divisible silver bullion

Thoughts on those private market "divisible" coins that are made you it would be easier to cold chisel and split it into quarters? The premium to spot is often lower than an eagle (what isn't?), and if silver gets back around 40+ it seems like a sensible deal. But I'm gunshy about such an unusual coin. Is 90% junk a better tool for that usage?

Link or pic? I'm not familiar with the coin you are talking about. And, that would give me pause because if you are looking for metal to use for barter in a SHTF scenario (and I assume that's the point of a fractionally divisible round/bar), you are going to want something that people will recognize and trust.

I'm sure that many people these days don't even know that pre-1965 quarters, dimes and half-dollars are 90% silver, but it's easy enough to corroborate that fact and I believe people will trust US mint coins aren't counterfeit.

My gut reaction would be to prefer 90% silver. YMMV.

http://bullion.nwtmint.com/silver_stagecoach.php
http://www.silverandgoldshop.com/Store/Product/1009-D.aspx

the top one is a NW Mint, so that does have some name recognition. APMEX has also starting minting 1/2 oz coins.

Interesting. I like the NWT ingot. They were smart to include the details (1/4oz, .999 fine silver) on all the quadrants.

Not too crazy about the divisible Morgan in the second link. Just my gut reaction / first impression - no real market analysis.

I have a 1/2 oz silver shekel...never really gave much thought to the divisional stuff.

But if shtf you use gold and silver divisible amounts more effectively...

I had purchased some of these coins from nwtmint they are a great looking coin and the price seems reasonable

I would personally recommend having some fractionals or some of these divisible bars/rounds in your stash, like FCH said, if SHTF they would be a very effective means of trade. There are places you can buy from online where you can buy rolls of fractional rounds and bars, of course there is a premium but its not too bad if you buy on the dips and in bulk. Here's one place: http://www.qualitysilverbullion.com/index.php?route=product/product&path=44&product_id=66

The Stageccoach divisible I got from NWTMint are among my favorites, but be prepared to WAIT for delivery. It took four months to get them.

PMBug said:

Link or pic? I'm not familiar with the coin you are talking about. And, that would give me pause because if you are looking for metal to use for barter in a SHTF scenario (and I assume that's the point of a fractionally divisible round/bar), you are going to want something that people will recognize and trust.

I'm sure that many people these days don't even know that pre-1965 quarters, dimes and half-dollars are 90% silver, but it's easy enough to corroborate that fact and I believe people will trust US mint coins aren't counterfeit.

My gut reaction would be to prefer 90% silver. YMMV.

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I would lean towards 90% too, but the bolded text gives me concern. Would it be easier to convince someone completely uninformed about metals that the old coins were actually made of silver or that the fractional generic is actually made of silver? I'm really not sure about this one, probably not a bad idea to have some of both.

I feel bad for not reading this sooner, or failing to post earlier. My apologies.

TLDR disclamer: It doesn't hurt to have options. I'd recommend pre-65 90% silver coins in addition to any physical PM's you own.



My quest to buy PM's started with divisible silver. Actually, it started with divisible gold, but I was quick to buy silver shortly after gold.

What really opened my eyes to the value of buying my PM in easily carried small amounts was reading "Patriots" by Rawles. Sorry for the spoiler if you haven't read it, but in this fiction, a bit of normalcy returns to the area the protagonists reside in. Their neighbors hold a market/dance event. Buying, selling, and trade are taking place at the event during the day. Just like you'd see at a flea market etc. Thing was, everyone has signs that say, "$0.25 in pre-65 US Coin" or something to that effect, for their product. They didn't demand the high prices that we are so used to seeing now. They knew what they were asking for was going to be in silver.

Once I read this, I actually started buying coin rolls from the bank, by the case. Yes, I literally resorted to coin roll hunting. (What can I say, I had some free time one day out of each week.) I felt like an idiot because I knew that a few times throughout my life I had held some of these pre-65 silver coins and hadn't given much thought to it.

Anyway, here I was, years later, looking through six $250 boxes of dimes in a day, looking for old silver. Yes, that's right, crazy huh? Sometimes I'd hunt half dollars. Sometimes dimes. Not so much quarters or nickels. Most of it has been sorted out over the years. There really isn't much to be had. I got skunked a lot on the halves, and the places you go to get rid of the coinage you sort through kind of get tired of seeing you come in with $2000 in coins, so you spread it out among a few different banks, just so you'd stop getting the damn looks. Most banks don't want to sell or order the cases for you if you aren't a customer so now you have all these new bank accounts at places you would NEVER bank at before. Honestly I am amazed at how many different banks serve my city of 30k people. It is kind of ridiculous.

Anyway, I stopped coin roll hunting when the weather got nice again, and have been too busy to bother with it this summer. Snow is coming again soon so I'm sure I'll order a few cases of halves from my banks and give it a shot. Can't beat finding silver at face value guys, believe me.

I got busy, and frustrated with my lack of progress. I had found $8.15 in face value pre-65 coins. I had looked through around $11,000.00 worth of coins. I know because I used to keep very accurate count of my progress. Yes, that number is fairly common odds. You have about 1 in a thousand coins chance to find one that is pre-65.

This kinda got off track, but back to divisible PM's. It is where I first started making my PM investments. I went on apmex and ordered a $100 bag of dimes. Some times I would buy their $1.00 of face value coins on days that spot would dip. What I was really doing was saving up to buy $100 in quarters next. Which I did about 3 months after I bought the dimes.

I felt that having $200 in change is a pretty damn good start. I mean, the average person has a change tub or something at home. Mine usually carries anywhere from $100 to $300 at any given time. At 300 it is full and I cash most, but not all of it in.

After my pocket change in silver was squared away, I started buying ounces. Its all the same to me though. 22 ounces of silver in 90% silver coins or in .999 rounds is still 22 ounces of silver. You just have to know what you're dealing with.

I feel that having exact change will help in a situation that we might be heading towards. I also don't intend on carrying more than I need to if I am going 'shopping'. I'll have done my recon or prior purchase, and know what I need to take to get what I want. That way I'm less likely to have to die defending the change that some robbers saw me get from the lady selling @ the bazaar, shop, store, market, etc.

Anyway, hope this gives some insight.

Nice post KMS. I check my change after a garage sale and such, but don't go coin hunting with rolls ordered from a bank.

For anyone who is interested in checking their change or coin rolls for pre-65 dimes, quarters and half-dollars, here is a pro-tip to save you some time. You can grab a stack of coins and just look at the edge side of the coins. On pre-65 90% silver coins, the edge will be solid silver in color. On post-'64 coins, you will see half silver and half copper on the edge.

Yes, the difference is very obvious. Keep in mind that some coins are just plain dirty. They won't jump out at you EVERY time, but yeah, it will jump out at you when you check rims.

Actually the best rolls to look through are penny rolls, preferably customer rolled since often these pennies were stored for many years. 1981 and earlier are 95% copper, 1983 and newer are junk (mostly zinc). 1982 pennies are 75% good and 25% bad but must be weighed on a digital scale to make sure(3 grams is good, 2.5 grams is junk).

When copper was $4.60 a pound the "good" pennies were worth about 2.9 cents each for their copper content. Even now they are worth over 2 cents each (double their face value) . A banker once asked me why I kept buying rolls of pennies and after explaning about the copper content, he exclaimed "well you're just a modern day copper miner, aren't ya?" I guess so..... 57

Folks are doing the same thing with nickels. Read up on Kyle Bass. He bought 20 million of them. Rawles has been suggesting to his blog readers to buy nickels. He explains why here

Same reason as your pennies.

Here is a link to the Stagecoach silver.
http://bullion.nwtmint.com/silver_stagecoach.php

It is generic silver and therefore subject to criticism by the 90% coin folks. But i buy silver for AFTER TSHTF to invest in a healthy growth situation, and I dont trust coins of the realm. There is a real possibility of the US devaluing the dollar by 50-80% and backing by gold eventually. Coinage (or tokens) issued by the sovereign could be construed as belonging to the sovereign. Hopefully honey and moonshine make good, highly divisible barter items

I liked your post Adirondack, because of your comment about barter with honey. About a month ago my family and I took a week and went "up north" as they call it around here. While up there fishing, sight seeing, visiting, etc, my girlfriend and I went looking for a couple that sold honey for a living. These people immigrated from the Netherlands, (I think) and raised honey bees when they moved here. The put their three or four kids through college on honey according to the website we found. I'll try and edit in a link when my girlfriend gets out of the shower.. To be continued.

Thanks, KMS.
To risk getting just a little further of topic... Honey is one of the few foods that will never go bad if stored in a simple canning jar at room temp. I buy it in 60 lbs buckets from a friend at a great price. It is alot like silver, but with more marginal utility

I'm a Mercury Dime freak myself. No date checking necessary, trades by individual dimes, or by bulk according to weight. About as divisible as you'd want, and in large quantities, it stacks and trades just like bullion, only way more divisible.

As for the govt. claiming it I don't worry about that too much. Mountains of legal protection there, and no precedent for where silver coins are concerned. If you possess it, it's your property. It's the gold I worry about from that angle, because governments trade in gold with each other, and have been known to confiscate it for that purpose. Not so with silver.

I don't want bullion because it can be cited in law as a commodity and taxed as such, including later trying to get it minted into coin, which might involve a heavy tax. Not as likely, I think, with face value coins already minted. Worst case, I can still trade those individually, their value isn't going anywhere, regardless what any new coinage might be called - just like now, where we distinguish "pre-1965" from the rest.

Silver is also Confiscatable

Sorry to burst your bubble Steven, but it is.
I also love Mercury dimes, bit like the standing Libs,and Barber quarters, I find the wear is usually high.(coins I grew up with).

Most dealers sell at dollar face value.
Now a $500.00-$1000.00 bag of Mercs, or the others may not weigh 712ozs.
And surely would not contain that many ounces.

If anyone knows a Dealer that sells Junk silver by the gram weight, yeah, I'll invest.

Adirondack Gold said:

Thanks, KMS.
To risk getting just a little further of topic... Honey is one of the few foods that will never go bad if stored in a simple canning jar at room temp. I buy it in 60 lbs buckets from a friend at a great price. It is alot like silver, but with more marginal utility

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I have this idea that shopping with pm coin is going to be difficult in a proper SHTF scenario.
How do you make contact with the person or org that has what you want ?
What risk do you expose yourself to, when you admit you have ways to pay ..... ?

So I have a fairly large store of diesel and have already discussed a simple exchange with my neighbour who is an organic farmer.

He was a bit taken aback at my cheerful assumption that he could feed me
but quickly realised that it was a sensible arrangement.

A bit like honey then (-:

Was doing a bit of research on divisible silver and gold, found a few with premiums that aren't so bad.

http://www.silver.com/1-oz-valcambi-gold-combibars/

I really like these, but the premiums are kind of high.

http://www.jmbullion.com/2014-25-gram-canadian-gold-maplegram-25x1g/

I've ordered the NWT mint stagecoach rounds and bars in the past, once they sent me the wrong bars, and I tried to order again and they said 30 days, now they said at LEAST another 30 days, so I wouldn't order from them if I were you.

There is also these rounds with a premium that isn't too bad.

http://qualitysilverbullion.com/div...filter_description=true&filter_category_id=47

http://www.montanararities.com/crabtree-silver-round-1oz.html

You know, I have seen these combi-bars before at a coin show, but I was astounded at the premiums associated with them. Same goes for silver. Although I can certainly see the utility, just how recognizable would the silver ones be? I can see the gram sections maybe being accepted, especially between gold bugs, but for divisibility, I quite prefer war nickels, dimes, quarters and halves as being the best option for "small change" during SHTF. For our purposes, a dime will be the new five or ten dollar bill when TSHTF, and a quarter will be the new twenty or more dollars with the half being the new fifty or more. As for smaller amounts, maybe a war nickel becomes the new five dollar bill or so.

I'll admit right now that I bought a hundred of the quarter ounce rounds from Apmex and fifty of the quarter sized 1/4 ouncers, but I did so out of curiosity more than anything. They are certainly unusual, and I believe they were the first small divisions of silver to stray away from whole ounce sizes.

The premium oz per oz is more on the divisibles than a normal oz, but so it is with fractional rounds. My point was that as this thread was talking about them and I had come across some that the premium isn't as high as compared to a lot of other divisibles I've seen. You generally have to pay an extra premium for convenience, so it's up to the person to decide what they're willing to pay for. I never understand coin collectors who pay crazy prices for a coin just cause it came from a certain mint or was printed in a certain year, even though an identical coin from a different year or mint is a fraction of the price, but to each his own.

11C1P said:

The premium oz per oz is more on the divisibles than a normal oz, but so it is with fractional rounds. My point was that as this thread was talking about them and I had come across some that the premium isn't as high as compared to a lot of other divisibles I've seen. You generally have to pay an extra premium for convenience, so it's up to the person to decide what they're willing to pay for. I never understand coin collectors who pay crazy prices for a coin just cause it came from a certain mint or was printed in a certain year, even though an identical coin from a different year or mint is a fraction of the price, but to each his own.

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Perhaps I could have come across as a little bit less of a dick. :judge:

I did not mean to disparage, merely to point out that among "the bugs" the combi-bars would be immediately recognizable for trade and whatnot, however I feel pretty strongly in diversification, so having bought so much sovereign silver such as Maples and Eagles, I have picked up a tidy pile of junk to accompany the whole ounce units. I've also picked up "fractionals" from Apmex, because I thought they were cool and unusual. While I may pick up some combi-bars in the future, I would like to see them become more of a mainstream item before getting too much of them/it. I see nothing wrong with divisibility going down to the gram size, and like the idea as a smart way to get to dollar or less values for small transactions, it is just that when it comes to acceptance and recognition by the general public, it may take a while to get around and become readily fungible.:wave:

ancona said:

Perhaps I could have come across as a little bit less of a dick. :judge:

I did not mean to disparage, merely to point out that among "the bugs" the combi-bars would be immediately recognizable for trade and whatnot, however I feel pretty strongly in diversification, so having bought so much sovereign silver such as Maples and Eagles, I have picked up a tidy pile of junk to accompany the whole ounce units. I've also picked up "fractionals" from Apmex, because I thought they were cool and unusual. While I may pick up some combi-bars in the future, I would like to see them become more of a mainstream item before getting too much of them/it. I see nothing wrong with divisibility going down to the gram size, and like the idea as a smart way to get to dollar or less values for small transactions, it is just that when it comes to acceptance and recognition by the general public, it may take a while to get around and become readily fungible.:wave:

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The bars are available as the one I linked to are actually broke down into 10 x 1/10 ozt (3.1g) bars, but yeah they are available in 1g bar units as well, and the premium is higher on them. While I agree that among people familiar with PM's and some in the prepper community most PM's most bars, rounds, whatever will be recognized in a post SHTF situation I don't think it will have a huge difference if you are trying to trade a AGE/CGM for something or some gold combibars with someone who is clueless about PM's. I think for people whose only investment or main investment for bad times is PM"s that's a problem, but if you are a person who can ride out at least a couple months disorder and uncertainty then AFTER things cooled down, PM's would be come a good tool for barter or just to replace a worthless fiat currency that collapsed.

I have NO problem with fractionals, have MANY including junk silver. I try to keep my PM ratios at 1/3 Govt. bullion, 1/3 junk silver, and 1/3 generic bars and rounds. Within those I have a variety of weights and types including divisibles. If you are asking why would someone want to carry a bar of 1ozt or 5ozt or however big that can be broken apart to smaller amounts and not JUST carry smaller units to begin with is that having to carry around a bunch of smaller coins/bars can get pretty clunky. The combibar will fit in your wallet kind of like a credit card. Then you could carry a couple regular coins/bars as well if you like.