[WTB] .999 Hand-Poured Silver Bars, Any Weight

[johnniewalker]

Hi everyone,
I melt my own silver to make ingots. Its small scale-I can pour two ounces, maybe three. Silver-pouring is an art. For that reason I find myself attracted to hand-poured bars. Truly what I'm looking for is broad-.999 hand-poured silver. Any mint, any weight.
I have ounces and ounces of 1oz silver pieces and bars-Johnson Matthey, Northwest Territorial, Sunshine, etc. What would be ideal is trading oz for oz. But I'm also open to spending some coins. I know I said any weight-but make it maximum 10 oz's-any thing else isn't in my budget

[1714919601]

1714919601

[1714919601]

1714919601

[Rawted]

I just wanted to pop in and suggest making 1 gram custom rounds. I used to collect silver like it was going out of style. I probably had in excess of 30 pounds at one time (down to just a few hundred ounces now). I wanted to sell some, but hated dealing with spot, local shops, and just scammers in general. I noticed on Ebay that gold 1 gram (or even as small as 5 grain) bars and rounds were selling nonstop. I decided to dedicate a hundred ounces to making my own rounds/bars. i bought a smaller kiln/forge than what you have, and had some custom 1 gram rounds molds made up. The molds cost me about $30 a piece, but were well worth it.

Anyways, i was able to sell all 100 ounces, in 1 gram rounds/bars, and receive 200% or more over spot. For some reason on Ebay (and especially now that APMEX and Ebay have teamed up), people buy the small fractionals like crazy, and at a higher premium. Everyday on ebay there's fractionals going for upwards of $60/ozt, when spot is not even hitting $32. you can see some examples of what i mean at http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=1+gram+silver+rounds&_sacat=0&_from=R40 .

Basically i ordered mold designs that i hadn't seen on custom rounds and bars. Chinese dragon, skull and crossbones, american flag, and a generic sports mold were my top sellers. I made enough over spot to easily recoup my initial investment in the silver (bought at $11/ozt years ago), the cost of the forge, the cost of the molds, and all packaging/shipping costs - and i pocketed several thousand more dollars over spot.

It worked really well for me, so i figured i'd share it. Either way, i hope you have a very successful run, fellow silversmith!

[EricTyle]

Hey TPP,

I just want to ask you how much do you think it would cost to start up? If you can buy at 30/ozt and you can sell custom rounds at 60/ozt (what seems to be the maximum, point being you can make profit), then I would also like to try it out depending on how much the start up is.

If you could give some quick explanation or maybe some place that could help me with that? After reading your post, you got me interested and I like the way silver looks compared to gold anyway, always wanted to collect it, but never did.

But yeah, hit me up

ET

[Rawted]

I'd be glad to help out. Send me your specific questions via PM, so we don't step all over JW's thread.

[EricTyle]

Sent you a PM

Figured it would be okay since its relevant to the thread and any educational information, in my opinion, should be public.

[usagi]

I just wanted to pop in and suggest making 1 gram custom rounds. I used to collect silver like it was going out of style. I probably had in excess of 30 pounds at one time (down to just a few hundred ounces now). I wanted to sell some, but hated dealing with spot, local shops, and just scammers in general. I noticed on Ebay that gold 1 gram (or even as small as 5 grain) bars and rounds were selling nonstop. I decided to dedicate a hundred ounces to making my own rounds/bars. i bought a smaller kiln/forge than what you have, and had some custom 1 gram rounds molds made up. The molds cost me about $30 a piece, but were well worth it.

Anyways, i was able to sell all 100 ounces, in 1 gram rounds/bars, and receive 200% or more over spot. For some reason on Ebay (and especially now that APMEX and Ebay have teamed up), people buy the small fractionals like crazy, and at a higher premium. Everyday on ebay there's fractionals going for upwards of $60/ozt, when spot is not even hitting $32. you can see some examples of what i mean at http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trksid=p5197.m570.l1313&_nkw=1+gram+silver+rounds&_sacat=0&_from=R40 .

Basically i ordered mold designs that i hadn't seen on custom rounds and bars. Chinese dragon, skull and crossbones, american flag, and a generic sports mold were my top sellers. I made enough over spot to easily recoup my initial investment in the silver (bought at $11/ozt years ago), the cost of the forge, the cost of the molds, and all packaging/shipping costs - and i pocketed several thousand more dollars over spot.

It worked really well for me, so i figured i'd share it. Either way, i hope you have a very successful run, fellow silversmith!

Well there's a coin premium, but 100% can't last forever. Coin premium is like 20% max IIRC.

[Rawted]

Well there's a coin premium, but 100% can't last forever. Coin premium is like 20% max IIRC.

You're thinking numismatic value on legal tender. I'm talking intrinsic value on pm rounds/bars. There's a huge difference. The reason that those rounds/bars sell so well is because of the perceived value of the piece by the consumer, and not the graded value in some PCGS/NGC mint book.

[usagi]

Well there's a coin premium, but 100% can't last forever. Coin premium is like 20% max IIRC.

You're thinking numismatic value on legal tender. I'm talking intrinsic value on pm rounds/bars. There's a huge difference. The reason that those rounds/bars sell so well is because of the perceived value of the piece by the consumer, and not the graded value in some PCGS/NGC mint book.

No, I mean the coin premium what you would expect to pay on small denomination coins/bars. Like, people these days seem to want to charge 1.5 or 1.7 for a 1/2oz round when a 1oz costs 2. I think it would be more like 1.1 for a 1/2 oz round if a 1oz round costs 2. And all this would be on a spot price of 1.8 or 1.9 per oz. That's what I mean by coin premium.

Luckily my supplier seems to be having a case of temporary insanity and is selling 1/2oz rounds for the same oz markup as dole bars 

[johnniewalker]

Well there's a coin premium, but 100% can't last forever. Coin premium is like 20% max IIRC.

You're thinking numismatic value on legal tender. I'm talking intrinsic value on pm rounds/bars. There's a huge difference. The reason that those rounds/bars sell so well is because of the perceived value of the piece by the consumer, and not the graded value in some PCGS/NGC mint book.

You know, if you've sold on eBay I think I've seen your auctions. 10 x 1 gram bars going for close to $20...about 200% of spot. And yeah, people buy it. They like the idea of fractional amounts of silver...in case the world ends and all transactions will be in gold and silver lol. Like one gram of silver for a loaf of bread lol.
Did you hand-pour these? Where did you find a 1 gram mold?

[Rawted]

Well there's a coin premium, but 100% can't last forever. Coin premium is like 20% max IIRC.

You're thinking numismatic value on legal tender. I'm talking intrinsic value on pm rounds/bars. There's a huge difference. The reason that those rounds/bars sell so well is because of the perceived value of the piece by the consumer, and not the graded value in some PCGS/NGC mint book.

You know, if you've sold on eBay I think I've seen your auctions. 10 x 1 gram bars going for close to $20...about 200% of spot. And yeah, people buy it. They like the idea of fractional amounts of silver...in case the world ends and all transactions will be in gold and silver lol. Like one gram of silver for a loaf of bread lol.
Did you hand-pour these? Where did you find a 1 gram mold?

You might have, i only stopped selling my silver there early last year. That's exactly what those people buy the silver for, too. I call them the SHTF (shit hits the fan) guys. They buy fractionals like crazy. I've even seen posts in survival related forums with SHTF people asking for custom minted gold/silver rounds with their logo/name on it. Apparently they wanted to start their own government when ours collapses...

Yes, hand poured, and i used a custom 6 slot graphite bar mold and the actual 1 gram molds from saturn supplies, and bought the press for the rounds off of either alibaba or aliexpress. Worked great for over 6 months. The furnace i used was nothing special outside of having a pouring crucible, and was like maybe $400 or so on Ebay.

Sorry for the delay in responding, i was getting 502 errors every time i visited this site today.