1/10oz fine silver rounds

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usaman65

Well-known member
Joined
Dec 7, 2007
Messages
121
Location
nj
Hi Guys-

I'm currently having dies made for a 1/10oz silver bullion round. The fine silver will be melted; poured into a sheet ingot; rolled on a rolling mill; Planchets punched; tumbled in steel shot for polishing; then the rounds will be struck by hand.

Sounds like a lot of work, but I've always wanted to do it. I chose 1/10oz silver rounds because it is a good size to hand strike, and they generally demand very high premiums compaired to any other fractional rounds. In many cases, 1/10oz rounds even sell for close to 2X spot..

The design I am having made is Shovel and pickaxe crossed with One Tenth Troy Ounce (above) - Fine Silver (below). I may have identical obverse/reverse to defray some of the costs. May sound not that impressive, but it looks pretty darn cool.

I will not be minting these until I have all the equipment (dies are being made now, not sure how long they will take). But what I was thinking was to strike these rounds for forum members out of their refined silver bullion. In most cases for you guys, buyers pay you less than spot for your home-refined bars, so maybe having nice minted 1/10oz rounds will appeal to you. (To get spot or better). I may do this to get a little of my money back from the cost of the dies, etc. I havent decided what I would charge to do this, probly pretty low. One problem I have thought of was what if the silver isnt exactly .999 or better? The best solution to that Could come up with was only to have "fine silver" on the rounds, so that is the purity isnt exactly .999+, you are not decieving anybody. "Fine Silver" is basically not intentionally alloyed.

What do you think?

kev
 
I like the idea of making the rounds and wish you well in finding a good market for them.
The only problem I can see in your plan is calling them fine silver if their not 999 as that is the industry standard. With gold from 995+ is accepted on the market but you might have problems with silver that doesn't meet market standards. If you want to strike these I would suggest only using silver of 999 which if your using a cell should be fairly easy and insist that you re refine any silver that is submitted that hasn't been assayed or come from a reliable source.
Don't forget your name is going to be attached to these rounds....do you want to be known as an unreliable source? We live in a very litigious society so id not be too keen to call anything fine silver or gold that really isn't.
If you want to just add a tag to them call them recycled silver :mrgreen:
 
Nick is very correct in his assessment. If you are stamping these rounds, you are by definition putting your “mark” on them as to purity.

I am no legal expert, but if you are looking to skate under guaranteeing .999 fine by calling it “fine silver” just in case it is lower in purity I think you have a problem. By definition “fine silver” is .999 fine. I am open to correction as this is just my memory of it. I prefer stampings that give decimal place purities so as to avoid these ambiguities.
 
For myself, these rounds are being struck out of .9999 shot, 1oz bars, etc.

Thats the only problem i had was with the refined silver for striking these coins for forum members, without assays, how can you be sure that it is exactly .999?

I am 100% into his project, just need to work out some of these problems.

kev
 
You will find out that stamping silver is quite entertaining and profitable. We have been stamping out silver spots for parade saddles for years now. It's fun!
 

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I like the 1/10 oz. size, and I like the idea of sending silver and getting back coin.

I think it would be good if you did final cell refining, and people could then just send in their precipitated silver. This would both save us a step, and assure you of the purity that you stamp.

Just keep a percentage of the silver sent.
 
The reason I did not suggest that in the first place was It is another step for me. I was thinking about a $0.75 - $1 a coin charge to make the coins, and if I have to do a step in refining that will just raise the price.

Another Idea I thought of was to make all ofthe coins slightly overweight so even if they are not exactly .999+, they will still contain 1/10oz .999 silver.

Kev
 
An off-weight coin would just be a red flag in the receiver's mind, which goes against the whole idea of coined silver in the first place.

The value of iffy bullion isn't very much. And the value of your mark would go down with it.
 
You mentioned that dies are being made. If I would be doing this I will go for something what was mentioned here - Recycled silver and maybe Gold refining forum. My rounds are marked fine silver and 999 but they were produced at refinery so their content is guaranteed.
 
This something I have been looking into myself, that is hand stamping my silver. I have talked to some die makers in my area, and I found one in particular who was interested in helping. I was looking to this to have some value-added to the silver, and that I think it just would be cool. I was thinking a long the lines of 1/4 ounce or 1/2 ounce though.

The other thing I looked at was casting the coins in silver, they are easier to do, but they don't have the professional look without a lot of finishing work.

I like the idea, but realistically, $0.75 - $1.00 each would be to high of a premium on a 1/10 ounce silver coin. That is adding $7.50 - $10.00 per ounce to the cost plus shipping both ways. At that price, I would be better to sell the silver as is. I can fleabay the silver at 95%-100% of spot in small quantities. You can buy Engelhard Silver for $3.00 or so over spot, and that is a very recognized name. I understand the amount of time and the expense of having the dies made, but silver is too cheap to absorb that kind of cost. On the other hand, stamping gold 1/10 ounce would be easier to justify.

Bottom line, I would probably send you some silver for the novelty of it, but I don't think I would see any extra profit from my point of view. I would be more inclined with 1/4 ounce rounds.

Richard
 

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