Budget Investing: How to Buy Cheap Silver
Buying cheap precious metals can be tough. Premiums are high, the spot price of silver and gold continue to climb, and some dealers charge extreme shipping fees to help you get the coins and bars you love.
We’re here to help. For our budget investors, we’ve prepared a full guide on how to buy cheap silver. To buy cheap silver, you’ll need to understand a bit more about how silver prices are determined. By the end of this blog, you should know everything you need to know about how to buy silver for cheap.
How to Buy Cheap Silver
The most important step in how to buy cheap silver is to determine which silver products you prefer. While personal tastes and investment goals factor into the equation, your goal as an investor on a budget is to find silver products with the lowest possible premiums.
For most hobby investors, there are three different kinds of silver products: rounds, bars, and coins. Silver rounds and coins look similar to one another, but there’s one important difference. Silver coins can only be minted by government mints, while rounds can be privately minted.
Silver coins, bars, or rounds – which is the cheapest way to invest in silver? Let’s take a closer look at all three options below.
Cheapest Silver to Buy
Before we get into the three different silver products available on the Hero Bullion website, we’ll give you a brief primer about how to buy cheap silver.
Silver rounds and bars are usually considered the cheapest ways to invest in silver. Both rounds and bars can be privately minted, which helps cut down on premium costs. Coins, on the other hand, are minted by massive government mints. This drives up production costs, and this leads to higher consumer-side prices.
Long story short, we generally consider silver bars and rounds to be the cheapest ways to buy silver.
Silver Rounds
If you’re trying to learn how to buy cheap silver, rounds might be your first stop. They mirror the appearance of silver coins, which are a favorite among most silver stackers. The only difference between silver coins and rounds is the type of mint that produces them. While silver rounds might not offer the brand recognition provided by the U.S. Mint, the high variety of rounds make them an excellent choice for investors.
The biggest benefit of buying silver rounds is that they often come at a low premium over spot. This isn’t always the case. Sometimes, silver rounds with low mintages might be sold at an extreme markup. But if you do your research and learn how to buy cheap silver rounds, you can save quite a bit of money by working with rounds instead of coins.
Silver Bars
For the most part, silver bars provide even more savings than silver rounds. Like rounds, silver bars can be produced by either private or public mints. But because the cost of producing a basic silver bar is considerably lower than the cost of making a quality silver coin, bars tend to be far more affordable where premiums are concerned.
Their affordable price doesn’t mean that silver bars aren’t beautiful. Some of our favorite pure silver bars for sale expertly combine affordability with intricate obverse designs.
Are Silver Coins Expensive?
Silver coins are expensive. For investors wondering how to buy cheap silver on a budget, silver coins can be hit and miss. On one hand, popular silver coins tend to feature some of the most beautiful designs we see on silver bullion. The American Silver Eagle, Canadian Silver Maple, and British Silver Britannia are just a few examples of the incredible craftsmanship that comes with silver coinage.
To some investors, the increased premiums associated with silver coins improves their investment outlook. After all, silver coins offer numismatic value. This refers to their ability to offer considerable value without considering their precious metal content.
But on the other hand, silver coins are an expensive way to invest in silver. If you’re interested in the look and feel of silver coins, you should take some time to find a solid deal before trying to stack using silver coins.
How Are Silver Prices Determined?
To learn more about how to buy cheap silver, we’ll need to get a better understanding of how silver prices are determined. Silver products are determined by three main factors: the spot price of silver, supply and demand, and silver premiums.
If these concepts are new to you, don’t worry! We’re explaining how all three components factor into the silver price equation below.
Spot Price of Silver
The spot price of silver is the single most important determinant of a silver product’s value. All silver products contain actual silver. Many of Hero Bullion’s silver coins, rounds, and bars feature a fineness of .999 or more.
Because of this precious metals content, every silver product has a base value. We also call this number ‘melt value.’ The melt value of a coin, bar, or round can be determined by multiplying the current spot price of silver by the product’s silver weight in troy ounces.
But this isn’t the only thing that determines the value of our silver products.
Supply and Demand
Supply and demand help to determine the total value of a silver piece. For investors who want to learn how to buy cheap silver, understanding supply/demand dynamics is an essential skill. When demand is high for a given coin or bar, the premiums you can expect to pay for that product will increase.
For mints, producing quality silver products is a numbers game – and a perilous one. If they make too many of a single coin or round, they might have to compromise on prices once demand peters off. But if they make too few, premiums may go so high that selling the coins could be tough.
Silver Premiums – What Are They?
The final piece of the puzzle in how silver prices are determined is something called a premium. We’ve talked a lot about premiums on our blog, so feel free to skip ahead if this is old info to you.
To keep things simple, a premium is the price you pay on top of a silver product’s melt value. If you’re wondering how much of a premium you’re paying on a silver coin or round, all you need to do is subtract its melt value from the total cost. The resulting figure is the premium cost of your coin, bar, or round.
How to Find Low Premium Silver
Investors often want to know how to buy cheap silver. To find cheap silver, your main goal is to identify products with very small premiums over spot. You can’t really buy silver for spot price. Even large mints are likely to pay some sort of premium on the massive silver shipments they use for their coins, rounds, and bars.
Silver bars and rounds are the best options if you’re stacking silver on a budget. Like we explained a bit earlier in this guide, these silver products generally come with some of the lowest premiums in the industry.
Strategies for Budget Investing
After you have a grip on the basics of how to buy cheap silver, it’s time to start researching the cheapest silver options on the market. Unfortunately for new investors, the precious metals market is huge. It can be hard to get the information you need to make the silver purchases you deserve for your financial future.
This section could get a whole guide of its own, so we’ve chosen to condense our knowledge down to two important points. Before you learn how to buy cheap silver, you’ll need to compare silver prices and identify low premium silver.
Comparing Silver Prices
This part should be easy. To learn how to buy cheap silver, you should familiarize yourself with the biggest dealers in the bullion marketplace. Especially during holidays like Black Friday, your favorite dealers might offer special discounts on all sorts of silver products.
Don’t forget about the little guys, either. You might be able to find better deals on silver coins, bars, and rounds if you shop around at some of the smaller distributors on the internet. Even local coin dealers might be a good way to learn how to buy cheap silver.
We’re generally a bit cautious about recommending local dealers to new coin collectors and silver stackers. While your local numismatic shop can be a good way to find cheap silver, it’s a bit harder to research coin prices on the fly when you’re shopping at a brick and mortar store.
Identifying Low Premium Silver
Finding the right type of silver product goes a long way when it comes to how to buy cheap silver. But just identifying the correct category of product isn’t enough. To really understand how to buy cheap silver, you’ll need to dig a bit deeper.
Even among silver coins, some options are better than others for budget investing. The American Silver Eagle, for example, is frequently one of the most expensive silver coins on the market. For investors on a budget, taking a look at global coinage from less popular mints may be a good idea.
We don’t have time in this guide to run readers through all of the world’s cheapest silver coins. As you continue buying silver to expand and diversify your portfolio, it’s important to look around to find the best, cheapest deals available.
How to Buy Cheap Silver: A Step by Step Guide
We’ve covered the basics of how to buy cheap silver. Still, it might be a good idea for new investors to leave our guide with just a couple more tips before they hit the shops and look for cheap silver for sale.
To buy cheap silver, you’ll need to do two main things: find cheap silver products and consider shipping prices. The second step in this process for how to buy cheap silver is perhaps the most important, but it’s also overlooked by many new investors who are just getting started with silver stacking.
Find Cheap Silver Products
To learn how to buy cheap silver, identifying the best products is step number one. How are you going to profit from buying silver if you can’t figure out the cheapest products to buy? Coins are always a good option, especially if you’re someone who likes their investments to have numismatic (collectable) value.
Otherwise, the cheapest silver to buy will almost always come in the form of either silver rounds or bars. These two product categories are minted privately, so they often come without the high premiums that saddle government-minted silver coins.
Hero Bullion has a wide range of cheap silver for sale. Check out our selection by navigating to the ‘silver’ category at the top of this page. As always, we’re here to help if you have any questions about buying a new silver coin, bar, or round.
Consider Shipping Prices
Shipping prices are often overlooked by new silver investors. Some online bullion dealers charge extremely high shipping fees for most of their silver coins, bars, and rounds. In the age of the internet, we often think of shipping costs as just a necessary part of making an online purchase.
But your goal with buying cheap silver is to stack precious metals without burning through your paycheck. Every dollar counts – even the dollars that go toward shipping.
Hero Bullion offers competitively low shipping rates, as well as free shipping on select orders to help you save.
Final Thoughts: How to Buy Cheap Silver
Buying cheap silver has never been easy. With the extremely large field of bullion dealers competing for your business, finding reasonable prices for the silver products you love is going to take some work.
By working through licensed bullion dealers like Hero Bullion and learning how to research before you buy, you can stack silver without breaking the bank.
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About The Author
Michael Roets
Michael Roets is a writer and journalist for Hero Bullion. His work explores precious metals news, guides, and commentary.