You can buy silver through local dealers and pawnshops or from online retailers such as APMEX or JM Bullion. More specialized dealers, such as the Best Company to Rollover IRA to Gold, allow you to buy whole ingots instead of just coins. Buying silver bullion is a wise investment decision. Silver bars have lower premiums than coins, are easier to store than coins, and their price will increase by a higher percentage than gold bars. For those investors who want to access the silver market, choosing between the two methods is not that simple.
Holding silver bars at this point in history is not only very wise, but it will generate huge profits in the next bull market. This industrial demand makes the prices of silver more volatile than those of gold and, in general, they react to various measures of manufacturing data. Perhaps the greatest is the counterparty risk associated with owning one of the ETFs, or perhaps even more so for investors who hold an exchange-traded note (ETN), such as the ETN (USV) UBS E-TRACS CMCI Silver Total Return ETN (USV). In addition, investors should expect to pay an analysis fee when selling or buying silver bars through a dealer to ensure the purity and authenticity of the asset.
For example, the United States Mint produces several silver ingot coins, the most popular of which is the one-ounce American Eagle. However, if a person truly believes that the financial system will collapse, physical silver is an ideal alternative. All silver bullion coins are issued by government mints, which means that they are legal tender in the country in which they are produced and, therefore, the metallic content and purity of the coins are guaranteed. There are silver bars that are not eligible for an IRA and that are also of high quality, so don't automatically assume that they are of lower quality if they are not eligible for the IRA.
Nor are financial advisors and journalists telling you the truth about how gold and silver fit into a properly diversified portfolio. On the contrary, if you buy silver ingots from suppliers that are not well known, the quality of the bars could be called into question. Funds such as the iShares Silver Trust (SLV) have made it fairly easy for regular retail investors to access the silver market. Here is an example of the difference in the premium (what you pay above the spot price of silver) between Eagle silver coins and silver ingots from top brands.
This is because, for the most part, the refinery has as much trouble producing a kilo of silver as it is for a 1-ounce ingot.
