You are right, Dan. I am lucky, Kella is only 8 and I started when she was 4. Since the question was asked what people do with their silver and gold, here is basically what I do, if I buy a coin collection, on a lawn sale or from word of mouth that I buy them, I sell enough to get my money back, (keeps the wife off my back and funds in the pocket to buy the next collection), I have learned not to sell the best stuff, keep the rare, old, best condition stuff, work your way back to front as it were. Sell the junk first. I learned the hard way, I used to sell the high money stuff first to get the cash back in my pocket, bad move. Put the 1800's coins in vf-unc. condition away for the future. If you want to see why, pick up a 1966 coin price guide at the next yard sale and see what that 1928-P Peace dollar, that is now worth $400 bucks was going for back then and think what it will be worth when your child is 35 and buying a house or what it will be worth when you hit retirement age, etc. If I find jewelry at a yard sale I will send it in to ARA or try and get more for it if the stones are nice from a local guy that sells jewelry at a flea market. Ebay may work in this way also and has a time or three. Then I put what I paid for it back in my pocket and use the profit to buy Kella like PM bullion. That is, if it was a gold ring, she gets gold bullion or maybe a small modern $5 gold piece. Usually the best time to buy those, I can often get them for spot, is at the flea market at the end of the month when rent is due. If it is silver jewelry or maybe junk silver coins that I have found, I will after selling those, buy her silver bullion. I will try and find her brand name bars like Engelhart that often go over spot. If I am able to buy bars from someone at spot or under, I will put them aside and wait til the next time I find some junk silver and once I have a profit of X amount of dollars on the junk silver, move a like amount of Engelhart bars into her hoard. Here again, keep the bars, the good stuff, til you have a profit in lesser quality merchandise, then move the bars into your freebie hoard. Atleast that is what works for me. Well, I have rambled on, but you did ask what we do with our silver and gold, so it is partly your fault.............and yours, Dan for mentioning I am trying to partially pay for Kella's college with ys'ing. I am in hopes her stock account, bonds, and 529B do that and someday after she graduates, I can give her the hoard to buy a house with and she won't start life hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt between college loans and mortgage just to have a profession and a place to live. Enough rambling, if you have read to the end, thank you for your time,
T.
P.S. One benefit to doing it this way is you have no money, only "sweat equity" invested in your or your child's hoard. It makes it easier to ride out the ups and down of the PM markets without getting all stressed out. I have bars of silver that I paid 35 or 40 dollars for a couple of yrs ago, but since that 35 or 40 dollars was all "house" money and from profits I had made, I don't stress over the fact that silver has fluctuated from a high of nearly 50 to a low only a couple of months ago of 18. I have no money in it and it really isn't meant for me. No matter what, it will be worth more to Kella than I have in it. And as long as the Fed keeps printing fiat money, I have a feeling she is going to do just fine with her PM hoard in the future.
