Chapter twelve. Storage

A ton of American Eagles!

Storage and/or display.

After you begin to accumulate silver in one form or another you will need to decide how to store it. When you buy bullion bars, they mostly come sealed in plastic from the dealer. So, if you are going to keep them in the wrap from the dealer (manufacturer) your problem is solved. If you purchase from a different source, it may be different. Plus, you may not like the plastic and want to do something else.

Coins sometimes arrive in "Airtight" plastic containers or in those little cardboard flips or maybe in small plastic bags. Again, this may solve your problem and leave you with no further action needed.

On the other hand, you may buy some junk silver which often arrives in small Manila envelopes or nothing at all. If this is so you will want to improve your collection by purchasing storage items for your bullion and/or coins.

The American Eagle $1.00 and Canadian Maple Leaf $5.00 coins store well in the mint tubes. Twenty for the Eagles and twenty-five fit in the Canadian tube. When you buy one at a time you wont have those tubes and need to buy them aftermarket, which is easy and not very costly.

Bullion stores well in several ways. There are shipping tubes which hold twenty coins and keep them separated (see blog page one). Bullion rounds can be stored the same way in shipping tubes made for them. Junk silver dollars are nearly the same size as silver rounds and fit nicely in those shippers. You can buy Airtight plastic holders to hold each coin separately as well.

Slabbed, certified coins are already sealed in special plastic containers to protect them and to preserve the certification authentication. However, after you acquire some of these you may want to store those slabs in a box. PCGS and NGC (and the others) make boxes which store twenty slabs in slots separating the slabs from touching. Remember a scratch on the plastic is almost as bad as a scratch on that coin! It still looks bad and unless you pay to have it re-certified, it will reduce the eye appeal and value at resale.

Here are a few photos to help clarify all this for you:

Flea Market coins are often in these.

Airtight makes most of these in clear plastic.

 Each coin or slab fits in the slots.

Coin "slab". NOT certified.

NOTE: Coin holders often have little hand written notes, like the quarter above, claiming the coin is "AU". Whatever it says is the OPINION of the seller and not the "Gospel" as they say!