Dear Mr. Berko:
For Christmas gifts, I usually buy 100 mint-condition Susan B. Anthony dollar coins (which are not silver) from a coin dealer for $1.50 each. I give them to friends and put them in stockings for our kids. This coin dealer offered me an opportunity to buy 10 beautiful, gleaming 6-by-2.5-inch silver-proof $100 coins minted with 480 grains of pure silver. They’re engraved with the Liberty Bell and the likeness of Benjamin Franklin. He has 12 remaining, and he will sell me 10 of them for $121 each, which is a very small markup. I’d like to buy the other two, but I am tight on money and would have to sell a couple of my power tools to raise the cash. He won’t take a credit card. This is $21 over face value, but this is a very rare issue, and if silver rises back to $50 per ounce this year, my money on this investment would more than double. This sounds like a really good opportunity. Could I be missing something here? Please advise quickly, because this dealer is retiring and will be moving to Florida next month, which is your state.
K.J., Moline, Ill.
Dear K.J.:
Yep, you’re missing something, and it’s your brain, which is probably in the back of your pickup. I’m almost convinced that our government has been covertly adding a brain atrophy chemical to our water supply for the past 40 years.
