Gold prices

[Mikey]

Anyone anticipating a rise in the price of precious metals with the start of war? Would you buy gold or silver and bullion or proofs??

 

thx

[jtryka]

I am not much of a bullion player. I would much rather pay the premium for a nice coin than a straight bullion piece. Personally, I hate the Gold American Eagles more each day simply because of the mint's [!@#%^&^] poor rendition of Augustus Saint-Gaudens stellar design. That said, I would buy nice mid-better date Saints (by that I mean not 08 NMs and 1920s common dates, but more like 14-S, 15-S, 11-D sorts of dates). You have the gold content for downside protection, and plenty of upside from the numismatic angle. As an example, I bought a 1-oz eagle when gold was $270, and now it's worth about $340 or $350 with the premium, not a bad return of almost 30%. At the same time, I was loading up on Saints, particularly 15-S and 14-S in MS-63 at $400 each. They now routinely sell for $600-650, or a return between 50% and 62.5%. Plus I like these coins! As for silver, I own little bullion, I buy a roll of silver eagles each year in January, and besides that I might have $1000 face in junk coins laying around (but most of them I bought when silver was around $3 an ounce in the early 90s). If you just want bullion, I would buy junk silver since it tends to have a much lower premium over melt. I just don't see a whole lot of upside to it until the economy recovers since it is used in more industrial areas than gold. Just my thoughts.