So you’re looking for 5 ounce silver quarters? Hhmmm…If you are new to the silver market perhaps you mean 5 ounce silver coins of some type.
American silver quarters from 1964 and earlier are quite valuable these days because of the fact that they are 90% silver and 10% copper in composition however the certainly are not 5 ounce coins.
You can however get 5 ounce silver coins and bars and that could be what you are looking for.
So…Are silver quarters worth anything? When you are like me hearing a question like that makes me stop in my tracks!
The answer is quick and easy:
Yes! Silver quarters are actually worth quite a bit these days. Read on to find out just how much they are worth.
There are a few different ways to look at silver and specifically silver coins like the silver quarters we talk about a lot here. Some people buy silver coins as an investment, others as collectibles and still others as a form of savings.
Each approach has some slightly different reasons behind it as well as it’s potential for profit or loss -however you choose to measure that metric.
Since I don’t really know much about buying silver coins as a collectible item we won’t discuss that here but I am more familiar with buying silver for investment or savings purposes.
If you have seen what the price of silver has done since the early part of last decade it probably sparked your curiosity. Although the price has fallen back a bit in the past few months silver was approaching it’s nominal high of around $50 per ounce and it seems like in the long run we can expect to see it head back towards that mark again.
After all has the Federal Reserve stopped creating new money for circulation both in the digital and physical worlds? Nope, not really. Other central banks around the world seem about as enthusiastic about money printing as well and the United States government certainly isn’t in a good financial situation.
Should you buy a bag of silver quarters? Well, if you want my short answer I’d have to say yes. Of course if you went with that advice you’d be going solely on my inclinations unless you’ve done some research into the potential benefits of buying silver quarters before.
If you haven’t looked into silver as an investment or form of savings protection now is a good time to get started. I’ll give you a brief overview though.
Over the years silver and gold have been the primary metals valued by people the world over and as a result used for currency. They’ve been tested over time and whenever societies lose their connection to silver and gold as the base for their money you can be sure that eventually their currency lost value.
Sometimes the loss of value and mistrust of paper money and other fiat currencies was so severe that hyper inflationary events occurred (because the money kept being printed by authorities and everyone wanted to be rid of it since they saw that it was being devalued).
A few countries that experienced severe inflation are Hungary, Zimbabwe and Germany. There have been many others as well however the above examples were some of the worst from a standpoint of the percentage level the inflation rate reached.
Throughout such times people who had the foresight to put money into precious metals -like buying a bag of silver quarters (or other form of silver)- did much better at maintaining their quality of life even when the value of other people’s savings were being wiped out. Other folks with access to valuable real goods that could be sold for increasingly higher prices as inflation rose did OK too.
In the U.S. we’ve seen the price of silver rise from a low of around $4.25 in 2001 to nearly $50 per ounce and now settle for a time around $32/per ounce. Many experts expect the price to rise to $70 per ounce and beyond as the financial situation in the United States and around the world has not been resolved in a positive way and the Federal Reserve continues it’s policy of massive new money creation.
You can always count on long periods of monetary expansion eventually having the effect of increasing the general price level as well as drastically spiking particular sectors as we saw in the housing market in the past decade.
As I mentioned above the structural financial problems in the United States and many other countries have not been fixed. This means that going forward we are likely to see more rather than less turmoil and if the central bankers of the world follow the only playbook they seem to have we will also see increasing inflation.
This is why buying a bag of silver quarters is a good idea. Of course you don’t have to buy a whole bag and they don’t even have to be quarters. Silver bullion bars and rounds are also an excellent way to get started. What matters most at this point is simply the getting started part since as the money supply increases we can expect the price of silver to go up as well.
In an earlier post I answered a question from a Silver Quarters Central reader who was wondering about how they should go about selling some silver quarters.
In the course of mentioning a few ways to make the sale (local coin shops, Craigslist etc) I said that it seems like keeping the quarters would actually be the best way to go.
Since it seems like over the course of the next few years the price of silver will continue to rise it kind of automatically makes sense to me to accumulate silver rather than sell it unless one’s financial situation makes spendable cash a priority.
While I’m not a real expert on the silver market I do read about what ‘experts’ think on the topic but for someone just finding out some things about silver my view might not make much sense.
Maybe if we make up a little story about one of the reasons why it’d be good to own more silver rather than less right now it’ll help to see the situation in a new light.
The year is 2007 (not long ago right?) and Richard is having a hard time making ends meet. His salary as a school principal is going up. It goes up by the day actually but oddly enough whenever he goes for groceries it seems the cost of his favorite coffee and the eggs he has for breakfast goes up at least as fast.
In fact just a few days ago the price of eggs was HALF what it is today and everyone expects to pay double or triple the current price next week as well.
Richard’s neighbor is a business owner who runs a small hardware store and even though he’s a regular guy and has always been a model citizen just yesterday the police led him away in handcuffs. Richard wasn’t home when it happened but the whole neighborhood knew why he was arrested. Drug dealing? Domestic violence…?
Nope, his neighbor had raised prices on some of the items for sale in his hardware store. There weren’t many items for sale anymore because suppliers didn’t have things available unless you paid in foreign currency.
To stay in business the hardware store owner had to keep up with the cost of buying goods however a new law had gone into effect stating that it was unacceptable to raise prices without approval from the newly created local price administration. They never gave approval to most business owners.
Richard had tried to withdraw his money from the bank months ago when prices were lower so he could buy some things to barter with in the future but banks were not allowing withdrawals due to…yep…another new law.
Richard wasn’t really sure how the country got into the mess it was in but he did now that things seemed to be headed down hill and in some parts of the country people were saying it was already almost impossible to buy the weekly groceries unless you had a solid foreign currency or some silver or gold. Even a little went much, much farther than the money you had in the bank (and couldn’t get out).
So you’re probably wondering where Richard lived right? Well as I mentioned this is a completely fictional story but this is the kind of thing that happened in Zimbabwe in 2007 and 2008. I know you probably don’t live in Zimbabwe but it seems that the head of the central bank there learned a lot from the US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.
The policies he pursued weren’t all that different than the path our government officials seem to be following now. While U.S. Citizens may not experience exactly the same situation as folks in Zimbabwe did we are headed for harder times ahead and we have already seen the value of our currency decline.
Saving some of your money in the form of silver quarters, dimes or silver bullion seems like a good, easy way to help ensure that you’ll be able to buy the groceries and other things your family needs down the road in case we do experience significant levels of inflation here in the future.
If you’ve already begun to buy physical silver you probably know that silver quarters are a great way to go. There are plenty of other bullion options out there as well.
If you haven’t bought any silver yet let me tell you a little secret: In my opinion it’s time to get started. Even if you can’t buy silver coins in bulk right now you can buy a few at a time.
The importance of physical silver investments is not just my opinion either.
Check out a recent post from SovereignMan.com that illustrates the instability in the so-called paper markets for silver and highlights why you want to put your precious metals investments into the solid commodities themselves and buy physical silver and gold rather than promises to deliver.
Remember that the dollar note used to be a promise to deliver silver or gold to the bearer on demand. That’s lasted a long time didn’t it?
Here’s an excerpt from the post mentioned above:
“Denver based Barnhardt Capital Management is a futures brokerage firm that focuses on agriculture, round-the-clock broker access, and inexpensive commissions. At least, it used to be.
Barnhardt shuttered its operations yesterday after six-years in the business. The firm’s founder Ann Barnhardt posted the reasons online for the entire world to see…
…Ms. Barnhardt further explains that markets are completely fractured… that the rule of law in the United States no longer exists. She decries Jon Corzine of MF Global for having outright stolen customer funds, and various exchanges and government regulators for having frozen out customer accounts as a result.
Given that the entire industry is “suicidally-leveraged” and exposed to “European sovereign junk debt,” Barnhardt recommends that ALL customers “withdraw from all of the markets as soon as possible so that they have the best chance of protecting themselves and their equity.”
We couldn’t agree more with this sentiment.”
As you can see this is serious business. Protecting your savings should be a high priority as you make your investment plans for the next year, two years and so on.
If you are looking for the price of silver quarters it is probably good to know up front that the typical silver quarter price is based largely on the spot price of silver which is a highly variable figure given the fact that it is an actively traded commodity around the world. This makes it hard to say for certain what the value of silver quarters will be from one day to the next.
The good news is that it is quite easy to figure out the price of silver coins if you know what the current spot price of silver is. This is because American silver coinage -quarters in this instance- is of a standard weight and size so we’re easily able to calculate the amount of silver in a given quarter and the value of that silver.
There is an even easier way to discover the current price of a silver quarter that requires no math on your part. A website called Coinflation keeps track of the current spot price of silver and runs the math based on the the various weights of different common silver coins to give you quick and easy access to the up to date silver quarter price information.
You can see below some of the well known types of silver coins along with their face values and actual values in USD.
If you click on each coin you can also see some more detailed information on the coin such as it’s dates of production, total weight and metal composition. Below is the detailed view for the Washington style silver quarter.
You can use tools like this to keep track of the price of silver quarters when you are out and about and find an opportunity to pick up a few silver quarters at an antique store. It’s also useful when keeping an eye on some eBay auctions that are ending soon.
It can be confusing to constantly do the math to figure out the price per ounce so if you just find the current spot price value of a quarter and then compare that number with the number of quarters in the auction and the current bid you’ll have an easy way to track whether you are looking at a good buy or not.
If you have been watching the current silver bull market since it’s start in the first year of the century then you are familiar with how far silver has come in that time. Ten years ago the price of a silver quarter dollar was only about 77 cents. Today it is over $7.
Despite the gains so far it does seem likely that the rise will continue for a time since the factors -or problems- that have pushed silver to it’s current price have continued to grow and become even more severe.
One sign that the interest in silver does not seem to have peaked is that fact that many people are apparently quite willing to part with any silver they do have. You’ll see signs advertising “We Buy Gold and Silver” at many pawn shops and pay day loan establishments around the country.
It seems likely that as silver and gold become more popular as the price of each continues upward that fewer people will be interested in selling and more in buying. For now you can keep accumulating your silver stash and keep an eye on the price of silver quarters to find good times to pick up more at a discount.
Remember the old silver quarters from the 60s? The ones that were 90% silver and 10% copper instead of the mostly zinc quarters we have today?
Well, even if you don’t remember those you may have heard about them or read about them in Reminisce magazine or some other similar publication and wondered where you could find that type of silver quarters for sale.
It’s really not that hard to find pre-1965 silver coins for sale. You just have to know a couple places to look. They are a pretty good way to get started in buying some silver for savings to act as a bit of an inflation hedge. One of the first places to look is eBay. They have coins of all types but they have a whole section for the various types of silver quarters that were minted. Naturally enough they also have silver dimes, half dollars and all the other types of silver coins.
In any case they have a whole section for silver quarters and you can find the Washington style silver quarters for sale there as well as the older styles of silver quarters like the Standing Liberty or Barber varieties.
You’ll find that a lot of the auctions will be single quarter auctions which isn’t the best way to buy unless you are looking for a particular quarter. You’ll also see rolls as well; typically a roll or two per lot. Some people even sell bags with large amounts of coins in one bag which is a good way to pick up a lot of them at once. The likelihood you’ll find a large lot auction of silver quarters on eBay varies from day to day but it is worth looking to see what is up at the moment.
Another place to look for silver quarters for sale is Craigslist. You’ll usually find them under the collectors items section where you’ll find folks trying to sell their coin collections.
Watch out on Craigslist since many people have a bit of an inflated valuation of some of their goods and you’ll need to know what the current coin values are based on the spot price of silver before you get involved in any negotiations with Craigslist sellers.
You can also find silver quarters for sale at some flea markets or at pawn shops. There are also those permanent flea markets or antique shops you often see along the Interstate that can be a good place to find some as well. Some antique shops don’t keep up with the current valuations of silver quarters and other coins so you may be able to find some good deals by shopping at these venues.
There are other online sources besides eBay where you can find large bags of pre-1965 coins. Generally you’ll need to buy a $100-1,000 face value bag of silver which will run you from $3,000 on up at today’s silver prices. You’ll need to have a fair amount of money on hand to put into silver if you want to buy large bags like this.
Here are a well-known online silver seller names to check into:
So those are a few places where you can find silver quarters for sale both on and off the Internet. With today’s inflationary environment it seems likely that silver will go considerably higher before fiscal and monetary sanity is restored.
Perhaps we’ll be back to using silver quarters everyday by then! That would certainly be an interesting turn of events and has the potential to bring some stability to America’s monetary system.
If you’ve looked around at some of the other articles we have here at Silver Quarters Central you’ve seen the information on silver dimes, quarters and so on. You know about some of the advantages of silver and how it is a good way to protect the purchasing power of your savings even when there is a lot of monetary inflation going on like we are seeing today thanks to the Federal Reserve and Ben Bernanke.
Because you know about all this you’ve decided that you would like to start accumulating some silver but are still deciding between the several different ways you could go about building your silver stash. Obviously you could go with silver quarters, dimes, half dollars or other types of formally circulated silver currency which is often called junk silver. Junk silver isn’t really junk of course. Just silver that used to be in circulation and everyday use. You might also be interested in more pure forms of silver like silver bullion as well as the best place to buy silver bullion.
One of the advantages or attractions of silver bullion over junk silver is the purity of the metal. Whereas junk silver contains 10% copper silver bullion is typically 99.999 percent pure silver.
Silver bullion can also be easier and simpler to handle in larger quantities because you can buy a variety of sizes such as 1 oz bullion bars and rounds as well as 5, 10, 100 or 1,000 ounce bars. Bullion bars are typically pretty easy to stack or package together for storage or transport. Junk silver can be more bulky and hard to handle so unless you need your silver divided into many small units bullion may have an advantage in this area.
You might also be able to find bullion for a better price than the price you will find junk silver bringing though this is highly variable. 90% silver auctions can sometimes be pretty competitive and you may be better off going to a mint or dealer and getting bullion than engaging in a bidding war for 90% silver rolls on eBay.
It can depend on the day and there isn’t a set rule or predictable pattern. If you like to buy new items than you will probably want to go with bullion since you are typically getting newly minted goods instead of the historically interesting but well worn junk silver currency that’s been out of circulation since the mid-60s.
That brings us to answering the question: ‘where is the best place to buy silver bullion?’. There’s really not a best place but there certainly are good places and the are likely to be terrible places to buy bullion. Obviously no one person has experience buying silver bullion from all the sources from which you could possibly buy bullion so it’d be hard to quantify the best place to buy silver bullion in a meaningful way.
A couple good places to start however are eBay and a few other online sellers. You’ll find that while there are a number of private sellers on eBay there are also quite a few dealers who sell on eBay and depending on the market conditions you may find they best deals on eBay or by going directly to the mint/dealer’s website.
One of those eBay sellers that also has an online store is Scottsdale Silver out of Arizona. Scottsdale Silver has a variety of silver bullion products you can purchase including their own label silver bars and rounds. You’ll find the Academy hand poured silver bars available there as well. You can go with 20 packs of 1 oz round or bars as well as 5, 10 or 100 oz “Stacker” bar offerings.
These bars are probably some of the best for organized storage since they are precisely milled and stack neatly on top of one another like blocks. Depending on your bullion purchase you might be able to get free shipping as well. They also carry some gold bullion in gram and ounce weights if you have an interest in accumulating gold in addition to silver.
Another option to look at is the Northwest Territorial Mint which carries quite a variety. They have bags of junk silver like Morgan and Peace dollars. They also have silver bullion in a variety of options. You can get bars and rounds by Pan American Silver. Northwest Territorial Mint also has their own label bullion. You can also get the super-large 1,000 oz bars from NWTMint. You’ll see some of the commonly recognized names like Engelhard on their website.
Those are three options for buying silver bullion. As we mentioned before they might not be the best place to buy silver bullion however they certainly are good options. So check out Scottsdale Silver, Northwest Territorial Mint and the current eBay auctions to get started in your silver shopping.