Hi, I am back for the second post in my 450 words series, and it is a week from my birthday. Happy birthday me! Anyway, this time, I got my inspiration from finding a 2005 American Silver Eagle inside one of the picture books in my basement, and now international silver coins are my new collecting challenge. Here we go.
       The first thing you need to know about real silver coins is that they are not made for circulation, but for the people who collect coins and invest in silver. Collectors are usually getting them for the coin, but the investors get them for the silver. Silver is always changing prices like gold, platinum, and palladium do, but silver is much cheaper than all of those. The highest silver has ever gone for is $55 per ounce and the lowest is around $5.
      There are many different types of silver coins, from the American Silver Eagle to the Perth Mint's koala and kookaburra series. One of the designs on a silver coin is the Royal Canadian Mint's Canadian Maple Leaf series commissioned by the Royal Canadian Mint. The coins are .9999 silver, it has a maple leaf and Queen Elizabeth II on it, and it is the Canadian version of Silver Eagles. Another one is the Elephant Silvers from Somalia. It has, you guessed it, elephants on it. I know some of you do not know what a silver eagle is, and that is fine. It has Adolph Weinman's Walking liberty design on the front and has an eagle on the back. It is made of fine silver and are minted at US mint locations. The British national silver coin is called the Britannia. It has a person on the obverse (don't know who), and Queen Elizabeth on the reverse, and is minted in London. These are some of the examples of national silver coins. I left out the Russian St. George national silver coin, the South African silver Krugerrand, the Chinese silver panda, and many others.
     Another way to collect silver is to buy rounds. These rounds are made by independent mints around the globe to produce non-national silver coins, like the Aztec one ounce round, also known as the Calendar Medal Round, featuring the sun stone (similar coin featured in the September YN auction as lot #84), seasonally minted holiday rounds for Christmas and other holidays, fractional rounds, (appeared as lot #87 in the recent YN auction) and the rounds with just the company's name on it. Most rounds also offer a 1oz silver bar version, like the Aztec calendar round and the Sunshine Mint's buffalo round. That will be all for now, and thank you for reading.
You all want your bibliography, but I just looked up silver coins and looked at silver websites and photos :)