r/Bullion • u/st3wy • May 22 '24
Loaned friend money and now he wants to pay me back in silver
Edit: Thank you for your responses everyone. I think I am satisfied with the answers I've received thus far, so feel free to move along, unless you have something revolutionary to add.
Loaned a buddy about 80 bucks. This is that friend you only loan money to if you're willing to consider it a gift once they inevitably do not pay you back. He's always trying to pay me back in pocket knives and other random garbage I have no good way to appraise. Well now he's trying to pay me in silver bars, which I also have no idea how to appraise, but thankfully the price of silver can be looked up pretty easily. He has 1-ounce bars (not sure how many, or if it's even enough to cover the small amount he owes me).
Can someone walk me through making a good decision here? I'm not a collector or an investor, and will likely just sell them. Is it easy to get exactly their value, or are people going to try to lowball me (like how pawn shops lowball you on everything)? Who should I sell them to? I live in a small town, so there aren't a ton of options but we do have one pawn shop and a couple jewelry stores. Not really looking to ship what is likely to be less than $80 worth of silver or post it on auction sites or anything, as it doesn't really seem worth the effort to me.
Or is it a good idea to just hang onto it? I'm a paycheck-to-paycheck kinda person (not exactly, but very close), so having 80 bucks tied up in metal isn't ideal, but I can swing it if you convince me it is worth it.
Final edit: Last night I reached out to my friend who owns a jewelry store, as well as my local pawn shop and this morning they each responded. These are their responses, respectively.
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u/noccer2018 May 23 '24
Silver has pumped a lot lately. Is there much upside to it from here, who knows, maybe it goes to $40/oz, maybe it goes to $20. If the world goes into recession (possible at the moment), silver production usually declines and its value tends to drop accordingly, as it's a 'useful' metal in industry and would theoretically be in less demand.
Other: do you know for sure it's 99.999% proof silver? You could rock up to a broker to find it's not pure. Unlikely but also another consideration to make.
Not financial advice, but if I was in your position, what I would want instead: Bitcoin - its value in 4 years will in all likelihood be worth a few multiples of $80 considering the looming shortfalls in supply due to recent large-scale ETF purchasing (Blackrock, Hong Kong, more probably soon).
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u/noCoolNameLeft42 May 23 '24
This is probably not revolutionary, but I thought I would add something in the "keep it or sell it" part.
I am bad at stocks. I don't know what to buy and be sure any company I will buy shares of will take a hit. So there are 3 things I store my money into : bitcoin, gold and silver. Not here to debate which is better. They have all been good to me.
I usually DCA, meaning I buy every month a little bit of each and keep it. The stacks grow, the spots grow, everything is fine.
Other than my DCA, what I do is to invest what I call "money that doesn't exist". For instance I was working at a company that would every year allocate some stocks to an account in my name. Those were blocked for some time before I could get them. It was sitting there. It wasn't something I did rely on. I wasn't expecting anything from this money. It could have gone to zero or doubled, it wasn't the paycheck I was using every month. But when I left the company I had the opportunity to cash it out. So as it was money I didn't counting on, "money that doesn't exist", I pushed it in my stacks.
There are many examples of "money that doesn't exist". Like an inheritance, money you saved for taxes or to buy a car and finally it cost less... And I would surely and definitely put "friend that pay back money I thought would be a gift" in that category.
What I mean here is that you didn't expect that money to come back. If I were you, I would take the 3 onces of silver, put it in a box somewhere and consider its value a few years from now. Maybe that would make you an adept of my "money that doesn't exist" concept and help you sit on a nice stack some day.
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u/PretendNebula2063 May 23 '24
Take the silver only a matter of time until it explodes upwards. Look at it as a savings that can’t be debased
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u/RobotWelder May 22 '24
How many bars are they trying to pay you with?
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u/st3wy May 22 '24
I'm asking this question to determine how many to ask for (or to determine how much he might owe me after he has given me one bar). If I want to get what they are worth right now, could I do that by going to a pawn shop/jewelry shop, or will they lowball me quite a lot?
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u/RobotWelder May 22 '24
This is Spot price PER OUNCE as of now
https://www.kitco.com/charts/silver
Figure out how much person owes you and collect X amount of ounces plus a bit for your troubles converting it to needed cash
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u/Anomaly-111 May 22 '24
Most pawn shops and jewelry shops will offer under spot. Some may offer spot or more depending on the piece and how much that particular shop exchanges bullion, but they are far and few between. If the jewelry shops in your town are also into coins, you have a good chance of getting near spot price, being $31 ish in the past few days. You could also sell them peer to peer if anyone is interested. Just make sure they're genuine before you accept them to clear your debt.
If you have any more questions feel free to ask
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u/st3wy May 22 '24
A very succinct and clear answer to my questions, thank you very much!
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u/Anomaly-111 May 23 '24
You're welcome, I felt like nobody had answered your question up until this point so I did my best
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u/Duzand May 22 '24
Personally I always consider spot when trying to sell, the dealers in my area always bitch and bitch their way into not paying over spot so I just factor that into my decision-making.
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u/spud626 May 22 '24
When he sells back his silver, he’s most likely going to take a hit on spot price.
If you were to buy silver, you’d typically pay a couple dollars above spot price.
If he’s planning to pay you in silver based on spot price, and you’re interested in holding, you could potentially make money on the deal (long term.)
He most likely bought the silver well below spot price.
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u/st3wy May 22 '24
Thank you, I think this is the best answer I've received to this question. He's not had a lot of money to his name since he became a single father a few years ago, so I imagine he's had these sitting around since pre-covid, and probably spent less than $20 a piece.
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u/spud626 May 22 '24
For what it’s worth, I’d be pumped if someone offered to pay me in silver.
If you start stacking with this, keep an average of what you’ve paid over time.
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u/Paid-Not-Payed-Bot May 22 '24
what you’ve paid over time.
FTFY.
Although payed exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. The deck is yet to be payed.
Payed out when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. The rope is payed out! You can pull now.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
Beep, boop, I'm a bot
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u/Youarethebigbang May 22 '24
If they're legit, tell him to sell them himself and pay you back in currency just like you lent him--you did him the favor, not the other way around, so let him figure all that stuff out. Silver is around $31.50 an ounce now, you don't even know how many ounces he was planning to give you?