Andrew Bary
When silver prices spiked tenfold in the 1970s to more than $50 an ounce, many Americans correctly saw an opportunity and lined up at precious metals dealers to sell their old sterling silver. That proved smart since silver prices proceeded to collapse to under $10 an ounce in the 1980s.
Similar behavior may be occurring during the current silver boom, which has led to a tripling in silver prices to over $90 an ounce over the past year. That includes a nearly 30% gain so far in 2026 as new price records have been set.
It isn't easy to generalize, but two coin dealers tell Barron's that retail investors are heavier sellers than buyers, and it appears the outsize silver gains are being driven by institutional investors and overseas buyers in regions such as Asia.
One sign of less-than-frothy demand is that the price of pre-1965 U.S. silver coins (half dollars, quarters, and dimes) have traded at a discount recently of $3 to $4 an ounce to the spot price of silver.
"Sellers are far outpacing buyers," says Chris Moran, the owner of The Happy Coin, a rare coin and precious metals dealer in Greenwich, Conn. "I've never seen so many 100-ounce bars" of silver for sale.
Jonathan Kosares, the owner of USAGold, a precious metals dealer based in Denver, says "retail selling dwarfs that of retail acquisition in the physical silver space."
One factor, he says, may be that investors may feel they missed out and are standing on the sidelines.
One of the most popular silver investments among retail investors are 1-ounce silver Eagles produced by the U.S. mint. There were about 25 million Eagles minted in 2024, the last year for which production information is available. Several hundred million are outstanding.
The mint doesn't sell the coins directly to the public, but through authorized dealers who create a secondary market.
An indication of retail silver demand is the premium the Eagles command above spot silver prices. The current premium is about $8 per ounce, meaning silver Eagles can be bought from coin dealers for close to $100 per coin. The silver Eagle premium varies based on demand.
Kosares says the premium as measured in dollars per Eagle coin is getting close to highs during the Covid era, but in percentage terms, the premium is near the lows of the current decade.
For big orders of 500 Eagle coins, the premium could be in the $5 to $7 range per coin, Moran says.
Many retail buyers also like bags of pre-1965 U.S. coins that are 90% silver. The bags are often sold by face value in amounts of $100, $250, $500, or $1,000. Each $1,000 face value bag contains about 715 ounces of silver.
These bags are sometimes referred to as "junk silver." At $90 an ounce, a $1,000 bag of coins contains about $64,000 of silver, meaning each coin is worth more than 60 times its face value. Investors can buy the bags at a discount to spot prices.
One reason is that many silver refiners apparently have plenty of pure silver to melt. "The majority of refiners are unwilling to accept junk silver as a product to be melted into exchange-ready bars, leaving a glut of 90% silver on the market," Kosares says.
"Add it all up, and you have a market where retail availability of silver bullion is not stressed at the same moment when exchanges are reporting significant shortages," he adds, referring to commodity exchanges. "It's quite the paradox. That has been ongoing for several months and has yet to resolve."
Bulls are predicting that silver is heading to $100 an ounce or above, but so far, U.S. retail investors don't appear to be driving the move -- at least in key parts of physical market. If the trend continues, there could be a pullback in silver prices.
Write to Andrew Bary at andrew.bary@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
January 15, 2026 19:29 ET (00:29 GMT)
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