Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid Stupid

I seriously might be the dumbest person on earth. I am going to describe an intellectual struggle that occupied me for well over a year. During that time, I consulted with experts, posted queries to online forums, and generally strained my creativity muscles trying to arrive at a viable answer.


I collected coins as a child, and own a large amount of "junk" silver. Quarters and dimes from before 1965, today worth a few thousand bucks.

Silver's value climbed a lot during Covid, and I was poised to sell but waited too long and it came back down.

One problem with being an uber-patient, buy-and-hold, wait-it-out guy is it's super easy to miss the boat. For instance, when my $3 shares of SIGA went from $7 to $26 (it cures monkey pox), I kept my chips on the table and now they're back to $8 (monkey pox fizzled). Oopsie!

So now I'll be moving abroad for a while, and shipping my stuff via container ship. I don't want to include my tons of silver coins, because that would be risky and dodgy and smugglery. But, of course, I can't sell right now because silver's so low!

Here is an accounting of my struggle to scheme this all out. It's been a major stressor of this entire undertaking:

Put them into a bank safe deposit box and sell them on a future visit back.
Nope. Due to bank greed and poor regulation, safe deposit boxes aren't safe.

Store them in a friend's basement
The sort of person you'd trust to store your valuable coins is the sort of person who'd avoid the risk of storing your valuable coins, even if you figure out a clever way to make it worth his while.

Store them in a friend's basement without telling him
Who do I look like, Walter White??

Integrate! Swap the zillions of dimes and quarters for a few krugerrands or whatever.
Hmm. Getting better. Bringing a few krugerrands overseas would still feel smugglery, but they'd be super easy to hide in, like, my underwear.

Trade it all for silver certificates or futures or some other abstract vehicle
Now we're getting somewhere! I'd still be locking in the value, and enjoy the eventual price rise, without the risk of transporting any material thing. But how would I make this trade? The transaction costs might be high!

Sell the silver for cash, and THEN buy a silver certificate or future with the receipts
Huh. Interesting. But, wait, wouldn't that be the same thing as.....

Sell the silver and make an (immaterial) investment in silver if you're so sure the price will go up. You know, like an investment. Like any/every investment anyone's ever made anywhere. Like Economics 101. Like don't be an asshole!
I can’t believe I’ve spent months worrying about this. The question is not "what do I do with the silver?" The question is "how do I profit from a future rise of silver value?" And the answer is, by investing in fricking silver, genius. Unload the stupid coins ASAP and then make an investment in silver if you're so certain and/or patient!


Which, come to think of it, I'm not sure I even am! Which means I'm double-extra-stupid!