How do I start a coin collection for my children or grandchildren?

Many people might consider starting a coin collection for their children or grandchildren as a type of investment for them. These collections are typically held by the parent or grandparent on the child’s behalf, with the intention of giving them to the child at a certain age, or as an inheritance, although sometimes the coins are given directly to the children.

Before you start collecting coins on behalf of your children or grandchildren, you should take a moment to consider a couple of key points. First of all, like all investments, collecting coins costs money, so you need to determine a monthly or annual budget for this. Secondly, you must decide what the ultimate goal of this coin collection is. Are these coins meant to help put the child through college, or are they just meant to be a nice gift that hopefully has some greater future value? Is this coin collection meant as a monetary investment to be cashed in someday, or do you mean for the coins to become family heirlooms which will be passed down through the years? Or perhaps your hope is that the child or grandchild will take up coin collecting as a hobby someday. Depending on what your collecting goals are, and what your budget is, you’ll want to buy different types of coins.

Be Sure Your New Coin Collection is Safe

Whether you decide to collect for investment reasons, family heirloom reasons, or just for the fun of it, remember to use common sense safety practices while accumulating your treasures. You may not want to keep investment and heirloom coins at home. In that case you can get a safety deposit box for them. Coins that the kids are actively collecting can be kept at home, but keep them stored away in drawers or a safe, out of sight of visitors to your home, especially if strangers come in (such as repairmen, etc.) Once the kids lose interest in a certain folder or coin type, take them to the bank and store them in the safety deposit box until the kids ask for them again. Coins are always one of the first things burglars will grab, because they can be easily sold. It never hurts to establish good collecting practices right from the start by always teaching your child or grandchild to put their coins and folders away out of sight when done with them for the day.

You Don’t Have to Collect Coins on Your Own

If you are in the Baton Rouge area and you’d like to talk to someone who about what’s available and where to start, you can speak with a representative at Gold and Silver of Louisiana. If the kids have taken an interest in a new coin collection, try finding a local coin club they can join, and go to the meetings with them, not only as a chaperon, but to learn more yourself about what coins make good investments and which ones are just “fun to collect.” Many coin clubs have special programs for “young numismatists.” Remember, collecting coins on behalf of, or along with children and grandchildren can be a fun and rewarding project for everyone involved.

Gold & Silver of Louisiana

2561 CitiPlace Ct. Suite 375

Baton Rouge, LA 70808

225-366-1000

As the price of silver has increased roughly %1000 over the past decade, many citizens of Baton Rouge have taken advantage of silver’s high price. Most have discovered that the box of old and tarnished sterling silver that has been sitting in the attic for over a decade now can be sold for thousands of dollars. Some have realized that collecting all of those pre-1964 90% silver U.S. quarters, dimes, and half dollars has finally paid off. Others have been excited to clean out their jewelry box filled with broken and used silver jewelry that has not been worn in forever and exchange it for cash to buy new and stylish jewelry. Several people are excited to sell the jewelry and flatware they inherited years ago, but could not get top prices until today. With silver trading over the $30 mark, many people are choosing this as a opportune time to sell silver flatware, bowls, candlesticks, charms, coins or jewelry.

On the opposite side of the market, many long term investors are starting to take a good look at investing in silver coins or bars. Unlike its big brother gold, which is primarily an investment metal, silver takes on the role of both and investment metal and an industrial metal. Most citizens are unaware of how many industrial uses exist for silver. The white metal can be found in everything from garments, medicines, and solar panels to cell phones, cars, televisions, and computers. Furthermore, many commodity traders and money managers believe that the unique properties of silver (AG) make it a necessity for many new industrial and technological innovations. Other silver speculators point to the fact that unlike gold, which has well surpassed its 1980 high of around $800 per ounce, silver has yet to eclipse its 1980 high of around $50 per ounce. In fact, at the current trading price of around $32 per ounce, silver can be bought for more than a 30% discount off its all-time high.

Is now the best time to invest in silver? Many new investors are asking this exact question. Furthermore, new investors want to know what form of silver they should invest in. In the current 2012 investment environment there are many different ways to invest in silver. One can invest in ETF’s, electronically traded funds, which are traded on the New York stock exchange. In addition, investors can invest in gold and silver mining stocks. Perhaps the most desirable form of silver investment in 2012 is physical silver. At Gold and Silver of Louisiana we offer a number of forms of physical silver for investors to choose. We offer everything from 1 troy ounce bars and coins to 5, 10, 100, and 1000 troy ounce bars. The most popular form of physical silver investment among our customers has been the 1 troy ounce U.S. silver eagle.  Whether you are looking to buy or sell, our store offers professional customer service and industry leading competitive prices.

Jewelry Store Growth in Merchandise and Jewelry Repair

Many exciting new things are happening at Gold and Silver of Louisiana in 2012.  In addition to facilitating the buying and selling of precious metals for our customers, the company is now offering professional jewelry repair services.  As a graduate of Louisiana State University, our jeweler Clifford Morse is very familiar with the Baton Rouge community. Cliff’s skills exceed the arsenal of a typical jeweler as he can create almost any custom jewelry design, engraving, or monograming. The company is very excited to have Cliff  join our team, and we encourage our customers to use her jewelry repair, design, and monograming services.

Antique Store Consignment

In conjunction with offering our new jewelry repair, monograming, and engraving services, Gold and Silver of Louisiana has also doubled our inventory by adding three new consignment vendors with hundreds of unique items of merchandise. Among the new merchandise added to the store includes: a vast selection of antiques, vintage costume jewelry, fine antique jewelry, fine Parisian scarfs and décor, many oriental antiques, a great selection of jade, and a wide selection of 18^th & 19^th century architectural prints. Our vendors specialize in bringing our customers some of the finest items in the world at jaw dropping prices. One of our new vendors hand selects her items from Paris France, and another vender gets her materials from New York.  

Featuring Local Baton Rouge Artists

Another initiative Gold and Silver of Louisiana is taking on this month is our Louisiana Art Walk. We are now seeking nine skilled and talented Baton Rouge artists for the opportunity to sell and showcase their art in our store for only 10$ a month. Our store is dedicated to supporting fine local artist by giving them the opportunity to promote their work at very affordable prices.  So if you are a talented local artist who wants to display your work in a high volume retail center, please give us a call or stop by our store with your portfolio.  On a final note, we would like to remind our customers that Gold and Silver of Louisiana specializes in a wide selection of fine vintage gold, silver, and costume jewelry at unbelievable prices. Don’t miss out on the opportunity to take advantage of our incredibly low grand opening prices.  Our staff is looking forward to see you in the store soon!

Bulls in the gold market have been baffled by the recent sell off in the yellow metal. They argue that given the European debt crisis, in addition to the U.S. debt problems, the fundamentals for gold are stronger than ever. Its a mystery to the bulls why gold has not eclipsed the $2000 mark. Despite such favorable opinions about the lustrous yellow metal, most gold traders are still scratching their heads wondering why the gold has not performed like the ultimate safe-haven that it is. Bears see this as a red flag in the market signaling that something is wrong which could lead to a deeper correction in price. Bulls, on the other hand, are bold to argue that this may be the best buying opportunity in the past year to pick up the metal at a discount. They argue that gold has been in a steady uptrend for over 10 years now, and even a correction to near the $1300 level would not break the overall trend. It is impossible to know what camp (bulls or bears) is right in their future assessment of the gold market; however, one thing remains clear—we have most likely reached a crossroads in the gold market.

The price of precious metals are well positioned to remain at historic highs.  Citizens of Baton Rouge are increasingly taking advantage of these market conditions by cashing in their broken, used, unwanted, or scrap gold, silver, and platinum.  Many people in the Baton Rouge area are amazed by the amount of precious metals the own—many of which they did not even know they had or they had forgotten about. Among some of the gold, silver, and platinum items that our clients have sold recently include: jewelry, sterling silverware, watches, coins, and bars.  Many people are just now starting to realize that they have hundreds or thousands of dollars in items that they have not used in years.

Gold started an impressive run from around the 1200$ level all the way up to the 1900$ mark. Then the metal took a 350$ hit and has since rebounded to around the 1700$ level.  Moves in the price of silver have been even more extreme than those in gold. Trading around 20$ a year ago, silver took a massive leap up by more than doubling near the 50$ mark. Then the metal crashed over 33% to the 30$ level in just a couple of days.  After the crash silver started to slowly creep back up into to 40$ range only to crash once again to around the 30$ mark. Now the metal continues to trade in the lower 30’s and is waiting for some price direction from the industrial sector. Platinum has behaved much different than the monetary metals. While platinum maintained its historical average with gold (trading higher than the yellow metal) for much of the past 11 year bull market, a few months back gold decoupled from platinum and began to trade higher.  Now platinum is trading around the 1600$ level—proving that it is not quite the metal that gold is during the current times. As the citizens of Baton Rouge consider selling their broken, used, or unwanted gold, silver, or platinum many look to the precious metal’s extreme volatility over the past year.  Our clients that visit our CitiPlace location off of Corporate Blvd tend to think that prices are going to maintain their current levels and not experience as much volatility as compared to the last few years.  After the most recent corrections, our company experiences some panic selling of both gold and silver, and as prices re-corrected up, another round of high volume selling occurred.  These are interesting time for investors in precious metals, and as always, we  feel that hard commodities are  and will remain a safe harbor during uncertain times.

Gold and Silver’s Position in a Volatile Time

Recent market volatility for U.S. and European stocks has not been felt in the two big metals.  Both gold and silver have remained a stable investment in the past few weeks as investors pull back from the uncertain financial markets.  Silver prices have risen, and gold is holding steady.  Economic activity is one of the major driving factors that drives the price of silver because of its many industrial uses, and with world markets contracting some investors expect to see further pull backs from silver.  On the other hand,  many investors think that the “poor man’s gold” will not drop as dramatically as other global economic indicators.  Gold prices dropped dramatically from highs near the $1,900 an ounce level into the $1,600’s with investors fleeing to the dollar as Europe questions the future of the Euro, however, the yellow metal has leveled out to a steady rebound with less dramatic swings in daily price changes.  Silver also fluctuated from highs at or around $50 to lows around the $26 dollar level.  Silver’s swings were due in part to arbitrary changes in margin requirements by the major exchanges, and also by a perceived decrease in global demand.  Since rebounding from its recent lows, silver has remained fairly stable in the low to mid $30’s per ounce.

Local Louisiana Perspective

Those who are selling gold and silver to the precious metal buyers in Baton Rouge have expressed their concerns about the often discussed bubble in metals, and are increasingly positioned to cash in their investments.   In general, many individuals in Louisiana that have purchased gold or silver as an investment, or those who are holding surplus or broken jewelry have experienced a fair increase in their holdings over the last few years.  Feedback from our customers in the Baton Rouge area is somewhat balanced between those who think prices are still on the rise and those who are eager to sell before prices take a tumble.  Given the relative stability in both metals throughout a highly volatile market, prices may continue to remain fairly constant relative to the stock market or even real estate.