Can someone clue me up on silver?

[Idkman]

Straight up, im new to this, i dont know what to expect, but one thing is for sure, from the bits of information i found about the silver market and the manipulation, it does not add up and it kinda puts me in an alarming state of thinking "something isnt right, how can this happen" The 15:1 rule, the fact that silver is a metal that is used in producing goods in general, and has fantastic properties for modern electrical goods that are often consumerist junk that gets binned within the year.

Whilst im sure many people have a vast knowlege of information here and i like to learn about it, i like to see how its seen across the board with a general outlook, as back 10 years ago the typical attitude towards silver was "oh its just the cheaper metal" but of course times have changed and now i see this cute cultist like art movement with many custom rounds that look amazing and people a generation younger than myself actively getting into silver because practically anyone in the world can tell you the economy is a mess.

And ill like to state, as of right now im treating this as a hobby, i dont expect to buy tons of silver in the future to expect me to be rich within the year, if anything my view is just get things i like, because if times become tougher than they already are ill at least have a melt value to look on to give me some spare change in my pocket if needs be.

[Paul]

"Buy gold sovereigns"

there, I've made it simple for you

Rinse and repeat each month and thank me in 30 years time 

 

[Petra]

Silver … you can either stock up on cheaper 1oz coins/rounds or buy some more expensive bits .. or a mix of both. Buying on here or second hand no VAT issues. I started off buying silver, however, I wish I had saved and bought more gold! A mix of both is no bad thing, but I personally would try and concentrate more on gold. As mentioned, a nice sovereign, or a half or 1/10ths. Don’t get hung up about high premiums on smaller bits. Some great deals out there, plus not really an issue when you sell .. unless you go somewhere like a pawn shop!🤔

[artalien]

The VAT makes stacking silver in the UK more challenging. Buy and hold: at as close to spot as possible. Value your silver stack at spot, that way you will not be disappointed.

Take all those youtube panic merchants with a ginormous pinch of salt!

As to the supposed silver market manipulation I have no comment as I don't know about that.

Happy stacking 👍✌️

[Stuntman]

Perhaps buy a few nice pretty pieces of silver and enjoy looking at them.  I'd recommend 10 oz coins and/or bars for that.  They are impressive objects in their own right and you may not want to sell them even if silver does go to the moon!

Personally I would look to use a physical silver exchange-traded commodity fund such as iShares Physical Silver if I wanted to profit from a potential increase in the silver price, rather than buy and sell the physical.

I agree with the advice above to consider physical gold, and bullion sovereigns in particular.

(I have done all the above)

Enjoy, and good luck...

[ArgentSmith]

Stick to CGT exempt in case you end up with more than a 3K nominal profit and buy on here to keep premiums down, a number of reliable sellers to choose from. Good luck. 

[JohnA1]

4 hours ago, Idkman said:

...because if times become tougher than they already are ill at least have a melt value to look on to give me some spare change in my pocket if needs be.

Then make sure you buy close to melt value (or as close as you can get). This forum is a damn good starting point.

 

Your observations are quite mature for a newbie, by the way. I think you're starting with the right attitude

[Abyss]

Don't listen to @Paul Silver is the best thing since slice bread. I had bought several thousand oz's of the stuff starting stacking it in 2018. I was buying

1 oz silver Maple Leaf 2016 SUPERMAN 15.64 €

2 oz silver QUEEN'S BEAST 35.18 €

10 oz silver Queen's Beasts 242.40 €

Perth Mint 1 oz silver 2017 MARVEL SPIDERMAN 21.38 €

From Goldsilver.be, the European Mint and group orders on the forum.

Obviously before VAT on Silver and I have sold my entire stack with the exception 60 oz when GameStop reddit community moved over to the silver short squeeze. People waiting for Silver to hit $50 oz I can recall certain coins (1oz Marvel Spiderman) sold for £70. In hindsight pure dumb luck and good timing when stacking Silver and my decision to exit my position and fully transition it into Gold.

Unless have a time machine to go back to 2018 @Paul is right, stack Gold, buy Silver as a hobby.

[HonestMoneyGoldSilver]

Neither gold nor silver are traditional investments as neither produce yield. There is an 80% correlation between price action in gold and silver. It's not logically coherent to recommend buying gold as an investment while advising against silver when 80% of gold's price is described by price movements in silver and vice-versa!

Silver is more work than gold but there's more room for silver to have sustained upwards price action than for gold. Gold is flirting around its nominal ATH while silver is nowhere near the ATH

The demand for electronics, solar panels and batteries is only trending in one direction. As you said, silver is an industrial metal with unique physical properties. Not only is it the best conductor of any element but it's malleable. There is likely some silver in every switch in your home along with everything that runs on electricity. I don't expect to get rich on silver or gold but I do expect demand for silver to continue to increase for industrial use and bullion (monetary use). The costs associated with mining, refining, manufacture, finance and logistics continue to trend upwards for the foreseeable future

My advice on silver is easy to understand but may be wrong. My assumption/understanding is that the AISC (All-in Sustainability Cost) for mining operations is currently around $20/oz and rising fast in some places. That puts a fundamental floor on silver's price of around or above $20. The price currently is $24. It might go to the moon, it might not (probably won't as I own a lot of it) but IMHO silver will not go below $20 and stay there. At prices below the AISC the fundamental supply-demand dynamics of real markets will kick in and overrule the derivative paper price, forcing silver to stay above the AISC

Nobody likes to talk about the downside potential for either gold or silver but the downside on silver is limited to around 15% of today's spot price (to $20) with similar figures of 15-20% on gold (to $1600 or $1700). There's an argument for holding paper silver but it depends on the individual. The premiums on physical silver in recent years have risen faster than the spot price. When buying physical silver (or gold) I try to be as ruthless as possible with premiums and not to overspend my monthly budget (both of which are easier said than done)

Many people on TSF use a clever strategy to lower risk. They will buy relatively large amounts of gold and silver at low premiums then flip it elsewhere for a higher premium. Essentially they are reducing their DCA or PCA (£/$ Cost Averaging) for metals they put into their long-term stacks. This is easier to do with silver than gold due to VAT/premiums and capital requirements to buy enough gold to make it worth your while selling gold. 

Edited November 25, 2023 by HonestMoneyGoldSilver

[Silverlocks]

10 hours ago, Idkman said:

Straight up, im new to this, i dont know what to expect, but one thing is for sure, from the bits of information i found about the silver market and the manipulation, it does not add up and it kinda puts me in an alarming state of thinking "something isnt right, how can this happen" The 15:1 rule, the fact that silver is a metal that is used in producing goods in general, and has fantastic properties for modern electrical goods that are often consumerist junk that gets binned within the year.
[ . . . ]

15:1 is a historic ratio and was a bit dodgy even at the time - back in the days of the Latin Monetary Union folks would make a few bob on arbitrage over this.  Don't get too caught up in what you think the ratio should be.  Silver may well go up in the future due to pressure from industrial demand, and if that happens no amount of manipulation will hold the spot price put. This is not financial advice. but silver does seem like it has more headroom than gold.

@Fenlander1's advice to buy sovereigns is a sound one.  Sovs are doing the heavy lifting in my PM stack.  If you're going to go into sovs, do your homework as it pays to have a bit of understanding of their numismatics.  Marsh, Allen and Spink are your friends here, plus there are many online resources.  Sovs hit a nice sweet spot of size and liquidity, availability and modest premiums.  You can put money into sovs and get it back out quite efficiently if you go about it right.  Sovs aren't the be-all and end-all of stacking gold in the UK, but they are a good start.

If you want to do silver, there are some gotchas here in the UK, and the elephant in the room is the VAT.  It's not impossible to stack silver efficiently in the UK.  You can buy and sell it on the secondary market at modest spreads, but the buy/sell spreads you will get from conventional online dealers make it very inefficient to sell through that route.  This means that if you're going to do silver, you have to get ofay with the secondary market, which also means doing your homework.  The silver items with the best combination of liquidity and efficiency would be tubes of Brits (sometimes other coins), or bars in the 10oz to 1kg range.  These items also trade frequently on the secondary market, and by and large you can buy and sell them at a fairly modest spread.

I'd say you're better off getting gold to do the heavy lifting, but this is not financial advice.  Some countries, such as the U.S., don't have VAT on silver, so it's a lot easier to do silver efficiently in those countries.  In the UK or EU, VAT makes it harder to stack silver with an exit strategy will get your money out efficiently.  IMO, here you want to consider silver as a hedge on a stack that primarily consists of gold.

Finally, there's exit strategy.  This is just a fancy way to say 'how am I going to flog my gold?'  You should have some idea of this when you decide what to buy.  Smaller items such as sovereigns are more liquid on the secondary market as there are more buyers who have the money to pay for them.  Through a dealer the only reasonably efficient bullion would be gold coins or bars in the 1oz range, and even then you're going to do better selling peer to peer on the secondary market.

If you're going to use the secondary market, then you should get used to buying and selling on the market, and do a little bit of wheeling and dealing to build up some reputation and trust.  You don't want to leave it until you need money RIGHT NOW to start trading, as you're going to have trouble establishing trust quickly (and at greater risk of getting ripped off in some markets).  It's better to sell a bit of stuff over time in order to maintain a presence and build up a track record.  Getting involved in buying off the secondary market will also help to establish your bona fides as there will be traders who have done business with you.

TL;DR: Sovereigns to start with, or tubes of Brits and silver bars in the 10 oz to 1kg range if you want to do silver as well.

Edited November 24, 2023 by Silverlocks

[HonestMoneyGoldSilver]

4 minutes ago, Silverlocks said:

15:1 is a historic ratio and was a bit dodgy even at the time - back in the days of the Latin Monetary Union folks would make a few bob on arbitrage over this.  Don't get too caught up in what you think the ratio should be.  Silver may well go up in the future due to pressure from industrial demand, and if that happens no amount of manipulation will hold the spot price put.  However, this is not financial advice.

So, @Fenlander1's advice to by sovereigns is a sound one.  Sovs are doing the heavy lifting in my PM stack.  If you're going to go into sovs, do your homework as it pays to have a bit of understanding of their numismatics, so do some homework.  Marsh, Allen and Spink are your friends here, plus there are many online resources.  Sovs are your friend.  They hit a nice sweet spot of size and liquidity, availability and modest premiums.  You can put money into sovs and get it back out quite efficiently if you go about it right.  Sovs aren't the be-all and end-all of stacking gold in the UK, but they are a good start.

If you want to do silver, there are some gotchas here in the UK, and the elephant in the room is the VAT.  It's not impossible to stack silver efficiently in the UK.  You can buy and sell it on the secondary market at modest spreads, but the buy/sell spreads you will get from most online dealers make it very inefficient to sell through that route.  This means that if you're going to do silver, you have to get ofay with the secondary market, which also means doing your homework.  The silver items with the best combination of liquidity and efficiency would be tubes of Brits (sometimes other coins), or bars in the 10oz to 1kg range.  These items also trade frequently on the secondary market, and by and large you can buy and sell them at a fairly modest spread.

I'd say you're better off getting gold to do the heavy lifting, but this is not financial advice.  Some countries, such as the U.S., don't have VAT on silver, so it's a lot easier to do silver efficiently in those countries.  In the UK or EU, VAT makes it harder to stack silver with an exit strategy will get your money out efficiently.  IMO, here you want to consider silver as a hedge on a stack that primarily consists of gold.

Finally, there's exit strategy.  This is just a fancy way to say 'how am I going to flog my gold?'  You should have some idea of this when you decide what to buy.  Smaller items such as sovereigns are more liquid on the secondary market as there are more buyers who have the money to pay for them.  Through a dealer the only reasonably efficient bullion would be gold coins or bars in the 1oz range, and even then you're going to to better selling peer to peer on the secondary market.

If you're going to use the secondary market, then you should get used to buying and selling on the market, and do a little bit of wheeling and dealing to build up some reputation and trust.  You don't want to leave it until you need money RIGHT NOW to start trading, as you're going to have trouble establishing trust quickly (and at greater risk of getting ripped off in some markets).  It's better to sell a bit of stuff over time in order to maintain a presence and build up a track record.  Getting involved in buying off the secondary market will also help to establish your bona fides as there will be traders who have done business with you.

TL;DR: Sovereigns to start with, or tubes of Brits and silver bars in the 10 oz to 1kg range if you want to do silver as well.

This is good and I went a bit overboard with the silver propaganda to balance the fact everybody else recommended gold

I love gold too and while I own a few 1oz pieces I've switched to buying only sovereigns

You're 100% right that homework is essential when buying gold or silver. Secondary market silver is where it's at and this requires more work

For balance lets look at what the mainstream say. The basic narrative is a "defensive investor" is holding a 2:1 gold:silver ratio - i.e. for every £100 invested £67 goes to gold and £33 to silver. An "aggressive investor" will run the inverse of that ratio with £67 going to silver and £33 to gold out of every £100 (at spot price in USD equivalency)

Why might you want to hold both gold and silver and in what ratio? A simple narrative is this:- If the global economy kicks off, fiat currencies are strong and everything is wonderful, then the price of gold will go down. In such a boom environment the price of silver will go up due to industrial demand. If the economy craters, well, gold and silver are expected to have a minor dip but thereafter gold will keep rising and silver will also rise due to its dual nature as a monetary metal but silver wouldn't be expected to rise as much as gold

I strongly advocate owning both metals in a ratio that suits your long-term goals and risk tolerance. You could hold 90% gold if you wanted or 90% silver depending on your individual investment needs

[Wilburwombat]

Lots of interesting thoughts in this thread, I'm not OP but like OP I'm a newbie looking to learn so threads like this are very useful.

When it comes to sovereigns, would one be OK purchasing present-day coins, or would I be looking more towards those from the past? Likewise is one better served going for the full coin over the fractionals (1/4, 1/2 etc). I'm sure the premium on the fractionals is likely to be higher, so that is something for me to bare in mind.

Thanks all for sharing your knowledge!

[Petra]

1 minute ago, Wilburwombat said:

Lots of interesting thoughts in this thread, I'm not OP but like OP I'm a newbie looking to learn so threads like this are very useful.

When it comes to sovereigns, would one be OK purchasing present-day coins, or would I be looking more towards those from the past? Likewise is one better served going for the full coin over the fractionals (1/4, 1/2 etc). I'm sure the premium on the fractionals is likely to be higher, so that is something for me to bare in mind.

Thanks all for sharing your knowledge!

I find that with sovereigns it’s whatever you can get in decent condition and at a good price. Fractional is great, don’t stress too much about premiums. Obviously get as cheap as possible, however, unless selling to a dealer etc. you shouldn’t have too much problem when coming to selling.👍

[Bigmarc]

12 hours ago, Idkman said:

i found about the silver market and the manipulation

It's good that you have a good understanding of the market you are operating in. Everything is manipulated to a certain degree, just try and use the cycles to your advantage.

 

12 hours ago, Idkman said:

The 15:1 rule

Unfortunately this period of time is when it was probably most manipulated. Try going back a couple hundred years.

12 hours ago, Idkman said:

the fact that silver is a metal that is used in producing goods in general

My opinion, for thousands of years silver was money, now it's a industrial metal. It seems to be stuck between the two labels. By now it should have had a run like copper.

 

[Idkman]

Thanks all for some great insight into this world, Also, I have been looking at sov's anyway, just seems the ideal way to go when trying to keep cash in your pocket whilst also potentially accumilating wealth.

Not gonna say im firm on the history of the 15.1 rule, a lot of my logic is if the industries are using something, the cost will go up for whatever the latest consumer craze is, and with precious metals they are all finite at the end of the day, especially with the case of silver usage as of recent though as the deposit scouting has probably got an increased cost of 30% across the board due to everything else being more expensive since 2020, but what do i know? heh

A lot of my processes are trying to gather a plan that fits me, and its ideal to do that monthly, i want to kick something nice off for 2024 and just see where it leads me tbh, and boy do i love planning things.

[stefffana]

On 24/11/2023 at 22:23, Idkman said:

Thanks all for some great insight into this world, Also, I have been looking at sov's anyway, just seems the ideal way to go when trying to keep cash in your pocket whilst also potentially accumilating wealth.

Not gonna say im firm on the history of the 15.1 rule, a lot of my logic is if the industries are using something, the cost will go up for whatever the latest consumer craze is, and with precious metals they are all finite at the end of the day, especially with the case of silver usage as of recent though as the deposit scouting has probably got an increased cost of 30% across the board due to everything else being more expensive since 2020, but what do i know? heh

A lot of my processes are trying to gather a plan that fits me, and its ideal to do that monthly, i want to kick something nice off for 2024 and just see where it leads me tbh, and boy do i love planning things.

Hi and welcome on forum!🤗

My advices are:

1. Plan wisely your monthly budget for precious metals and don't go higher than you can afford.

2. Try to have in your stack both metals, gold and silver, in approximately the same value. You don't know which one will perform better in next 20-30 years, but I think silver didn't shown the real potential yet.

3. Try to be consistent with your purchases, month after month. Your stack of gold and silver will grow steady and healthy.

4. Don't be afraid to buy today if you have money to spend. Even the spot look high today, I am sure will be higher after a number of years when you will decide to sell.

5. Don't talk too much with your colleagues/friends/family members about your precious metals. Less people who know, less risk to be robbed.

6. Don't buy at the beginnings high premium, numismatics, slabbed coins, etc. These requires plenty of knowledge and the market to sell them is very tight. After few years of stacking, you can slowly move little by little to collecting. Don't be afraid to ask on forum, there are plenty of good people who will give you friendly advice.

7. The mistakes are expensive. Buy only from reputable dealers or from forum. On forum you can find good quality stuffs at the best prices. Upgrade your membership to at least Silver. You will have instantly access to see what people are selling. With £6/month membership you can save a lot of money buying from forum. Daily bargains are selling usually quick. 

If you have any questions, just ask.

Happy stacking!🤗

 

 

 

 

[Earthmetal]

On 25/11/2023 at 23:17, stefffana said:

My advices are:

1. Plan wisely your monthly budget for precious metals and don't go higher than you can afford.

2. Try to have in your stack both metals, gold and silver, in approximately the same value. You don't know which one will perform better in next 20-30 years, but I think silver didn't shown the real potential yet.

3. Try to be consistent with your purchases, month after month. Your stack of gold and silver will grow steady and healthy.

4. Don't be afraid to buy today if you have money to spend. Even the spot look high today, I am sure will be higher after a number of years when you will decide to sell.

5. Don't talk at all with anyone about your precious metals. Less people who know, less risk to be robbed.

6. Don't buy at the beginnings high premium, numismatics, slabbed coins, etc. These requires plenty of knowledge and the market to sell them is very tight. After few years of stacking, you can slowly move little by little to collecting. Don't be afraid to ask on forum, there are plenty of good people who will give you friendly advice.

7. The mistakes are expensive. Buy only from reputable dealers or from forum. On forum you can find good quality stuffs at the best prices. Upgrade your membership to at least Silver. You will have instantly access to see what people are selling. With £6/month membership you can save a lot of money buying from forum. Daily bargains are selling usually quick.

Really good advice there. I've changed a couple of bits in blue though.

[CANV]

Buy a 100 Oz bar. Be amazed by it,   Then er own it forever …….