The Art of Silver Coins

When I began collecting coins my first major purchase was through Miles Franklin. I spoke with Andy Schetchman, Vice President, and ordered some American Silver Eagles and NTR 10oz bars. I really had no idea what I was doing. What happened was I found myself out of work with a very severe back injury. With lots of time on my hands I began surfing the web and I remembered this guy named Cliff High from the History Channel. The History Channel had aired a program focusing on future events and one of the segments featured “The Web Bot Project” that Cliff and George Ure had developed. The History Channel has since removed this segment, with the exception of the very short piece referenced. I ordered my first IRID report from Clif and one of the main items was market predictions.

The Web Bot Project was developed specifically to forecast the stock market, so, it only made sense to pay close attention to this specific forecast. The article referenced gold and silver coins and that silver, specifically, would be making a huge move over the coming months and anyone that did not possess silver coins would regret missing this opportunity. It also explained there would be a crash but it would be short lived.

This is what truly sparked my interest in gold and silver. I began devouring all information about silver and gold. One of the first things that I learned about was the gold/silver ratio. The historical gold/silver ratio has been based on the amount of gold and silver coming out of the ground on an annual basis. Since both metals are money, and for most of history have been used as currency, this is the main reason I began collecting silver coins. At the time the gold silver ratio was 42/1. Almost/Over 5,000 years of history has shown the gold silver ratio at 16/1. My logic, at the time, was to capitalize on the move from 42 to 16–pretty massive move and a truck load of profit!! Logical thought process, bad “investment” idea. With silver and gold both being money, and at the time having no understanding of this concept, I didn’t realize what I was doing was making an exchange of currency for money instead of “investing” in a commodity. It is the same thing as when we travel to another country and exchange our fiat USDollar for the fiat currency of the country we are visiting. There is one very significant difference. Gold and silver are money and not fiat currency. Money stores value, fiat currency loses value through debasement and inflation (taxation for nothing in the pursuit of nothing).

Over the past few years my interest has evolved into a deep appreciation for the art of coin making. If you look at some of the coins produced in the past there was little emphasis on the actual art and lot of emphasis on who the ruling criminal was when the coins were minted. In some cases a long past criminal leader has been honored on a coin, but for the most part, the featured mug shot is someone who is either still alive or recently pasted. With very few exceptions I say good riddance. The coins that are being minted today, especially through private mints, are of an extremely high quality.

They truly are art in miniature. The detailing is spectacular and the depth of the press, which creates the relief, is amazing. Some of the better quality mints typically issue small mintages for particular coins, which, in theory, means the coins will be more valuable in the future. Fewer units of a particular product make it more rare, therefore, more valuable. With over seven billion people on the planet when a mint produces only two-thousand units of a specific coin, you can see they would be considered very rare indeed. One of the other ways that private mints are “creating a market” in coins is to produce medallions that have a historical or societal connection. One of the first, that I am aware of, is the Johnson/Mathey (JM) Constitutional Coin series. JM produced a series of medallions that featured each of the Bill of Rights. One coin for each right. This is an amazing set of ten coins that were meticulously detailed to give the person holding the coin a sense of what the right means to them as a person. Since the Bill of Rights are a series of God given rights, the images are easy to understand and apply to every human being on this planet. As of this writing I have possess five of the ten. I would like to own all ten and have them framed as the coins are truly remarkable in their beauty.

Recently, I did acquire a couple of low mintage coins, featured in a video that I made, from two different mints. One of the coins was a remembrance of D-Day and features the work of Heidi Wastweet. Her work is becoming well known among collectors as she utilized design ideas from Chris Duane and The Doc and has created some of the most beautiful private mint coins a person can possess. Some of the coin artist, from New Zealand and Australia, have done an outstanding job of bringing wildlife to life on a very, very small canvas–the coin itself.

With silver at lows not seen since 2008/2009 why would a person not acquire, at least, a small of amount of each? If you do not understand or appreciate silver and gold as money and as a means of wealth preservation, maybe give them a look as art in miniature. If you have an appreciation for art, these small canvas’ can make for a beautiful addition to your collection.