How can one stack silver with these crazy premiums?

[messymessy]

Ebay bucks are expiring in 4 days. Use em or loose em.

Thanks for the reminder. I'm going to try and buy a little bit of that over priced 90%.

[rulesforrebels]

its crazy even coin shops in my area are buying at 3.50 over spot for even the new 2013 silver eagles. fortunately for me i got an in with a dealer at a good rate so im buying green mega boxes of 500 and bringing them to the coin shops every few days.

[jmaii]

I haven't been buying silver for that long but it's become very clear to me that there's one way to stack silver at reasonable premiums: build relationships with dealers.

I set soft limits before I go out. I'll look at a site like jmbullion.com or apmex.com and pretend I'm placing an order. So if I were to got out today I would pretend to buy $500 shipped/insured of silver from jmbullion, which right now would be about $27 for generic silver and about $31 for eagles (yikes!). With those numbers in mind I visit the stores that I've scouted to find helpful staff and good prices).

There is a domestic coin dealer a few towns away that sold me some Marshall Islands 1oz silver coins for $1 over spot and even rounded down the cents (spot was $23.30 and I got the coins for $24). He only really deals in domestic coins and popular bullion, so he was going to send it to melt otherwise. The rest of his stuff is a bit too pricey, but it's always worth a trip on my way someplace else. I met the owner and he even welcomed me to call him if I wanted to check if he had any "melt silver" on hand.

A little ways past that coin dealer is a medium sized retail jewelry store that has a "we buy gold and silver" sign in the window. I was beginning to get discouraged because I had just scouted ten stores and best offer for eagles was $8 over spot (nearly 40%) and rounds were $4 over spot (nearly 20%). This store, however, had very nice staff who brought me a whole box of eagles and rounds/bars for me to peruse. They sold me eagles for less than $4 over spot and rounds at less than $3 over spot. We chatted for a while as I looked through the silver, mentioned that I'm collecting silver as an investment for my son, and one employee realized his best friend lives on my street. I will definitely be back to that jeweler, and only partly because it has Qdoba next door.

So spend a weekend or two on a road trip, visiting local coin dealers, jewelry stores, pawn stores, and cash for gold shops. When you find a place you like make a note to visit/call every so often.