Precious metal surprise: silver a real comer
By Davd Ganz for Numsmatic News
Hi-o Silver! After years of being thought of as a backwater of precious metals, and even threatened with demotion to an industrial metal, silver is back in the spotlight. The effect on common date silver coins couldn’t be more welcome to collectors and investors, and is helping the market as a whole.
Up more than 29 percent over last year’s $13.38 average, silver has increased almost four times its 2003 average of $4.87 a troy ounce and three times its 1998 price average of $5.54 an ounce.
Here’s how the difference plays out on a common circulated Morgan dollar that contains .7734 troy ounces of metal. At $5.54 an ounce, a silver dollar has about $4.42 worth of bullion. A quarter has .18084 troy ounces worth of precious metal, worth just about a dollar. At the current $17.38 average, the silver dollar’s metal reserve is $13.44 and the quarter is about $3.15.
As gold crossed $1,000 and platinum $2,175, silver went over the important psychological barrier of $20 an ounce before retreating to profit takers. That approaches the 1979 average of $21.79, which is otherwise understood only in the context of the Hunt Brothers run on the silver market.

When trying to determine value of medals, many factors should be considered, which can sometimes overwhelm new collectors.
Compared to some other countries, the United States uses bills rather than coins for relatively small denominations. The smallest Euro bill is for 5 Euros (approximately $8) and the smallest British bill is for 5 pounds (approximately $10). However, even through there have been several attempts to introduce a $1 coin — and starting last year, the U.S. mint has issued new one dollar coins — a very large (76% to 13%) majority of the public prefers a dollar bill to a coin.
By John Browne for the Pittsburgh Tribune Review















