereigns irrespective of year are the most liquid for sure.
Fractional gold up to and including one ounce e.g. Britannias are equally fluid provided the premium remains as a low percentage.
Perhaps there are less buyers when spot remains near its highs but plenty of sellers.
With high spot it is quite difficult to sell at spot and you may find dealers only paying 97%.

Bullion silver will sell at spot + 15% without any difficulty when spot is at current levels.
For example, currently, any bullion one ounce coin priced below or up to £15 will fly off the shelves.
You will not get these prices in the UK buying from bullion dealers because they charge 20% VAT ( or markup secondhand silver to a similar gross price even if they do not charge VAT )

[Nick1368]

I guess one ounce  Krugerrand is up there

[goldmember44]

9 minutes ago, Nick1368 said:

I guess one ounce  Krugerrand is up there

Definitely, good one! And it's known and accepted anywhere in the world.

[Tn21]

Liquid - meaning you can sell fairly quickly. 

For Au after seeing recent sales here on TSF and some items struggling to sell even when competitively priced ( 1oz coins). It has made think about fractionals maybe the best way forward. Sovs come under that category and can be bought and sold fairly easily. 

Fair amount of folk bang on about sovs here on TSF and I never really appreciated where they were coming from. Now however I just think that sovs are simple and straightforward perfect for liquidating. Those that do bang on about sovs I see and hear you all 👍.

 

Silver tbc . . . 

[goldmember44]

38 minutes ago, zhoutonged said:

 

Gold is always liquid @ 24ct isnt it?

Yes, at bullion prices. But as Tn21 said, size also matters. And what about gold proof coins? Which ones hold a premium the best, without sacrificing liquidity too much? I.e. retaining collector/numismatic premium and still selling fast, even in difficult economic times. I can think of very few coins, and mostly sovereigns (among modern coins). There will always be people around who have money to spend, but they become very picky in hard times about what they buy...

[goldmember44]

1 minute ago, zhoutonged said:

I must admit Im more commodity minded than a collector, but would you agree the bigger the premium the less liquidity?

Generally, yes. But it depends on the coin...a few select ones retain liquidity even when having sizable premiums...like the 1937 George VI sovereign.

[goldmember44]

7 minutes ago, zhoutonged said:

I shouldn't have posted on this thread, I'm out of my depth. Interesting though I would not have guessed gold with sizeable premiums would have been very liquid. I guess it depends on how much of the premium you are looking to recoup? or do some coins as above trade in a narrow market with big premiums?

Well as I've said, there will always be people around who have money, and if something comes up that is very sought-after they will take the opportunity.

Also, I'm thinking the 1/4 gold Queen's beasts are very good...if the gold spot price rises sufficiently one can easily sacrifice their premiums in exchange for liquidity and a quick sale...I mean, who is going to refuse a nice quality 1/4 QB for spot price?

Btw you are not out of your depth, your opinion is valuable

[Seth]

I'd say Krugerrands followed by sovereigns, I travel a lot and have traveled a lot throughout my life, and bought gold in all but one continent - Antarctica I've been there a few times there's nothing to buy there but there is a post office, and American gold eagles are not available to buy in quite a lot of countries and are very rare to find in quite a few, it's the same with gold Britannias and to a lesser extent sovereigns.  Sovereigns tend to not be nearly as popular as Krugerrands in Asia, the middle east, Africa as they are in Europe and the Americas.  So I'd say it depends on where you are based or where you intend to sell them.

[ilovesilverireallydo]

Through my experience of selling: 1989 sovs are the most liquid as long as prices are competitive, regardless of size. I have recently sold two quintuples without sacrificing premium, and these weren’t perfect coins. Any special designs  like 2012,  2005, 2002 always sell well in most sizes, though halves and fulls are more popular. Proof halves in boxes priced under 10% over spot do well. Older shield full and halves hold decent premium. 
 

1/4 queens beasts seem to be holding reasonable premium from 10% to 30%. 1/4 oz Brits not so much they need to be under 5% over spot to sell. 1 oz struggle from what I can see. 

Gold 1/10 Brits and Krugs do well too, and proof 1/10 Brits in boxes hold good premium and sell quick. 1/10 eagles do ok. 

in silver, queens beasts do well, and Brits will always sell easy at 15% over as would Eagles. Some low mintage coins do ok, but not as well as the used to. The Spider-Man Marvel one is a breakout selling nearly three times the price at launch. Perth Lunar aren’t doing as well as they used to. Phillies, Arks do ok at 10-12% over spot. 
Decent condition pre 1920 coins sixpence and up hold good premium sometimes as high as 100% over spot based on condition 

 

[ilovesilverireallydo]

2 hours ago, Seth said:

I'd say Krugerrands followed by sovereigns, I travel a lot and have traveled a lot throughout my life, and bought gold in all but one continent - Antarctica I've been there a few times there's nothing to buy there but there is a post office, and American gold eagles are not available to buy in quite a lot of countries and are very rare to find in quite a few, it's the same with gold Britannias and to a lesser extent sovereigns.  Sovereigns tend to not be nearly as popular as Krugerrands in Asia, the middle east, Africa as they are in Europe and the Americas.  So I'd say it depends on where you are based or where you intend to sell them.

I am not sure if this has been your experience or conjecture, but large parts of Asia, especially India, China, Arab states actually prefer sovereigns. So much so even jewellers make Sovereign copies in 22ct (most marked as copy). A lot of silver bullion rounds in India will either have religious symbols or previous British Emperors/ Empress on them. In Africa, most ex British colonies prefer sovereign over Krugs such as Kenya and Tanzania. This is based on my experience in visiting or meeting these countries coin dealers and collectors, as well as buying selling to them. 
It may be that we meet different circles so there may be a difference in opinion, but from what I have experienced in some of these countries you will get paid more for sovs than any other bullion coin if taken to dealers. 

[ilovesilverireallydo]

Forgot to add, a large number of realistic gold sovereign 22ct copies come from the Middle East. 

[goldking]

My opinion (and that's all it is) is the standard gold sovs are currently the sweet spot for being the most liquid and most favourable on both sides with regards premiums.  1 ozers (Krugs) are better on the premiums but your market is much lower as none of the lower income folks are going to have £1300 sitting around.  Full sovs have higher premiums (comparatively) but that is offset by them having a much bigger market in terms of affordability for most people, being only £300.  Your halfs and quarters are way too heavy on their premiums to be considered 'liquid' unless you're happy to lose money.  

Maybe @LawrenceChard could chime in as he's at the coal face?

[dicker]

For me it has always been Sovs - very easy to dispose of.

 

Best

Dicker

[LawrenceChard]

Sure, my point about liquidity relates to the volumes of supply and demand.

From Wikipedia:

"Markets for trading commodities can be very efficient, particularly if the division into pools matches demand segments. These markets will quickly respond to changes in supply and demand to find an equilibrium price and quantity."

With products like "our choice bullion sovereigns", we are happy to "go short" and sell coins we don't have, because we can normally cover the sale with a purchase more or less immediately. Before we do this, we usually warn the buyer that there may be a slight delay, some buyers are happy about this, others prefer to wait until we have positive stock or pay more elsewhere. We would be very reluctant to do this on less liquid products, like half sovereigns.

To illustrate this, I am confident we could buy 5,000 or 10,000 sovereigns within a 24 or 48 hour timeframe, even if we had to pay extra for the current year.

If someone asked us to contract to supply a similar quantity of half sovereigns, we would refuse, and the prime reason is that we would not be able to buy that quantity in a short period of time. Even if we were to pay extra premiums for the current year, it might not be possible. 

I would seem silly to me to price illiquid products as super keen premiums, only to sell out and have to disappoint potential buyers who will then go elsewhere, and often pay much more. So we charge a little more, but can offer a better service and availability.

Another factor is price / demand inelasticity. If we slashed our premiums on low volume products, it would usually not increase demand effectively. What we do now is to monitor our stocks, and when we consider we have excess of a product, we will offer them out at a lower, more competitive, premium, but try to keep a strict control on stock levels,. Theoretically, this should be easy using computerised and automated stock / sales systems, but these are not foolproof, so it does require extra human attention which also diverts resources away from key products.

Let's take a look at margins and costs:

If we were to work on a 2% profit on bullion half sovereigns, we would make about £3 on a single-coin transaction. Our cost to process the deal would probably be at least £5, so we would lose money on it, and it would divert staff time away from more important stuff. If we made a 2% profit on Krugerrands, we would make £25 on a single-coin transaction, which would easily pay our processing costs. One of my dreams would be to regularly sell 1,000 Krugerrands per day, at a 1% profit, in which case I would monitor the business from my yacht in the Caribbean. Perhaps I should add that I do not own a yacht.

I use Krugers as an example because the market for them is quite liquid, although even better are "one ounce gold coins our choice", because some days we have someone wanting to buy Krugerrands, but people sell us Maples, Britannias, eagles, lunars, etc. This is often very frustrating, because we have excess stocks of some one ounce gold coins, and a shortage of other one ounce gold coins. By having a "one ounce gold coins our choice" category, we increase the commoditisation, which helps to create a more efficient market.

An efficient market is one where buyers can get as much or many as they want, and sellers can sell as much or many as they want, and do so at very competitive prices.

The main problem with Krugers or "our choice one ounce gold coins", is that they are not CGT free, so we also have another category "our choice CGT free one ounce gold coins".

A further problem with half sovereigns, apart from new minty ones, is that they are more likely to be more worn, or even underweight, from heavier use in circulation. Older ones were often more weakly struck to begin with, which does not help. If you are wondering why half sovereigns wear faster than full sovereigns, just look at £5 notes compared with £10, £20, or better still £50 notes. The recent change to plastic has alleviated this somewhat.

We also serve two main markets, the collector / numismatic / gift market, where people often want to get a better grade coin, and don't mind paying slightly extra for it, and the investment market, where most investors, and the big volume of business, understandably want competitive prices. 

You mentioned "quarters", and at first I assumed you meant quarter ounce gold coins, but on re-reading, I think you meant quarter sovereigns. Personally I don't like them. You can probably find what I said about them when they were introduced in 2009. Even the proof ones are unimpressive, being of low relief, and the non-proof ones look pathetic. In 2009, we bought 500 of the proof ones, which were actually quite a reasonable premium (I think the Mint cocked up), and the last time I looked, we still had some left, and at a much lower price than the Mint charges for new ones. It's not good business to have stock which takes over 10 years to shift!

As usual, what started out as a short, quick, answer turned into an essay, and I could have written ten times as much.

 

[LawrenceChard]

2 hours ago, dicker said:

For me it has always been Sovs - very easy to dispose of.

 

Best

Dicker

I fully agree.

They are also CGT free, and you can also have fun collecting dates and designs, whereas Krugerrands are efficient but boring.

Sovereigns typically cost only about a percent more, usually less than equivalent quarter ounce coins.

[sovereignsteve]

5 minutes ago, LawrenceChard said:

It's not good business to have stock which takes over 10 years to shift!

On this topic and a few more you raise in your excellent reply above, is something I have wondered for a while. Do you as a bullion dealer who must have a very large number of £ tied up in your gold stock, make provision to hedge this exposure or just rely of "it'll all even out in the long run"?

[LawrenceChard]

19 minutes ago, sovereignsteve said:

On this topic and a few more you raise in your excellent reply above, is something I have wondered for a while. Do you as a bullion dealer who must have a very large number of £ tied up in your gold stock, make provision to hedge this exposure or just rely of "it'll all even out in the long run"?

The only time we ever hedged was when we owed several million pounds worth of gold in about 2008.

There were a few other times we should have done, but nobody rang the bell.

[ChrisSilver]

1oz Gold Coins provide the best value per oz, but may be more difficult to sell if spot is at higher prices.

Fractionals are very affordable and likely can even recoup some of the premium if selling on the forum, or would sell extremely quickly if selling just over spot. 

Bullion Sovereigns provide the best of both, their premiums are very reasonable and they seem to be some of the most liquid coins, also as mentioned above they have an added bonus of being CGT free in the UK, if you wish to sell a large stack within one year in the future. I have recently bought a couple of sovereigns  

The liquidity of coins also depends on the location, for example in the US, the silver ASEs sell very well, and in Australia Perth Mint stuff is very popular. 

[LawrenceChard]

On 12/03/2020 at 06:24, ilovesilverireallydo said:

I am not sure if this has been your experience or conjecture, but large parts of Asia, especially India, China, Arab states actually prefer sovereigns. So much so even jewellers make Sovereign copies in 22ct (most marked as copy). A lot of silver bullion rounds in India will either have religious symbols or previous British Emperors/ Empress on them. In Africa, most ex British colonies prefer sovereign over Krugs such as Kenya and Tanzania. This is based on my experience in visiting or meeting these countries coin dealers and collectors, as well as buying selling to them. 
It may be that we meet different circles so there may be a difference in opinion, but from what I have experienced in some of these countries you will get paid more for sovs than any other bullion coin if taken to dealers. 

It is correct that many middle eastern imitation sovereigns are stamped 22ct, sometimes 22c, or 22k, poosibly in Arabic also, but it si also quite commone to encounter 21ct ones, such as this example we photographed recently, marked K21:

 

[ilovesilverireallydo]

6 hours ago, LawrenceChard said:

It is correct that many middle eastern imitation sovereigns are stamped 22ct, sometimes 22c, or 22k, poosibly in Arabic also, but it si also quite commone to encounter 21ct ones, such as this example we photographed recently, marked K21:

 

Absolutely and I have even seen 14kt and 18kt versions but they are rarer

[ilovesilverireallydo]

On 12/03/2020 at 15:00, LawrenceChard said:

I use Krugers as an example because the market for them is quite liquid, although even better are "one ounce gold coins our choice",

Only difference I would note here is the liquidity on one ouncers is only at dealer levels that have larger customer base. On a one to one seller like on these forums and other market places such as Facebook they don’t do well even at spot. In the last month many 1oz struggled to sell at even spot on these platforms. 
 

I do appreciate the insight from your perspective on these, but for small sellers who plan to recoup their premiums I would always advice sovereigns over any other golf coins.

[Platinum]

I reckon the coins with the best liquidity will be the ones that guru-google comes up with.

If a new PMs bull market starts then a lot of new people will enter the field. They will google around for the answers they seek on what to buy and will take the most easy option.

I have been into the PMs for more several years yet it took a very long time before I realised that sovereigns even existed (or that they were modern too). They never came up when I googled. 

So the most liquid coins in my humble opinion will be the ones from the biggest mints from what people percieve to be trustworthy nations. Hence Maples, ASEs, Britannias, Kangaroos and Philharmonics. 

[LawrenceChard]

9 hours ago, Platinum said:

I reckon the coins with the best liquidity will be the ones that guru-google comes up with.

If a new PMs bull market starts then a lot of new people will enter the field. They will google around for the answers they seek on what to buy and will take the most easy option.

I have been into the PMs for more several years yet it took a very long time before I realised that sovereigns even existed (or that they were modern too). They never came up when I googled. 

So the most liquid coins in my humble opinion will be the ones from the biggest mints from what people percieve to be trustworthy nations. Hence Maples, ASEs, Britannias, Kangaroos and Philharmonics. 

Beware Google!

Years ago, there was a great search engine called Alta Vista, which was the Google of its day.

It sold out to Disney Corp, who renamed it "Now", monetised it by plastering it with adverts, and very quickly killed it.

Without researching it, I can't remember whether Google overlapped with it, but when Google was young, it instantly became the best search engine.

Even when they originally monetised it, it was still good, because the adverts were clearly segregated, although there would have been some people who failed to notice.

More lately, it has become even more commercial, to the point where it has become difficult to find high quality content, and factual information, without having to sift through AdWord adverts occupying the top 3 slots, followed by S.E.O. optimised commercial sites, dodgy "comparison" sites, and a plague of dubious "associate" sites.

Although Google is still the best search engine around, I get annoyed almost every time I use it, and treat the advert sites like a case of Coronavirus.

My cynicism has spread in recent years, and at times I feel like a conspiracy theorist. All the big multi-national corporations cheat us and lie to us, often by using hype and propaganda, not to mention political lobbyists, corruption, and more. I include the U.S. Government, and am unsure whether Russia and Putin are better or worse the America and Trump.

 

[5huggy]

@LawrenceChard - after 35 years in the I.T. industry and using IT daily and some times excessively - I concur totally - in that I hate it (google) 

It has dumbed down , in an awful lot of cases, society IMHO 

The , as currently referred to as "millennial's"  today'  REMEMBER nothing and learn nothing by remembering i.e. human mental storage! 🥴

I have proven this on countless occasions!

Ask one to give you an answer to a question - response "oh I will google it" - OK!

ask same question next week - response "ER dont know - i'll google it"🙄

Turn the tills off in a retail environment (part of my background area) ask for example in a pub for 2 pints of X, a pint of Y and 2 g&T's 

response panic!! "where's the calculator!!!!!"😵

times past bar (person) told you the bill while STARTING to pull the first pint!

Please don't get me wrong - Computers are a wonderful TOOL for , well the likes of this kind of dissemination of information and communication

excellent for mathematical situation's , data storage et al (thereby hangs another ominous, generally unnoticed black swan!) 

But another aspect of K rud is the "SOCIAL MEDIA" - that can lead to false/panic news - IE bog roll run of late!

It IMHO is the old cliche - Not what you got -it's the way that you use I.T. 😉