Letter Re: Advice on Small, Incremental Silver Investing Purchases

Mr. Rawles
As a proud 10 Cent Challenge subscriber and daily reader of your blog I must thank you for the mountains of information and content that you make available to us every day.
Worth many times the price!

Today I would like to know if you could recommend a reputable seller of tangibles i.e. gold / silver. I have been in contact with your banner advertiser Swiss America. They are a good group of
people but I don’t quite have the funds to invest that I think they normally deal with. I think I would be a small time buyer of said tangibles. I would like to invest no more that $100 a month, I know this is a
small amount but it is a start.

Again thank you for such a wonderful and potentially life-saving web site and keep up the good work. Respectfully, – S.R.

JWR Replies: First, congratulations for taking the initiative to actually diversify your investments into some silver. I should mention here that I have several quite wealthy consulting clients that have been talking about buying precious metals for several years, but they have never “gotten around to it.” Meanwhile, silver has doubled in value.

Under your circumstances, buying locally makes sense. With small mail orders for silver coinage, postage costs are a real killer–effectively doubling the premium (over “spot”) that you pay. Hence, you’d probably be best calling around to local coins shops. Just ask all of them on the same morning for a price quote: “How many times over face value do you sell small quantities of pre-1965 “junk” silver?” Then do your business with whomever offers the best rate. Be courteous, offer to take even slightly bent coins (that won’t run through their coin counting machine), don’t take up too much of their time, and pay in cash. They’ll like getting cash. Tell them that you’ll be back about same time next month every month for the foreseeable future. They’ll wish they had a hundred customers like you.

Once you have developed a rapport with the folks that run the coin shop, you can probably sweet talk them into selling you small quantities of coins at the same rate that they charge for full $1,000 face value bags. (After they see you coming back, month after month.)

I wish you the best with your silver investing program.