Silver American Eagles
It’s probably no surprise to my readers that in addition to trading and building neural net models, I like to collect coins and paper money, especially paper money that’s worthless.
As a Numismatic, my approach to coin collecting is simple; collect items I like and add in a few items for their metal value (gold and silver). I probably do more collecting nowadays than trading because the markets have become one highly frequent casino.
For those readers who live under rocks, the price for gold and silver has been on a tear upwards over the past few years. There have been a few scary pullbacks, but the overall trend is still higher. Over time these trends tend to attract the “dumb money” and I suspect its happening now.
Why? Well the US mint suspended production of the 2010 Silver American Eagle due to unprecedented demand!
Granted this is old news but the 2011 Silver American Eagle won’t be available till July 2011.This comes right after the suspension of the 2010 Gold American Eagle and the discontinuation of fractional Gold American Eagle coins.
The trick is knowing when to sell your gold and silver, but in all honesty I’d have a hard time giving up my Eagles. They’re so shiny and preciousssssss.
Update
I must admit, I’ve put my collecting on hold over the last few years but I still love the American Silver Eagles, including the gold variety too. In some ways I like them better than Bitcoin, the only drawback is that they’re heavy to carry around. With Bitcoin, it’s all digital. Still the drawback with that is that if you forget your password, you’re screwed.
IF you’re trading the Eagles in Silver or Gold, just for pure melt value then you should charge $3-$5 over or under spot for silver and $50 to $75 for over and under. Why so much? Price volatility and volume. Both metals can be pretty volatile pricewise but the real problem is volume. Many people can buy Silver so the volume will be higher whearas Gold is hard to buy and sell. This is what I call the bid-ask spread. Learn it and profit from it!