Collecting advice from long-time collectors

[tbone]

I'm finding that my strategy in collecting is evolving slightly, and I'm looking for advice or thoughts from older or long-time collectors.

I started out as a stacker of mostly silver back in the 08 crisis days.  Rode the PM wave up and down (should've sold, but 20/20 hindsight...).  Moved from pure bullion to fancier silver proofs and such.  Anyway, I've been focusing on gold and more numismatics in the past few years.  My general strategy has been to find gold (and some silver) that is fairly close to spot but might have a chance at higher premiums in future.  But its mostly been all over the map, anything from modern gold like libertads and proofs to sovereigns to old world gold to pre-33 US. 

Should I be concentrating on just one area (say pre-33 US gold, which is interesting to me) ?  Should I get more numismatic coins (higher premiums over spot)?  If most collectors follow a similar evolution in collecting, if I was to fast-forward 20 years, what would I tell my younger self to do?  Any words of advice from the older/long-time collectors out there?

Thanks in advance!

[Cornishfarmer]

I go in waves, semi numi then proof then bullion and back again.    My advice (which isn’t worth anything because I told a mate not to touch Bitcoin when was $60).   I would go for bit of both and drop the proofs.   Trouble with bullion is when spot high so I’ve got some sovs bought for £250 but the are only still worth spot so £225 odd. But will be easy to sell when spot rises again. Also got queens beast lions bought for £950 which have gone up in price but will be harder to find a buyer to pay top price.

its like some of the sales here, had some nice shields, SOTD sov and young heads which were great coins at great prices and they struggled to sell quickly.

if talking about silver don’t know because I bought low sold high and still struggled to cover purchase price

[tbone]

11 minutes ago, Cornishfarmer said:

I go in waves, semi numi then proof then bullion and back again.    My advice (which isn’t worth anything because I told a mate not to touch Bitcoin when was $60).   I would go for bit of both and drop the proofs.   Trouble with bullion is when spot high so I’ve got some sovs bought for £250 but the are only still worth spot so £225 odd. But will be easy to sell when spot rises again. Also got queens beast lions bought for £950 which have gone up in price but will be harder to find a buyer to pay top price.

its like some of the sales here, had some nice shields, SOTD sov and young heads which were great coins at great prices and they struggled to sell quickly.

if talking about silver don’t know because I bought low sold high and still struggled to cover purchase price

Thanks @Cornishfarmer , so it seems semi-numi and bullion.  Interesting that the better coins struggled to sell.  Do you concentrate on one area, or buy whatever comes along that you like? 

[Cornishfarmer]

15 minutes ago, tbone said:

Thanks @Cornishfarmer , so it seems semi-numi and bullion.  Interesting that the better coins struggled to sell.  Do you concentrate on one area, or buy whatever comes along that you like? 

Never bought a coin I didn’t like at the time.  But looking back I have a few, mostly because of size not design esp 1/50 ele.    my long term coins are Somalia ele, queens beasts and pandas. And bullion Pre 33, 20 francs and sovs.    Will jump on the emu if in gold, should have swan.   But things change wouldn’t have thought HGM would have going in this direction a year ago.    

[Pete]

I'm kind of in the same situation as @tbone having been a stacker for a while and piled in big time when silver was on the way up.
Now regretting that because the silver is worth half what it cost today.

I too bought a few proofs and even thought they are beautiful to look at, the resale value seems to always be less than expected.

I am only adding odd coins from time to time to either complete a date run set but having started on the Queens Beasts silver and gold I have to continue to buy the new issues.

Occasionally a real bargain surfaces so as a PM addict I sometimes buy but I have avoided the temptation to back up the truck to lower my average ounce cost in silver.

Looking forward I am really hoping that silver is grossly underpriced and has a lot of upside potential.
I am not convinced gold will rise much but will retain value and maybe platinum is due a correction as it does seem cheap compared to gold.

If silver ever returns to the mid twenty pounds per ounce I would consider swapping for gold and of course if ever that happened I am sure silver would continue to rise and I would end up kicking myself for selling too early.

 

[tbone]

4 minutes ago, Pete said:

If silver ever returns to the mid twenty pounds per ounce I would consider swapping for gold

Same here, seems most of the silver I have is in waiting to unload it (at higher price) for gold.  An expensive lesson for me, but I've moved on. 

I'm hoping to avoid more mistakes like this, and my path towards more collectable coins will probably mean I'll fall into more collector "traps", hence my post here. 

[RoughDog]

Newbie here, but some thoughts I have are:

How about selling a complete series?

Suppose someone purchased multiple lunars or queens beasts each year.  Sold a complete series after it finished? 

Maybe only plausible for silver due to price?

Maybe only purchase key coins or most attractive coins from each series?  Low mintage, first coin in series,  tiger, snake etc?

Save up lot of money and make one huge purchase at cheapest time possible?

Maybe be wary of purchasing when something seems to be rising too fast too quick.  Nothing rises fast forever.  Such as housing market bubble etc

 

Seems to require a lot of discipline to treat it as 100% investment almost got to think like a dealer.

I am a little bit of a collector/investor so to do the above is not to my liking, but not that much of a collector that will pay huge premiums.

I will pay a premium on occasion and plan to do for the 2 oz silver queens beast lion that I missed but I mostly purchase this years coins.

 

[tbone]

2 hours ago, RoughDog said:

Newbie here, but some thoughts I have are:

How about selling a complete series?

Thanks for the reply RoughDog.  I have collected a few sets, but I've often heard that "sets are for suckers", which may be true and one of those things more experienced collectors find out the hard way once they try to  sell.  For example, I have every Kookaburra (silver), but from a pure financial standpoint I doubt I can recoup the costs if I sold the entire set today (most were bought long after the initial release so at a higher premium).

Anyway, that type of stuff I'd like to hear from long-time collectors here.

[sovereignsteve]

2 hours ago, RoughDog said:

How about selling a complete series?

 

15 minutes ago, tbone said:

I've often heard that "sets are for suckers",

people do collect sets but complete sets rarely sell well as most potential buyers already have a part set.

2 hours ago, RoughDog said:

Maybe only purchase key coins or most attractive coins from each series?  Low mintage, first coin in series,  tiger, snake etc?

Good in theory but the problem is having the foresight to know which ones to buy when the price is cheap or reasonable, usually on issue or soon after. By the time you know the mintage or if something will be popular, the window has closed. Many series don't do well so buying the first coin will be a waste.

[Lowlow]

I wouldn't be too upset about buying silver at a higher $us or £uk price, it doesn't really matter, you still have your silver.  You aren't upset because you have the silver, or that you spent the money, you're only upset because later the price went down.  Well, that happens sometimes.   It doesn't mean the price you paid was too high, or that your silver isn't worth everything you paid for it, all it means is that you might have bought more silver had you waited longer.  Or you might have bought less of it.  You really had no idea what the price of silver was going to do, none of us really knows.

If you're buying today at 17$us/oz, are you going to be upset if it costs 50$us/oz tomorrow ?  Or 5$us/oz ?  The point is, it doesn't matter what the market is going to do if you look at silver and judge for yourself what its value is TO YOU and then make the decision to buy, sell, or wait.

Said another way, the only reason it FEELS like a decision is because you have bought into the idea that paper is money, and that silver isn't.  Really think about that.  You agonize over the $us or £uk price of silver, but when you're sitting in $us or £uk, do you sit around agonizing over the fact that its falling in price relative to google stock, or bitcoin, or whatever the high flyer of the day is ?  Are you proud of yourself for being in $us or £uk instead of being in something that is falling in price today ?  Or do you consider $us or £uk to be "home base", the place where you're "not invested in anything".  Well, you are invested in something, even if you're holding your countries currency.

Do you get upset if you are holding $us and you could be holding £uk and £uk rises in price relative to $us and you didn't get in for the ride ?  Do you get upset if you're holding £uk and you could be holding $us and $us rises in price relative to £uk ?  Why ?  It's no different if you're in silver and you consider that your home currency, of course $us and £uk are going to rise and fall relative to silver.  There's no such thing as being in the perfect trade, you're ALWAYS going to be early, late, pay too much, etc, at some point ... but things change, maybe tomorrow it'll be different, will you consider yourself some kind of market genius if that happens, even though at this moment you really have no idea if it will or won't ?

[tbone]

13 minutes ago, Lowlow said:

Said another way, the only reason it FEELS like a decision is because you have bought into the idea that paper is money, and that silver isn't.  Really think about that.  You agonize over the $us or £uk price of silver, but when you're sitting in $us or £uk, do you sit around agonizing over the fact that its falling in price relative to google stock, or bitcoin, or whatever the high flyer of the day is ?  Are you proud of yourself for being in $us or £uk instead of being in something that is falling in price today ?  Or do you consider $us or £uk to be "home base", the place where you're "not invested in anything".  Well, you are invested in something, even if you're holding your countries currency

Thanks Lowlow.  I appreciate your input.

I don't agonize really.  I try to be honest with myself and I do kick myself from time to time over bad decisions (financial or otherwise).  But I'm not losing sleep over it (I didn't mortgage the house for silver or something crazy).  I do think silver is very undervalued (yes, in terms of $ because that is what I get paid in and what I need to use to make a silver purchase, or any purchase for that matter).  So for me I guess I'm glad I have some silver, but buying silver since '08 has been a losing venture just in terms of opportunity costs.  Basically almost everything else has gone up (in the US anyway), while silver has dropped and flat lined.  Not really a high flyer of the day, its been an almost 10 year up trend.

Anyway, silver and gold are a just a part of my finances, but I enjoy the collecting aspect and I'm trying to make smarter decisions and learn from others who've been down this road.

[Lowlow]

15 minutes ago, tbone said:

Thanks Lowlow.  I appreciate your input.

I don't agonize really.  I try to be honest with myself and I do kick myself from time to time over bad decisions (financial or otherwise).  But I'm not losing sleep over it (I didn't mortgage the house for silver or something crazy).  I do think silver is very undervalued (yes, in terms of $ because that is what I get paid in and what I need to use to make a silver purchase, or any purchase for that matter).  So for me I guess I'm glad I have some silver, but buying silver since '08 has been a losing venture just in terms of opportunity costs.  Basically almost everything else has gone up (in the US anyway), while silver has dropped and flat lined.  Not really a high flyer of the day, its been an almost 10 year up trend.

Anyway, silver and gold are a just a part of my finances, but I enjoy the collecting aspect and I'm trying to make smarter decisions and learn from others who've been down this road.

Two thoughts.

1) I'd recommend the book "The Disciplined Trader" for a primer on trading psychology, not because you intend to be an active trader, but for the peace of mind that comes from reading it and understand how feelings play into trading.  It's completely human to feel excited when a trade is going your way, to feel smart, to feel like you've done something, accomplished, to be proud, and to feel wrong when the trade goes against you, feel regret, wish you had a "do over", wish you had made another decision or made the decision slightly differently.  But none of that has anything to do with anything, they're just feelings, and not real, and have nothing to do with what the $us or £uk price of silver is, was, or will be.  I can't really explain it any better than that, that's why there is a whole book (actually numerous authors have written about it), but I'd recommend the read if for no other reason than because it makes it a lot easier to forgive yourself for what you perceive is a bad trade.

2) For me, given the same trade, I wouldn't feel it was a bad trade.  It's like having a girlfriend, you feel like you made the right choice when she's being cute, hanging on your every word, holding your hand, whispering in your ear, etc, and the wrong decision when she's being a b*tch, complaining, spending your money, p*ssing off your moms, and throwing a temper tantrum because you don't want to watch Britains got talent reruns with her.  Same girl, different day.  She isn't good, or bad, it only feels like that depending on what day it is.  If you dislike her today, wait a few days, probably like her more then.  If you like her today, wait a few days, probably dislike her.  If silver went to 500$us/oz tomorrow your feelings about it would change, but it's still just the market, still just $us, still just silver, and still just you.  The only thing the changed is how you feel about it.

(And if she isn't being cute, hanging on your every word, holding your hand, whispering in your eat, etc, at least some of the time ... kick that b*tch to the curb ...)

[swAgger]

1 hour ago, Lowlow said:

I wouldn't be too upset about buying silver at a higher $us or £uk price, it doesn't really matter, you still have your silver.  You aren't upset because you have the silver, or that you spent the money, you're only upset because later the price went down.  Well, that happens sometimes.   It doesn't mean the price you paid was too high, or that your silver isn't worth everything you paid for it, all it means is that you might have bought more silver had you waited longer.  Or you might have bought less of it.  You really had no idea what the price of silver was going to do, none of us really knows.

If you're buying today at 17$us/oz, are you going to be upset if it costs 50$us/oz tomorrow ?  Or 5$us/oz ?  The point is, it doesn't matter what the market is going to do if you look at silver and judge for yourself what its value is TO YOU and then make the decision to buy, sell, or wait.

Said another way, the only reason it FEELS like a decision is because you have bought into the idea that paper is money, and that silver isn't.  Really think about that.  You agonize over the $us or £uk price of silver, but when you're sitting in $us or £uk, do you sit around agonizing over the fact that its falling in price relative to google stock, or bitcoin, or whatever the high flyer of the day is ?  Are you proud of yourself for being in $us or £uk instead of being in something that is falling in price today ?  Or do you consider $us or £uk to be "home base", the place where you're "not invested in anything".  Well, you are invested in something, even if you're holding your countries currency.

Do you get upset if you are holding $us and you could be holding £uk and £uk rises in price relative to $us and you didn't get in for the ride ?  Do you get upset if you're holding £uk and you could be holding $us and $us rises in price relative to £uk ?  Why ?  It's no different if you're in silver and you consider that your home currency, of course $us and £uk are going to rise and fall relative to silver.  There's no such thing as being in the perfect trade, you're ALWAYS going to be early, late, pay too much, etc, at some point ... but things change, maybe tomorrow it'll be different, will you consider yourself some kind of market genius if that happens, even though at this moment you really have no idea if it will or won't ?

Great logic. Well put.

 

37 minutes ago, tbone said:

Thanks Lowlow.  I appreciate your input.

I don't agonize really.  I try to be honest with myself and I do kick myself from time to time over bad decisions (financial or otherwise).  But I'm not losing sleep over it (I didn't mortgage the house for silver or something crazy).  I do think silver is very undervalued (yes, in terms of $ because that is what I get paid in and what I need to use to make a silver purchase, or any purchase for that matter).  So for me I guess I'm glad I have some silver, but buying silver since '08 has been a losing venture just in terms of opportunity costs.  Basically almost everything else has gone up (in the US anyway), while silver has dropped and flat lined.  Not really a high flyer of the day, its been an almost 10 year up trend.

Anyway, silver and gold are a just a part of my finances, but I enjoy the collecting aspect and I'm trying to make smarter decisions and learn from others who've been down this road.

Remind yourself too, that you own physical silver which as far as i'm concerned is everything. In a market that is (for now) manipulated with dominantly paper, non-existing, silver. I genuinely do see a time when this strangle-hold will start to lose its grip. I'm not one of the "to da moooon" guys, at all. But i certainly believe silver will come to a true level. Whatever that may be. I will carry on buying the physical, real thing.

[tbone]

7 minutes ago, swAgger said:

Remind yourself too, that you own physical silver which as far as i'm concerned is everything. In a market that is (for now) manipulated with dominantly paper, non-existing, silver. I genuinely do see a time when this strangle-hold will start to lose its grip. I'm not one of the "to da moooon" guys, at all. But i certainly believe silver will come to a true level. Whatever that may be. I will carry on buying the physical, real thing.

I agree completely.  I do feel like the paper manipulation games can't last forever, but it may outlast me .  I'll still keep my core silver position though, can't part with it at these levels.

[Pampfan]

I have found that my collection started out as a mishmash of pre- 1964 90% silver, and a few odd silver bars and 1 ounce coins. I didn’t really no much of anything except that I was spending a lot more money than what I received when I went to sell. There was no real reason to my collection - as funds were very limited. I was quite scared of buying a fake coin - so my logic was to buy ngc graded coins - since they were in a nice holder - I could have the piece of mind the coin was real.(not going to get into fake holders coins - yes I know they exist.) my first big purchase was a 1 ounce gold American eagle ms70 by ngc. Considering the price I paid for it - $1425- I wasn’t going to be able to continue with 1 ounce gold coins - so I had the idea of buying limited edition silver eagle sets from the mint with the intent of getting the coins graded and then selling them off to earn enough funds to make other purchases. That idea came crashing down when some of the coins didn’t grade out. So I decided to buy unopened silver rolls from all the mints in the world. Picked up a roll of snake privy britts, libertads, maples, eagles,philly’s, and about 5 others. Had them stored away - until one day I looked at a few of the rolls and they had milk spots - I sold them off at a loss just to get rid of them, meanwhile - I had seen a YouTube video of some guy in Britain who had the pamp suisse silver family, all the bars in all the different sizes - I said to myself - that was cool - maybe I could do it in gold. So at that point I shifted my stacking to a collection of pamp gold fortuna bullion bars and 1/10 oz gold coins from around the world) So I started selling off all the silver and gold I had to get the pamp collection. Took me 4 years to locate all the bars, and pick up about 20 different 1/10 oz gold world coins. I sent them all off for grading and got 10ms70 and 10ms69. I said that sucks - I really did not like how that was turning out and I also realized with my failing eyesight 1/10 oz coins are just to small. So I decided to only buy ms/pf70 1/4 oz gold coins when they come up for sale on eBay. Sold off all the 1/10 oz and managed to accumulate about 14 1/4 ounce coins in ms/pf70 condition. So my gold stack consists of my pamp gold bars and some graded numismatic gold. 

I still wanted to have a position in silver and I wanted to teach my kids something about silver - so whenever we went to the coin shows - the dealers would sell me colored 1 ounce silver eagles at spot for my kids. So probably at this point they have about 250 in total. I also only stack silver eagles at this point - cause I can sell them in an instant - 

to end my story - I collect world gold 1/4 oz gold coins - (if they go up or down I don’t care) pamp suisse bars ( if they go up or down I don’t care because I will never sell them anyway) and colored and regular silver eagles - cause my kids like em - you really can’t lose if you love what you collect and that is what many years of collecting has taught me.

[tbone]

41 minutes ago, Pampfan said:

I have found that my collection started out as a mishmash of pre- 1964 90% silver, and a few odd silver bars and 1 ounce coins. I didn’t really no much of anything except that I was spending a lot more money than what I received when I went to sell. There was no real reason to my collection - as funds were very limited. I was quite scared of buying a fake coin - so my logic was to buy ngc graded coins - since they were in a nice holder - I could have the piece of mind the coin was real.(not going to get into fake holders coins - yes I know they exist.) my first big purchase was a 1 ounce gold American eagle ms70 by ngc. Considering the price I paid for it - $1425- I wasn’t going to be able to continue with 1 ounce gold coins - so I had the idea of buying limited edition silver eagle sets from the mint with the intent of getting the coins graded and then selling them off to earn enough funds to make other purchases. That idea came crashing down when some of the coins didn’t grade out. So I decided to buy unopened silver rolls from all the mints in the world. Picked up a roll of snake privy britts, libertads, maples, eagles,philly’s, and about 5 others. Had them stored away - until one day I looked at a few of the rolls and they had milk spots - I sold them off at a loss just to get rid of them, meanwhile - I had seen a YouTube video of some guy in Britain who had the pamp suisse silver family, all the bars in all the different sizes - I said to myself - that was cool - maybe I could do it in gold. So at that point I shifted my stacking to a collection of pamp gold fortuna bullion bars and 1/10 oz gold coins from around the world) So I started selling off all the silver and gold I had to get the pamp collection. Took me 4 years to locate all the bars, and pick up about 20 different 1/10 oz gold world coins. I sent them all off for grading and got 10ms70 and 10ms69. I said that sucks - I really did not like how that was turning out and I also realized with my failing eyesight 1/10 oz coins are just to small. So I decided to only buy ms/pf70 1/4 oz gold coins when they come up for sale on eBay. Sold off all the 1/10 oz and managed to accumulate about 14 1/4 ounce coins in ms/pf70 condition. So my gold stack consists of my pamp gold bars and some graded numismatic gold. 

I still wanted to have a position in silver and I wanted to teach my kids something about silver - so whenever we went to the coin shows - the dealers would sell me colored 1 ounce silver eagles at spot for my kids. So probably at this point they have about 250 in total. I also only stack silver eagles at this point - cause I can sell them in an instant - 

to end my story - I collect world gold 1/4 oz gold coins - (if they go up or down I don’t care) pamp suisse bars ( if they go up or down I don’t care because I will never sell them anyway) and colored and regular silver eagles - cause my kids like em - you really can’t lose if you love what you collect and that is what many years of collecting has taught me.

Great post Pampfan, thank you.  I've gone through several phases like you.  The milk spots issue really turned me off on slabbed "premium" bullion, which is probably a bad idea all-together.  Some Pandas and maples spotted on me, and I hated to look at them + they lost value.  Partially why I prefer gold nowadays.

I do love collecting coins.  A great hobby and potentially a good investment if I can figure out how to "do it right", if that makes sense.  I guess I want my cake and eat it too.

[ilovesilverireallydo]

I started out buying silver from the big cos here in U.K. Didn’t realise how much more I was paying for these coins. Mostly Eagles and Maples. 

Then I started to do a tonne more research  and realised how silly it was to buy silver cons at 20% premium plus 17.5% VAT (back then). 

So i sold it all on eBay, lost 10-12% of what I paid but used that to stack scrap/junk silver coins, buying them individually on eBay one by one. Soon enough I had more silver weight for the same money. 

I quickly learnt that research is a good thing. So for the long game (retirement funds) I stack mostly “junk silver” when I can get it at spot or lower, Silver Brits as they have a capital gains tax advantage and half sovereign and full sovereign.

i will often trade or sell any coins with a higher numismatic value over metal and stack more metal, however I do collect some stuff that is for me, rather than investment. These include interesting poured items, 1oz silver manufactured bars, certain circulated coins such as silver crowns, silver Indian rupees and some semi numi series like the lunar 1/2 oz, interesting Britannia and German silver. I also collect odd silver items like ingots, pendants, interesting spoons, bullets etc. However I know what limits I have set myself on the premiums, and what prices I am willing to pay overall. 

I also found it highly educational selling coins on eBay, as well as watching hundreds of auctions to know what retail prices you could achieve. That knowledge goes into buying stuff from dealers who don’t have websites and then trying to flip it for more weight. 

[tbone]

5 hours ago, ilovesilverireallydo said:

I quickly learnt that research is a good thing. So for the long game (retirement funds) I stack mostly “junk silver” when I can get it at spot or lower, Silver Brits as they have a capital gains tax advantage and half sovereign and full sovereign.

Thanks @ilovesilverireallydo .  When I was stacking silver I was into US junk silver, which is nice because it combines stacking for weight and has history to it (Merc dimes and Franklin halves were a favorite).  I guess that history component is more interesting to me as I get a bit older, and why I'm moving more towards collecting rather than stacking I think.

Do you collect any more numismatic pieces?  If so, what is your strategy? 

[ilovesilverireallydo]

2 minutes ago, tbone said:

Do you collect any more numismatic pieces?  If so, what is your strategy? 

I do, but nothing super premium. Old coins mostly that I know have held up their prices and collectability. I hardly collect modern numismatics but will occasionally buy potential successes like Perth lunar, swan, emu as well as Korean warriors, and in gold 1/10 krug date run, just cause I think they are cool.

Right now am building sets or precolonial silver coins, such as Indian rupees and date runs of pre decimal U.K. silver coins, such as crowns half crowns, double florins and florins. Basically rescuing decent pieces from bulk buy and storing properly. 

These rupees are a recent acquisition and love them.

[Pete]

15 hours ago, RoughDog said:

Newbie here, but some thoughts I have are:

Save up lot of money and make one huge purchase at cheapest time possible?

Exactly my friend !!

That's what some of us old-timers did when silver was >£20 per ounce in early 2011 before rising to £30 per ounce in the Spring.
I would buy 100+ ounces in one order ( e.g. 5 tubes of Eagles or Maples ) in Germany where the VAT was only 7% believing I was on a roll.
Premiums on these sold on eBay were high due to the demand and most buyers were naively accepting the full UK VAT.

The problem is timing - "cheapest time possible "

[Pampfan]

@tbone just a few other thoughts - it really all comes down to a personal decision on what/how etc. to collect.  My collection would definitely be a lot different if I would never have joined the forum - and all the knowledge I learned from other members who are passionate and so knowledgeable in their specific areas of collecting. I definitely was able to pick up some great stuff because of posts by @Numistacker and @sovereignsteve, etc. 

 

[Lowlow]

2 hours ago, Pete said:

That's what some of us old-timers did when silver was >£20 per ounce in early 2011 before rising to £30 per ounce in the Spring.

I would buy 100+ ounces in one order ( e.g. 5 tubes of Eagles or Maples ) in Germany where the VAT was only 7% believing I was on a roll.

This part of the VAT system confuses me.

@Pete says folks in the UK can buy from Germany for 7% VAT, and someone in Germany paid 7% VAT to import the coins, but I read an article about a man in the UK who was convicted for tax avoidance because he did the same two step process - establishing a business in one EU tax jurisdiction to import precious metals, then he would go from the UK to that country, take delivery of the precious metal, then transport it back to the UK to sell it, essentially having the same effect as avoiding the high UK VAT on precious metals.  I don't see what the difference is.

Why can't you, the average UK citizen, set up a business in Estonia, an EU member with no VAT on silver, import the silver, and then sell it to another business in the UK essentially importing the silver into the UK with zero VAT ?

Your EU tax structure is confusing to me in general, but this issue confuses me even more than the rest of it.

[tbone]

10 hours ago, ilovesilverireallydo said:

These rupees are a recent acquisition and love them.

Very cool, nice pics too.  The coloring on that obverse is great, not sure if that's the lighting or the natural patina of the coin.  Nice!

[ilovesilverireallydo]

29 minutes ago, tbone said:

Very cool, nice pics too.  The coloring on that obverse is great, not sure if that's the lighting or the natural patina of the coin.  Nice!

It’s the patina, love it. I have a few coins I have kept just cause of the patina. 

[kimchi]

5 minutes ago, ilovesilverireallydo said:

It’s the patina, love it. I have a few coins I have kept just cause of the patina. 

Absolutely! Would NGC remove that does anybody know?