Is it worth buying silver coins for below melt price?

I often see people selling proof sets or regular sets that contain one coin that is sterling silver, and the silver in it is worth more than what the seller is selling it for. Are these worth buying? I'm not a very experienced coin collector, so looking for advice

I would question the authenticity of the set if it's below melt price (too good to be true etc.) If in doubt you could post pictures here and ask. But if they're authentic then yes I would say it is worth buying at below melt price.

if its like $1-2 below melt is it anything to be suspicious of?

madew

if its like $1-2 below melt is it anything to be suspicious of?

Discounts are relative.

Silver dollar 2USD below melt price would be 10% off.

Silver quarter 2USD below melt price would be 50% off.

At 5-10% discount you might be looking at seller, who can't find buyers for stuff and wants to sell it.

At 50% discount you might be looking at person who is really desperate or at something else.

Silver prices have rissen quite a bit, could be old listing prices.

sorry for the late reply, is it a good investment buying old silver coins for close to spot price, assuming the seller is trustworthy?

I would buy most silver coins as close to or below melt if possible. If you are buying it for bullion, I would steer clear of low purity coins as it costs more to refine them. Some proof sets have silver coins in which people are unaware of, some flat packs from The Royal Mint have silver, Bahrain and Falkland Island sets for example. Unless they are asking way over melt or spot, I would take a gamble, same as if they were asking way under.

I just sold 7 American Silver Eagles slightly below recent melt values. Cash.  Why? I bought them 20 years ago.

i’ve seen canadian proof sets, jamiacan proof sets and bahamas proof sets with silver coins. if they are selling for melt price, is it worth buying and would it be easy to difficult in the future if i lose interest in them 

A lot of precious metal NCLT from the 70s and 80s is cheap, because metal prices are so high now and the buyers of these coins are mainly elderly people wanting to quit them. I mean if they paid $10 for the set in 1977 and now its got $65 worth of silver and yet they can sell it no trouble for $50 - they will take it.

I buy a lot of silver coins from the 70s to 90s and given they are common, many are likely to be tranished or toned, it has no real value beyond the metal. Many will have low face values or be in sets with base metal coins of no interest. There's just a glut of it.

I remember in late 2023, one dealer was just separating and breaking up sets of the $5 and $10 Montreal Olympics silver coins. At least 5 full sets of them, common as dirt, but worth money due to their silver content. But every coin was tarnished or scratched or had some other defect that made it below collectable condition. He offered them to me at melt and I said no. So now they were smelted down for metal. If it was a few I would have said yes, but  this was like 250 of the damn things and they weigh like 25 grams each, so thats 7 kg of silver, which would be never worth more than melt. The cost was like $10k in silver melt alone, plus he wanted like 5% premium on them. I would rather spend that money on gold sovereigns from the 1800s or some real classic silver coins like silver crowns from 1666 or something, than tacky 1970s Hippy dippy Canadian silver coins celebrating sports and Kum ba yah togetherness.

They were all sold in the 70s and the owners have either died and left family who don't want them and quite them off to some dodgy 2nd hand shop “that will do them a favour, but its an inconvenience” or they sell them online. Plus they issued lots of them and the tacky 1970s graphic art has aged poorly and not old enough to be antique - so no value beyond metal.

Same also with our 1977 to 1996 proof sets of NZ coins, this worker was breaking sets open and taken out the single silver dollar coin and scrapping the 6 or 7 muck metal coins, as they had no value. Even sadder is people paid real money for them back in the day.

Even now I buy NZ proof sets for 80 - 100% melt value of the one silver coin. Just because metal is high, does not mean its rare. Plus add on the bad economic conditions - few people have spare money for worthless and tacky silver coins from 50 years ago. If silver crashes, the value and price of 1970s Franklin mint, 1970s Canadian Montreal graphic art silver coins and silver proof coins will collapse too.

I even bought 3 x of the 1977 British silver jubilee crowns in 92.5% silver for $15 each when their melt was $38 each. No one wants them - but they have silver.

Of course if they are selling silver dollars for like $1 or 4 cents from Ali Express or Temu and its so called rare coins like 1804 US dollar, various Chinese Republican dollars, French Piastres, British Trade Dollars etc - then they are fakes made of some nasty muck metal in a Chinese workshop.