Why I Like prices gold bullion coins

Latest Numismatists Article

Gold & Silver Coin Bullion News

Number One on my avoid list is the TV shopping show dealers and premium "Mints" out there that sell nice looking commemorative coins for premium prices, but that have no value beyond their bullion (if they have any) when you must eventually sell them. Some of these "Mints" sell on the TV and cable-based shopping channels, and the prices they charge when they do sell genuine U.S. Mint coins are nearly always several times higher than the price the coins would cost from a normal coin dealer! These shows rarely sell anything that can't be acquired elsewhere more cheaply, so don't impulse buy from these shows! Do a little research and you'll see the same Silver Eagles at $2 over spot price from major traditional coin dealers. Most of the Uncirculated Morgan Dollars I've seen TV shopping show dealers sell for $300 each can be purchased from a normal coin dealer for $30. Never buy coins from TV shopping shows!
Buy American Eagle gold coins.

Although some of these U.S. paper money notes carry more of a premium than others, most $2 and $5 Red Seals that are seen are circulated notes from common series that carry very little premium over face value. All $1 Red Seals are scarce and are quite valuable in higher grades, while $100 Red Seals (although relatively modern) carry a premium of 20% to 40% even in circulated condition. Again, there are several scarce issues among these notes, and we recommend the Standard Guide to Small Size U.S. Paper Money (1928 to date), by Dean Oakes and John Schwartz, for more information.
Buy all your S silver dollars in our Silver Dollars Galore store.



I recommend filtering for volume. Check out the eBay sellers who have done several hundred gold sales or more. These are the gold bullion sellers you can trust assuming they also have a high positive feedback score. Volume indicates that they have been in the business for a while and must be doing something right. You will always end up paying a premium when you buy from a high volume seller. It's always worth it. Let's take a simple example. You buy a 1/10 ounce gold bullion American Eagle from a new seller. You get a super deal and only pay $100. Now, let's say you buy the same coin but pay $120 from a power seller. Let's say the first one ends up to be a fake and the second is real. You pay an extra $20 but isn't that better than getting something worth $0 with your hard earned investment dollars? I always go with the high volume sellers.
Buy Kangaroo silver dollars for a great investment.

prices gold bullion coins News From Around The World

Local heroes join Olympic torch relayBrisbane Times, Australia - 4 minutes agoOlympian swimmers Jodie Henry, Alice Mills and Amanda Fraser, who won silver and bronze at the Sydney 2000 Paralympics, will represent current Olympians. ...Bu

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:16:05 +0100
New York Times, United States -... that supposedly ranged across the millennia, from gold and silver Roman and Anglo-Saxon works to sculptures attributed to Paul Gauguin and Henry Moore. ...

::

Coin Trivia for 16 Sep 2008

1. What are three 1793 cent designs?

silver and gold bullion coins | gold coins for sale | rare gold coins | american eagle gold coins

The Best Information on 1878 silver dollars

Numismatists Article Of The Day

Invest in Mexican 50 Peso Gold Coin

By Wilson Snyder

With the recent financial meltdowns and declining US currency, smart investors are looking for better ways for asset preservation. Gold coins are one of the most valuable commodities to protect personal wealth and offset risk, which is discovered during countless crisis situations over the centuries. Although most investors focus on US and European gold coins, Mexican gold coins, especially 50 peso, are also good asset to combat inflation.

Mexican 50 Peso is among one of the most beautiful designs of any gold coins, more than 20% larger than the popular 1-oz Gold Eagles. It features a winged angel with the legendary mountains in the background. The reverse side features an eagle with a snake in its beak.

First minted in 1921, Mexican 50 peso honors the Independence of Mexico. It contains 1.2057oz of gold in an alloy of 90% gold and 10% copper. It was only made from 1921-1931 and then from 1944-1947. Being over 1.2 ounces of contained gold, it is a great vehicle for holding gold than the popular US $20 gold coin, which has less than 1oz of gold. While the price of most of the US gold coins have increased sharply over the past several years, the price of Mexican 50 peso is still in the ground floor. Mexican 50 peso maybe a highly undervalued area in gold coin market. So this is a good time to begin a collection of beautiful Mexican 50 pesos.

In order to purchase Mexican 50 peso gold coin, you may contact your local coin dealers. Most of them sell gold coins to the general public. If you are an information-age coin investor, you can also order it through Internet. There are many websites where you can purchase Mexican 50 Pesos by credit card and your gold coins can be knocking on your door in a UPS package the very next morning.

About The Author

Wilson Snyder
Learn more about Mexican 50 peso gold coin and gold coin investment at Mexico Gold Coin

Gold & Silver Coin Bullion News

Bullion coins are an excellent investment option. You can go in for the American Eagle, Canadian Maple Leaf, Britannia or the Australian Nugget. The American Eagle Gold coins were minted first in 1986 and hold pride of place as the world's leading gold coin investment option. These gold coins are struck in 22 karat gold with the total weight as stamped on the reverse of the coin. Silver and copper are also used so as to protect the gold finish. Special dyes are used to strike these gold coins to ensure that minute details are visible. Such American Gold Eagles can be bought at dealers of precious metals and coins. You can buy them at the prevailing price of gold and a premium for distribution costs. Gold coins are universally recognized and can be easily sold. The South African Krugerrand was the first gold bullion coin that was marketed as an investment opportunity. The one-ounce Kruggerand gold bullion coin is extremely popular.
Buy gold coins.

Cherrypicking is the art of searching through coins, looking for the specimens that have been overlooked for some reason. When searching through rolls of coins that you from your local bank, you might be cherrypicking for die varieties or older dates (such as looking for Wheat Pennies among the circulating Lincoln Memorial Cents out there today.)
Buy gold coins.

According to the World Gold Council, annual mine production of gold over the last few years has been close to 2,500 tonnes. About 3,000 tonnes goes into jewelry or industrial/dental production, and around 500 tonnes goes to retail investors and exchange traded gold funds. This translates to an annual demand for gold to be 1000 tonnes in excess over mine production which has come from central bank sales and other disposal.
You can buy m63 gold coins in our store.

On my personal "do not buy" list are coins issued by the National Collector's Mint. The U.S. Mint has issued warnings about this company's misleading advertisements in the past, particularly its "Freedom Tower" coins. National Collector's Mint ads imply that Freedom Tower coins have meaningful amounts of precious metal in them when they do not. In addition, despite the perception they often give to the contrary, nothing this "Mint" makes has any association whatsoever with the genuine U.S. Mint, and it is my opinion that the coins they sell are, and will remain, virtually worthless as an investment collectible.
Buy Maple Leaf gold coins.

five dollar gold coins Galore

New Dollar Coin Emails Misinform

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 18:08:00 +0000

There have been a couple of different versions of emails floating around the internet lately claiming that the National Motto "In God We Trust" has been omitted from the new dollar coins.

Here is a an example of one of those emails:

U.S. Government to release new dollar coins.
You guessed it "IN GOD WE TRUST" IS GONE!!!
Who originally put "In God We Trust" onto our currency?
My bet is that it was one of the Presidents on these coins.
All our U.S. Government has done is Dishonor them, and disgust me!!!
If ever there was a reason to boycott something, THIS IS IT!!!

DO NOT ACCEPT THE NEW DOLLAR COINS AS CHANGE

Together we can force them out of circulation.

The problem with these emails - - they are flat out WRONG!

The new dollar coins do contain "IN GOD WE TRUST" on them. The National Motto, along with the year, mint mark, and the phrase "E PLURBIS UNUM", have all been moved to the edge of the coin to avoid cluttering the design. Although a few examples have been found with the edge lettering missing, these are error coins and not some government plot to phase God out of America.

The one word that is missing from the new dollar coins is the word LIBERTY. Apparently the thought was that the word would be redundant since the reverse design for all of the coins depicts the Statue of Liberty.

So if you get one of these emails in your inbox, please do everyone a favor, don't pass it on . . . DELETE IT!

2. What two men were honored with 1983 commemorative 5 marks of West Germany?

First there was the $1 Loonie, then the $2 Toonie, now Canada has the $5 Woodie

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:44:00 +0000
I knew about the $1 Loonie and $2 Toonie, but I somehow missed the release of the $5 Woodie.

If you missed it too, especially those of you collecting Canadian coins, check out this short video (Link). And while your there, check out some of their other "Talking to American" videos, some are pretty funny.

And before you leave me comments, yes, I know the $5 Woodie coin was a joke. The videos are basically a Canadian version of Jay Leno's "Street Walk" except that the answers are actually a joke.

How do you calculate the value of the gold or silver in a coin or jewelry?

Sat, 08 Nov 2008 04:23:00 +0000
(One of the most common questions I'm asked is how you can determine the gold or silver value in a coin. Two years ago I tackled this question in my other blog when I wrote the following article. Originally posted in September 2006, here it is again. - A.C. Dwyer)

With the recent anniversary of September 11th, I like many others found myself reliving in my mind where I was on that day. The old anger quickly bubbling back to the surface as I thought about the horror of that day and all those people whose lives were cut short. So you can probably imagine the uncomfortable feeling I got when the ad came on for National Collector’s Mint’s new “2001-2006 World Trade Center Gold and Silver Clad Commemorative” medallion. This medallion has the WTC buildings that can pop up from the medallion and . . . I’m sure that they didn’t think about this . . . the buildings also can be knocked down. But, regardless of how distasteful I find this medallion to be (that’s a whole topic in itself), it got me to wondering about a part of their advertising.

According to their advertising, the medallion is clad in “24 KT gold” and “.999 Pure Silver!” The advertising leads one to believe that the gold and silver make this item more desirable. So how much is the gold and silver in the medallion worth? Or for that matter, how much is the gold and silver in any of our coins worth?

So I thought I would do a write-up to help everyone understand just how to determine the answers to these questions. There are two things that you need to determine this: weight and fineness.

If you just want to know the answer to how much the gold and silver is worth in the National Collector's Mint medallion, jump straight to the last paragraph. If you really want to know how to calculate the value yourself, read on.

Let’s start with fineness. Fineness is the measurement of the purity of the metal. One method of describing the fineness of gold is the karat (kt). This is the measurement of the proportion of gold in an alloy equal to 1/24 part of pure gold. For example, 12kt gold is 12/24 part of pure gold or 50% pure gold, 22kt gold is 11/12 part of pure gold or 91.7% pure gold, and 24kt is 100% pure gold (as in the new gold Buffalo bullion coin).

But fineness can also be stated as parts per thousand or 1/1000. For example, you can see $20 double eagles in the 2007 Redbook listed as “.900 fine” which is equal to 90% pure gold. In the case of territorial or private gold, you will sometimes see “887 thous.” or “900 thous.” on the coin itself.

So, to bring the two methods together, 22kt gold is the same as being .917 fine or 91.7% pure gold. This is step one to determining the value.

Step 2 is to determine the weight of the metal in the coin. This is a little trickier to understand. There are two different methods of weights used depending on whether it’s a precious metal or a base metal. Precious metals (i.e. gold, silver, platinum) use Troy Weights where base metals (i.e. copper, nickel, etc) use Avoirdupois Weights, abbreviated avdp. Nickel can be a little trickier because in the early days of the mint, it was considered a precious metal and used the Troy system. Today nickel is considered a base metal and uses the Avoirdupois system.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that regardless of which method of weights is being used, the one measurement that is equal in both systems is the grain, abbreviated gr. (i.e. 1 troy grain = 1 avdp. grain) When looking at the daily spot prices of metals, you will find the precious metals quoted in troy ounces and the base metals per avdp. pound. So what you need to know is how many grains make up each of those units.

For troy weights, 1 pound (lb) = 12 ounces (oz) = 240 pennyweight (dwt) = 5760 grains (gr)

For avdp weights, 1 pound (lb) = 16 ounces (oz) = 256 drams (dr) = 7000 grains (gr)

So, now lets go through an example using a $1 Morgan which is listed in the 2007 Redbook as 412.5 grains, .900 silver, and .100 copper (copper being added to increase the hardness of the coin). Basically, this coin is 90% silver and 10% copper. Using these proportions on the grains, the coin is 371.25 grains of silver and 41.25 grains of copper. Using the troy weight system on the silver, this is equal to 0.773 oz. of pure silver. Using the avdp weight system on the copper, this is equal to 0.006 lb. of copper. Using spot prices from 9/8/2006 of $12.16 per oz. of silver and $3.56 per lb. of copper, the metal values of the morgan silver dollar would come to $9.40 of silver and $0.02 of copper in each mint state coin.

So how about a $20 double eagle? Again using the 9/8/2006 spot prices where gold is $609.60 per troy oz., the 2007 Redbook lists the double eagle as 516 grains, .900 gold, and .100 copper. But this is actually inaccurate because legislation allowed for up to 5% of the alloy to be silver, not just copper. So for this example, I will use .900 gold, .050 silver, and .050 copper.

After doing the appropriate conversions, the gold content comes to 0.9675 troy oz. of gold or $589.79 of gold. The silver content comes to 0.05375 troy oz. of silver or $0.65 of silver. The copper content comes to 0.0037 pounds or about $0.01 of copper.

Here are the equations I used for the $20 double eagle:
Gold equation: (516 x 0.9) / (5760/12) = 0.9675 troy oz.
Silver equation: (516 x 0.05) / (5760/12) = 0.05375 troy oz.
Copper equation: (516 x 0.05) / 7000 = .0037 lb

Now, just because you know how to calculate the value of the metals in your coins, don’t go running out to sell your 90% silver and expect to get these values. Selling these for melt is a whole different story. One dealer that I know of that buys 90% silver for melting told me that they basically just add up the face value of all the coins, and then multiply it by .715 which, in general, covers the wear on coins along with the dealer’s cut of the proceeds. When they sell it to the refiner, they actually get anywhere from 95% to 98% of the spot price depending on the quantity of the metal. But don’t think you can skip the middle man and go straight to the refiner. The minimums required to sell directly to them are pretty high.

So, how much is the gold and silver worth in that World Trade Center Commemorative “clad in 24 KT gold and .999 Pure Silver” being marketed by National Collector’s Mint for $29.95? Since both the gold and silver are basically pure with no alloy added, all we need is the weight of each metal. According to their website, both are 15 milligrams (mg) each of gold and silver. Oops, this needs a new conversion I didn’t cover above. How many mg per troy oz? Well, 1 mg is equal to approximately 0.0154 grains. So, multiply 0.0154 x 15 = 0.231 grains (yes, that’s less than ¼ of a single grain each of silver and gold!). Divide the grains by 480 (grains per troy ounce) = 0.00048 troy oz. each of silver and gold!!! That means there is 29 cents worth of gold and approximately ½ cent of silver!!! So, each medallion has less than 30 cents worth of precious metals in it!!! This is not a joke, do the math!!! The 15 mg of gold and silver came from their website, I did not make it up!!!

UPDATE SINCE THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE WAS POSTED!

Someone who read my original post sent me a real cool way to simplify weight conversions without having to do all the math. If you recall my WTC medallion example, it is clad in 15mg of 24k gold and 15mg of .999 fine silver. Since both metals are basically pure, all I had to do to calculate the weight of each metal was go to Google and type the following into the search box:

15 mg in troy oz

and out came the answer:

15 milligrams = 0.000482261199 troy oz

Multiply that by the price of gold and silver, add the two results together and guess what? It's still only about 30 cents worth of precious metal in the WTC thing!

Just keep in mind that if you do use this Google calculator, you still have to multiply any answer by the finess of the metal whose value you are calculating.

So consider my original post as an academic exercise in how to do the calculations yourself. I plan to use the Google calculator going forward.

1884 silver dollars | 1964 canadian silver dollars | carson silver dollars uncirculated | 1893 s silver dollars