A little background on gold/silver markets , American Free Press had a report in April 5 ,2010 issue that's proof that Wall street manipulates gold & Silver prices, mainly by JP.Morgan/ Chase bank and the HSBC bank (China) have large manipulative shorts positions that means they sell gold and silver on paper but no one knows for sure how much real gold is being held , no audits , plus the Federal Reserve and Treasury are working with them on this (also trust the FED. yea Right) we still have no audits on the Bailouts to this day , except that many trillions are not counted for... what i am trying to say is the SCAM is in BIG TIME , and a lot of people are going to get HURT many different ways,I can not say it only so many different ways ,,, the FIX is in to DESTROY American and it's people BIG TIME , The Great Depression was KIDS stuff as to the FIX in now ... WE are at the VERY end of a drop into a new DARK AGES>..........it's so close you should be able to feel it....... and also understand we have gold/silver mining bans still from the 1930 Depression ERA. what's in the ground , it could be lots we don't have anyone to trust to tell truth.. same for oil or gas no one to trust... get Supplies for survival NOW...

I recently sold some silver dollars and half dollars I have had for years. I bought them when silver was between $4.00 and $6.00 an ounce back in the 1980s. You have to shop around as to whom you sell to. For the silver dollars the price varied by as much as $5.00 for each coin from place to place. I finally found a buyer who actually looked at each coin, which was what I wanted because I knew I had a couple of silver dollars that were worth more than bullion value. He passed the test. I had one silver dollar I had paid around $20.00 for back in the 80s, he gave me $90.00 for that one coin, I didn’t tell him I knew what it was worth. I will do business with him in the future.
As far as when to sell goes it might help to look at it from a percentage point of view verses a dollar amount. Would you sell if you were up 50%, 100% starts to sound pretty good. Remember silver did drop by $40.00 an ounce over a couple of year period back in the early 80s when everyone thought it would go to $100.00. Like the tulip mania of the 16th century you couldn’t eat tulips either but people still paid huge prices for them thinking they would just keep going up.
You have to ask yourself is the up side reward from here worth the down side risk? I certainly wouldn’t be knocking myself out to acquire silver or gold at these prices. I still keep an eye out for junk sterling.

Riding around today i saw about 10 to 12 shops signs out WE BUY GOLD, WE sell , they are feeding on fear, because the normal sheeple , don't think that what is going on around the world will happen here, you can buy gold and silver ........... BUT AT what point do you get out... after it hits the fan ,,, it's now too late... TIME , THINK, you can not eat or shoot gold.. you can make money yes, but money loses value everyday..you can not eat money either... the time to stock up in needs is NOW........

Yeah, my philosophy regarding precious metals since the cost to purchase has risen dramatically for some time and the fact that I don't have the available income to obtain any precious metals, other than the ones that are work related scrap, I'd much rather invest in consumables, etc. for future needs.
I mean, just exactly how edible is gold and silver? I know that they can be used to obtain needed items in a PAW but, if I work to obtain those items prior to the apocalypse, I don't need to panic about not having gold or silver to obtain them, I already have them or I have the means to obtain whatever I need through barter.
Sometimes I think that precious metals are just a little too overrated.

If you are able to buy gold and silver cheap, that's great... but taking note all the unrest around the world, NOW is the time to sell , sell, sell , while it may go higher, riots, or death of a government, can happen overnight, you will want all the survival supplies you can get, food, ammo,etc , save small silver coins only for trade , after the dust settles ,,,

Some names and numbers to look for in sterling flatware and sterling plates:
Purity numbers: 800, 830, 850, 900, 925, 950, 980.
Allan Adler, Alvin, Amston, Baker - Manchester, Blackinton, Concord, Dominick & Haff, Durgin, Durgin-Gorham, Easterling, Fessenden, Frank Whiting, Gorham, Howard, International, Kirk, Kirk Stieff, Knowles, Lunt, Lunt-Towle, Manchester, Mauser, Mayer, Merrimac, Mount Vernon, National, Old Newbury Crafters, Oneida, Reed & Barton, Richard Dimes, Reed & Barton, R and B-D and H, R and B-Sterling II, Schofield, Shiebler, Frank Smith, SSMC-SAART, Stieff, Tiffany, Towle, Tuttle, Unger, Wallace, Wallace-Sterling II, Wallace-Italy, Watson-Newell, Watson-Wallace, Watson, Weidlich, Westmorland, Whiting div. of Gorham, W &D Graff. Assyrian Head, Carnation, Charter Oak, Columbia, Danish Princess, Daffodil, Eternally Yours, Fleur de Luce, Grenoble, Heraldic, La Vigne, Marquise, Moselle, Remembrance, Siren, Tiger Lily, Vintage.

1.097 regular ounces = 1 troy ounce.
31.10 grams = 1 troy ounce.

You can find calculators on line to determine the price of scrap sterling silver; for instance if silver were trading at $29.26 an ounce the price for sterling scrap would be $24.29 per troy ounce.

Not necessarily. Some are not stamped at all but are solid sterling silver.

SSSR is there a stamp indentation on the metal to tell you what kind of silver it is?

SS5R - that is some of the best information I have heard in a while!

One way to get cheap silver is to look at yard sales and thrift shops for sterling silver flatware. Look in those boxes nobody pays attention to and sometimes you will find a fork or spoon or a cup someone has missed. You can sell this as junk silver; sterling silver is 92.5% silver.
I once found a heavy handle off of a sterling silver water pitcher that had been broken off, it was solid sterling. Know what you are looking for before you go, look for sterling silver not sterling plate. Some countries do not put any mark on their silver it does not mean it is not solid sterling. If you can get some nitric acid you can test silver to see if it is solid or plated. You make a very small scratch 1/8-inch in an inconspicuous place on the piece you are testing. If the spot turns a creamy color it is high quality silver, usually sterling. If it turns black it is coin quality silver and if it turns green it has high amounts of copper and therefore is poor quality silver and a gold color means a lot of brass, it means this is a silver plated item.

Silver closed at $30.12 an ounce today and gold went over $1400. As the value of the dollar drops, precious metals are soaring as predicted.

That it is fern, that it is.
While I have a great deal of interest in having gold as a hedge, my main concern for now is putting together other appropriate preparations. I do have some not yet considered PMs in several dozen pounds of copper. Gold and silver are way up there presently and will keep rising in cost for a while. Copper being a very necessary metal for all sorts of industries will also keep pace with gold and silver and may become another form of currency with the fall of the dollar. Not as much but, something.
With all of the stores I intend to accumulate and, the cost of foodstuffs increasing incredibly, I may be able to convert some extra into gold and silver at some point. Don't really know when or if but, it could happen.

I have stumbled into way to purchase gold that seems to have worked to my benefit and you may want to watch in your area. I went to a small town, out in the country, twice weekly auction house that was auctioning off an estate's gold and silver coin collection. They auctioned those coins off over a period of 8 weeks since it was large collection. The 9th week I went (I did not know the coins had all been sold) and they were auctioning off the jewelry from the same estate without directly advertising it. I purchased an 18 and 22 carat man's gold ring that had a 1/10 gold USA coin set in it for $150. It was heavy so I toddled off to a jewelers and had it appraised. The appraisal was $1210 and gold was just under $1000 at that time. I paid to have the appraisal in writing to keep with the ring. I have repeated that same process after every coin auction that is advertised in this state and have struck pay dirt each time. I am not sure what to do with jewelry if I ever needed to barter or such but it is a way to obtain much more affordable gold.

I am seeing and hearing even more advertisements for gold than I have for quite a bit now. I imagine it was mostly because of the elections Tuesday but, who knows. Their frequency has increased regardless and I'm wondering when the bottom is going to drop out of the gold market.
My concern is due to history and what has happened back in the 80s. Early in the 80s gold was doing a fairly rapid but nonetheless dramatic rise in price per ounce. Beginning, best I can remember, in the vicinity of $200 maybe $300 per ounce and climbing over a short period to over $800 an ounce. Pundits were speculating that the ounce price was going to break the $1000 mark in short order. It didn't.
I'm reasonably certain that part of the reason for the run on gold was due to happenings in the Middle East, Iran I believe but I get the two mixed up constantly, with the Ayatollah Khomeini and his madness.
Anyway, gold held near $800 for several weeks then began a not as rapid decline in price back to pre-run levels that, again best as I know, had remained fairly stable until the great emancipator barry soetero got bought into office in 2008.
My biggest concern is the price, at over $1300 an ounce, is way out of reach for just about everyone in the US, it's bloody expensive! Then, when soetero gets ousted next election(I'm hoping), the price per ounce may likely begin a decline to pre-panic levels again which will set off another panic run by folks who try to unload their gold holdings to prevent a major financial loss from their recent panic purchasing.
As for me, gold is out of the question. It's too expensive to purchase and I can't eat it. Silver and other metals are in about the same situation, out of my league except for what I already possess, I can't buy anymore since my funds are extremely limited.
For now, I'll just sit back and watch what happens, it could be amusing.

But I'm going to keep adding to my prep stores so that we can weather any storms that may occur. Precious metals may not be all they're cracked up to be.