SILVER SALES SURGE

Despite its status as a precious metal, silver has lacked the allure of gold — a more popular investment for those seeking a store of wealth. But the extreme rally in silver prices over the past few months has spurred a reappraisal of the silver items sitting in drawers and cupboards at home.

Some customers are coming in with "stuff that they'd completely forgotten that they had, and it was just sitting in a safety deposit box or in a closet somewhere," said Greg Cohen, a senior numismatist at Stack's Bowers Galleries, a rare coin shop on Park Avenue in Midtown Manhattan. "They never thought about it until now. And then they realize, wow, this actually added up to quite a bit."

It's been a busy year at Stack's Bowers, which has locations worldwide and is owned by Gold.com Inc. At its Manhattan store, the average number of daily visitors has grown to 50 from 30 over the last year, Cohen said. Most are there to sell, he said.

Silver prices have swung sharply in recent weeks, but remain more than double their level a year ago. That's lifting the melt value of silverware, jewelry and coins above what many collectors once prized them for.

Dealers are reporting that January was their strongest-ever month, driven by a surge in trading volumes for silver and bullion products. Silver transactions have climbed as the pre-1965 US silver dollar coins almost tripled in value since the beginning of last year.

"It's coming in droves and droves," Gary Tancer, owner of Coin & Jewelry Gallery of Boca Raton, said in an interview. Tancer said he bought 10 times more than he usually does in a year in January. "The average check I'm writing is probably in the eight to $10,000 range."

Canada Gold, one of North America's top precious-metals dealers, refined a record 2 metric tons of scrap silver in December alone, according to Chris Pollock, founder and managing partner.

"A lot of these are coins that previously people would've proudly kept in their coin collections," he said. "Now we're seeing these get melted down."The huge influx of silver flowing into the market is straining refiners, which take scrap and other metal-bearing materials and process them into high-purity products such as bullion bars. Heraeus Precious Metals, one of the world's largest precious-metals refiners, is facing a backlog, said Dominik Sperzel, head of trading for the German firm.

"When you place the silver order today, it cannot just take a few weeks," he said. "We're already talking about months."

To read the complete article, see:
Silver's Historic Surge Fuels Rush to Sell Heirlooms and Coins (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/silver-historic-surge-fuels-rush-110010500.html)

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