Investing in commodities such as in silver is a serious deal and one must be careful when dealing with the seller. The risk involved is higher for silver purchase online. One most commonly bought form of silver are silver coins mainly because buying them had become practical as they are easy to store. If you are looking to invest in similar size gold coin, it would also be advisable to try and invest in silver coins.
Silver coins are made both by the government mint as well as many other private mints in USA. They are all made with the same exact quality specifications. The finishing of the American eagles are always polished and with the front of the coin engraved with the walking liberty and the other side with an eagle spreading its wings with stars above it. It is because of these extra works on the precisely made coin, the cost of American eagles is a steep higher that than more generic silver rounds. Silver rounds are plain simple coins made with silver of 99.99% purity and one troy ounce weight exactly like that of the government silver coins.
Coins issued by the government mint are of three types mainly, the regular silver coins which are circulated, the ones which are special edition or uncirculated limited coins and the proof coins. If you are a regular investor who is interested in only the silver contained in the coin and nothing else, then you should go to the regular in circulation . The special edition coins and the uncirculated coins are of interest for those who are into silver coin collection. Collectors would love to pay any extra premium to get their hand on that very rare special edition 1 oz silver coins which are specially released for a particular occasion and in a limited number. Sometimes particular batches of coins which have been misprinted gets released into circulation and get discontinued immediately after finding it out. Such coins which go into circulation will have a huge demand among the numismatics. Proof coins are the regular silver coins but the image on the coin being more clear and appreciative. They got better mirror like finish and looks very attractive. This is achieved by striking the die twice or thrice on the blank coin to get a good image of the die.
Before you purchase silver coins, make sure you check for the sign of authenticity that is present on the coin. Do look for the warranty card if there is any provided with it. Check if the weight of the silver is exactly one ounce or not.