What's Up with 40% Silver?
MarkKelley
Posts: 1,878 ✭✭✭✭✭
A couple years ago when 90% was selling routinely for 25x face, I listed 40% Kennedy halves on the bay for $80 per roll. Nothing but crickets. Since it was basically free, I kept renewing the listing all this time although they never were selling. Now, I have sold 40 rolls over the past five days. Do you guys know something I don't?
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I think that's just the way it goes. Your lucky you sold them. So much bullion for sale right now.
Student of numismatics and collector of Morgan dollars
Successful BST transactions with: Namvet Justindan Mattniss RWW olah_in_MA
Dantheman984 Toyz4geo SurfinxHI greencopper RWW bigjpst bretsan
Most people don't want 40% to stack. Right now, bullion is hot, so people are buying what they can get.
Lucky you sold, after "Today's Tumble" on silver price Down $1.22 @ 8:10 AM you may have made out.
Poor guys like me stack them.
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
Just some profit taking, it will be back. 😆
Paper money eventually returns to its intrinsic value. Zero. Voltaire. Ebay coinbowlllc
So many people hate silver clad even more than they hate cu/ ni clad that it sells at a steep discount to silver value. Most of it is just lightly circulated junk but it's not unusual to find BU coins from disassembled rolls in it. Between these, varieties and '70-D's it has quite a few premium coins in it.
Perhaps more relevant to your question is that finding coins without spotting and gouges is much more difficult than most would expect and there exists a retail demand for G and better specimens! My guess would be people are seeking these more than the few dollars they can profit on the normal premium coins.
These coins do not clean up nicely and you can go through a lot of acetone trying.
By the by BU 40% is in high demand and low supply now days. A lot of BU rolls were melted in 1980 because people had them at hand when silver went to $50 an ounce ($200 in today's money). There weren't all that many to start with because people hate silver clad.
This might reflect "sample error" because most bullion for sale is in the coin hobby in this country. We see a lot of it but it could all be sucked up pretty quickly if the demand materializes.
A lot of coins are already being melted so there might not be so much left even before the demand shows up if trends persist.
It's hard to imagine but these BU rolls were trading at nearly $30 per coin in today's money. People were throwing everything that wasn't nailed down into the melting pots. Most of the junk 40% was melted on the way up and as it was peaking everything else went in.
Much of what we see now days was being held by the general public and by the FED. It is stuff that was overlooked and it is mostly coins that circulated. Nice attractive AU's are much more common in it than attractive XF or low end AU's. There are not a lot of attractive coins in any grade. VF- is the low end but these coins are invariably ugly with staining and marking.
Mintages were huge (over 800,000,000) but attrition is almost as high as the other circulating coinage.
I love the 40%'ers!
As a matter of fact, a couple of years ago. I had a great deal to buy the Mexican 10%'ers.
At $2 apiece, I picked up 50!
Some are in very exquisite condition too!
Better pictures later.
"Jesus died for you and for me, Thank you,Jesus"!!!
--- If it should happen I die and leave this world and you want to remember me. Please only remember my opening Sig Line.I've been told that these often aren't anywhere close to 10% but they must average close to 10% because the refineries buy them at not too steep a discount. This is another one that can be tough in Unc. The last few dates aren't so hard but the earlier ones are and are often nice Gems.
For low fineness silver I don't think you can beat war nickels. There are lots of high grade coins and lots of great varieties. Believe it or not several dates bring nice premiums in VG or F. It would seem most people just saved the '43-D.
All these coins will be gone before too many more years. Then they'll start melting 90% even faster. Demand just keeps going up and up.
Grabbed a stack of Blue Ikes the other day at the Michigan State show from one dealer. I gladly paid melt with full OGP.
Mark
Nothing.
Speaking of 40% silver halves, last night I pulled out and went through the 1965 SMS halves I have acquired over the years as an adult collector.
The wide variety of appearances that 1965 SMS half dollars have is very interesting. Some are ugly and look like circulation strike examples. Others look like other run of the mill 1965 SMS coins (with fields and devices that trend towards brilliant, but with numerous planchet flaws, marks, scratches, dings, gouges and spots). Others look grainy or satiny across the fields and devices (along with many of the flaws mentioned in the prior sentence). Others have grainy or satiny fields and devices, with the devices looking different from the fields because the devices are heavily frosted. Others have deeply mirrored fields and heavily frosted devices, including some that warrant a Cameo designation.
Then you also have coins which look like those described above, but they are remarkably free of the numerous planchet flaws, marks, scratches, dings, gouges and spots that are so common on these coins.
Below are photos of three of my graded 1965 SMS halves.
SP66CAM
SP66
SP67
Here are some Coin Facts photos of other 1965 SMS halves.
SP68+ (Toned)
SP64
SP65
SP65
SP66
SP66
SP66
SP66
SP67
SP68
SP68CAM
SP67CAM
SP68CAM
Here's just one 40% Kennedy I hunted down while CRHunting.
Many found similar to this one with such pizzaz and luster!
Here are just some of my 10%
Mexican Pesos
"Jesus died for you and for me, Thank you,Jesus"!!!
--- If it should happen I die and leave this world and you want to remember me. Please only remember my opening Sig Line.War nickels began hitting the melting pot well before 90% silver coins did. In 1963-64 I accumulated many rolls from circulation and sold them to dealers for about $2.55 per roll. Doesn't sound like much, but the dollar was worth 10x what it is now, so the premium in today's money was equivalent to over $5 per roll. As a college student with limited funds, that was worthwhile to me .
I think it's easily possible that more than half of the war nickels then in circulation were melted in the mid-1960's. And a huge chunk of the remainder were likely also melted during the next 30 years or so, as they were unpopular with stackers and were bid at well below melt during most of this period.
The 1943-D was saved in all grades, but the next-in-line 1944-S was not, and today it is likely the scarcest war nickel and might even boast fewer survivors than the 1950-D.
My Adolph A. Weinman signature
I for one like these and bought [for not a lot] a PCGS67 1957 Peso coin. In vain, I have tried to find out if these blanks were blanched or plated or how the surface silver is so much higher than the core....Anybody know???
Well, just Love coins, period.
Until recently, 8x face was well over melt. 40s almost never have a positive premium. They are currently NEGATIVE 80 cents.
You need silver over $28 to get to 8x. That doesn't happen very often.
I'm looking to buy coin silver now, but not interested in 40% Kennedy halves or anything below 80% for non-US.
I believe most of the war nickels were used as alloy to make silver contacts. Of course there are millions and millions surviving. But these survivors tend to be uncherrypicked coins with lots of XF's and AU's in them. The market for such coins is growing rapidly and most of these survivors are AG to G condition that are not widely desired. Many are stained or cull. Only about half of dates like the '44-S can be considered G or better. A relatively small number of the date are in VF or better.
These coins are still being melted in large quantities and I have to believe they are not often cherrypicked first. XF's and AU pricing will approach BU prices in the long term for some of these dates.
I wonder how fast the market can put the brakes on the destruction or will lots of $10 coins be getting melted for $3 worth of silver.
Indeed!
I find it incomprehensible that collectors have been ignoring all of these for more than half a century. Some of these finishes are very very scarce because most of the coins are just typical SMS specimens. I consider about 75% of them "typical" but even these typical coins could be classified into 2 or 3 categories. Some may even be unique since there are a few I've seen only a single example despite looking at countless thousands of sets.
The mint played around with all of the processes used to make these coins resulting many different versions of all of them. We think of the '67 as being uniform but there are non-standard coins among these as well. No matter what you like there's probably an SMS for you. The sets were hated because the coins and what collectors expected and desired were rarely the same. Sales were subdued and attrition staggering.
Collectors are also overlooking the fact that these sets rarely come with FB dimes and FS nickels. If you want one of these there are almost none on the market and finding them in the sets is exceedingly difficult even though no one is looking for them because the services don't recognize them in SMS!@!!
Whodda thunk collectors would ignore high quality rare coins for so long?
With premiums so low on junk silver it doesn't make much sense to buy low fineness silver at this time. But selling junk silver last year and buying 40% made a great deal of sense. If you could pick up varieties, Gems, or even chBU it made even more sense. The cheapest chBU roll now goes for $100.
Now the best bet is to sell odd ball and low fineness silver and junk gold to buy 90% silver. If you try to get interesting silver you'll have more bang for your buck when you trade it in for war nickels, BU 40%, and Mexican Pesos in ten years.
For me the objective was to end up with nothing but scarce coins at bullion cost. If I had only a couple more centuries I think I could do it.
I'm buying it strictly for the metal content. If it has potential collectible premium, that's a bonus. But I'm not interested in cherry picking any of it.
I'm only buying coin silver as a contingency in the low probability (but possible) event that I'd need to use it as currency. Same reason for 1967 and earlier Canadian coinage, which I would use in Canada if necessary.
Otherwise, I prefer to own NCLT (ASE, Mapleleaf) or bars.
I have been looking through 1965-1967 SMS sets since 1998. Most of the coins in these sets are run of the mill to ugly. However on occasion some high quality, eye appealing coins can be found (with a wide variety of finishes and appearances).
When these attractive coins are found they can be acquired for nest to nothing. You can remove the attractive coin, replace it with a run of the mill example of the coin and then resell the set to a wholesaler to recoup a portion of the cost of purchasing the set.
Doing the above over the years I have been able to assemble some Special Mint Sets that are truly "Special".
I started too early to do this efficiently. Luckily it was very profitable but i could have lost a lot of money as well. I started buying the sets about 1975 after window shopping them for ten years. Mostly I sat down in coin shop and went through mint sets finding nice coins and then buying the entire set. Fortunately prices went up quite a bit before I started selling them a few years back. Also I was armed with a lot more knowledge when I assembled sets to sell. A lot of coins had tarnished and couldn't be recovered. But I did have a lot of nice Gems and varieties as well as the knowledge to pull out coins with unusual surfaces and characteristics. I don't know if I made any money on them and there was a lot of opportunity costs but now I have a bunch of these coins at a cost basis of regular coins which is very low.
I suppose that I met a lot of great people and had an awful lot of fun so even if prices stay so low I'll have a great profit. Even at these ridiculously low prices there are a few significant coins involved as well. There's even a DCam '65 cent in nice 66 or 67! A few of the coins have to be seen to be believed. The half dollars may be a little disappointing but the quarters are mostly what I was cherrypicking.
I always went with the lowest premium. But then I always tried to trade up to nice older US coin.
Just the Silver alone in these silver/clad Kennedys are worth the trade off if your like me and get these in Bank boxes or bags for only face!
$4 for 50c, is quite OK on my book!
Not even talking about the variety/BU aspect!
It's a No Brainer. Duh!
I love these, esp the SMS Kennedys.
Just take a look at those ddo 1966 "Double Profile" gems. Check out John's Lips on that one. Super Doubled!
I have a few myself. Pics later...
"Jesus died for you and for me, Thank you,Jesus"!!!
--- If it should happen I die and leave this world and you want to remember me. Please only remember my opening Sig Line.Understandable, but I dislike the administrative work associated with selling. I infer I have a different time preference than you do. For world coinage, I'm unsure how easy mid to low quality is to sell, even though it's only bought for the metal content. I've never owned it before, only NCLT.
For US, I'm not going to buy low-quality silver, but I'm also not paying additional premium for BU since these are such common coins. To me, BU 1960's dimes and quarters or silver Kennedy halves are bullion and don't deserve any additional premium though I know it has one.
For non-US, I'd rather pay somewhat over melt for gem or good quality but if I can't do that, I'll only buy low or average circulated at discounts.
I agree. I've managed over the years to pull 4500 or so 40% halves from bank boxes at face value.
Selling junk can be an issue but you can always sell it to a wholesaler or a refiner for 95-97% of melt if you have a large quantity. Of course shipping costs are substantial now days. You can always trade it as well which is easier sometimes.
I bought most of my 40% BU silver at no premium or a small premium. This premium wasn't to melt but to the discount. In other words 40% trades at a 20% discount and I'd pay only a 10% discount sometimes.
There always better silver available at little or no premium.
Looks like you're selling the rolls too cheap, especially if the 40% halves are near Unc.: https://www.ngccoin.com/price-guide/coin-melt-values.aspx
Arizona coin exchange has been buying 90% around 20x. Local buyers more like 16-18x.
If you're selling on ebay, even with a store, you're losing 10% seller cost, hopefully you don't offer free shipping as well.
As usual, this thread has gone somewhat off-topic. What I'm talking about here is circulated junk 40% silver, not numismatically valuable coins.
Silver is bulky and heavy enough when you consider value, 40% is ridiculous, but I favor gold.