I've been buying silver and a little gold now for 1/2 a year and i'm just wondering what type of coins people are buying and what kind of premiums are you paying?
My fav silver coin is the Chinese panda but the premium is over 50% of spot at the bullion store in Vancouver that i use. So when spot is around $22 CAD one 30g Panda, which is less than the regular one troy ounce, costs $35 CAD. I only bought a couple of these ones as that it just too much to pay. But still the design is super cool. I love how they have diagonal lines on the edge of the coin instead of the usual straight lines you see on all other coins. Such a simple idea but adds to the uniqueness of the coin.
For buying at volume i think the best option is the US Silver Buffalo, as these trade the closest to spot. They're recognized all over the world and i really like the simple design of it. I also prefer seeing the Native American face over the stupid queen anyway so that another bonus of the American coins. The only downside is there's no years printed on the buffalos.
The Silver Eagles are also one of my fav's as that is the most recognized silver coin in the world, but you pay more than the Buffalos. Another cool thing about US coins is the sides are flipped around on each side so it always stays face up when flipping. No other countries seem to do this which is odd.
Being Canadian i do buy some maples, and all CAD silver coins are .9999 fine instead of the usual three 9's so you're getting a slightly purer silver. The premiums are a bit cheaper than the US eagles, but not as cheap as the buffalo's. The radial lines on the maple's are really cool, but they've had issues with milk spotting which i've even noticed in my small collection. But as i mentioned before you get the ugly face of the queen on these ones so you have to put up with that.
I do like bars as well and have bought 5 oz's from Sunshine Minting, and 10 oz bars from the Royal Canadian Mint. The bars will give you the closest to spot rate, so for volume i like these ones. I think the 10 oz is as high as a small time stacker should go as the 100 oz might be harder to deal with for it's size and ability to sell later on.
For gold I only have a couple maple coins of the 1/4 and 1/10 ounce size. I think it's better to buy smaller amounts than try to save up to buy a full oz coin as when you want to sell it will be better to have paid more to have an ounce made up of 1/4's and 1/10 coins instead of just one full ounce, so you can sell off a bit at a time. Plus if gold is going over 10K or more like some predictions you're going to want your gold in the smallest denominations possible.
So what type of coins and bars are you buying?