Silver Sense For Real-World Preppers

Price shocks don’t happen in a vacuum. When silver sprints to $115 and slides back to the 70s, there’s a story under the chart—one that starts with spot and premiums at your local coin shop and stretches through rate signals, dollar strength, tariffs, and geopolitics. We walk through a real purchase at the counter, why $2 to $5 over spot can be fair, and how online “deals” can disappear once taxes, high premiums, and weeks-long delivery windows hit the cart.

From there, we connect the macro dots. A potential shift at the Fed can loosen credit, push more dollars into the system, and nudge hard assets higher—unless hot jobs data props up the dollar and cools the move. Tariffs add friction to trade and can fuel inflation fears, yet they also trigger defensive buying from nations that want insurance outside the banking system. Meanwhile, industrial demand is no sideshow: EVs, solar, and electronics quietly soak up silver, tying today’s price to tomorrow’s manufacturing cycle.

We also tackle the difference between exposure and ownership. Paper metals and unallocated accounts can track price until too many hands ask for bars at once. Physical rounds, bought locally, settle the question in seconds: you can sell back for cash, even on a volatile day. For preppers, that same round carries barter utility—fuel, staples, or generator time—priced by what neighbors value, not what a screen says. If you’re abroad, VAT and import rules change the break-even math, making patience and a wider target range essential.

If you’re weighing a hedge against policy mistakes, a store of value outside the rails, or a practical trade on macro trends, this walkthrough gives you a clear, grounded map. Subscribe, share with a friend who’s eyeing their first ounce, and leave a review to tell us where you think silver goes next.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Today’s Focus On Silver
• 0:30 Not Financial Advice And Setup
• 1:18 Local Coin Shop Visit And Volatility
• 3:12 Spot Price Vs Premiums Explained
• 5:25 Online Retailers, Taxes, And Delays
• 6:45 Three Forces Moving Precious Metals
• 7:14 Interest Rates, Fed Signals, And Jobs
• 10:36 Dollar Strength, Tariffs, And Trade Jitters
• 14:17 Geopolitics And Central Bank Buying
• 15:53 Savings Math Vs Silver Since 2020
• 18:49 Paper Metals Risk And Delivery Crunch
• 22:09 Bartering Use Cases And Local Pricing
• 24:41 Selling Back To Shops And Liquidity
• 26:49 Industrial Demand And Tech Tailwinds
• 28:41 VAT, Country Taxes, And Break-Evens

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:02

You are listening to the Common Sense Practical Prepper. It fixes everything except that decision. Good evening, Mr. and Mrs. America. From border to border, coast to coast, and all ships at sea. Here is your host, Keith.

SPEAKER_01: 0:21

Everybody, this is Keith, and welcome back to the Common Sense Practical Prepper Podcast. February the 14th, Valentine's Day 2026. So today we're going to talk about precious metals, primarily silver. We're going to do a deep dive into it. I've spoken about silver a time or two, silver and bartering, but I want to talk a little bit more and get a little bit more in depth. So before we get started, this is not financial advice. This is just my opinion and the results of some of the research that I've done. So I want to talk about my latest visit to a local coin shop here in Richmond, Virginia. So when I look at the price of silver and how volatile it's been, I wanted to do some research to figure out exactly what's going on. And a lot of what I found out for the price of silver applies to the price of gold. Now I've said before, especially when silver reached, was it 70, 80, 90? And then two weeks ago it hit 115, priced way out of my budget. But I'll tell you what I found out, and I'll tell you some purchases that I made and why I made those purchases. Again, silver bullion, gold bullion, gold coin, silver coins may not be something you want to do. But at least do your research. You might be surprised on the benefits of holding physical silver or physical gold. So the other day I purchased some silver rounds. And remember, silver rounds are not legal tender. Silver rounds, and make sure if you ever purchase a silver round, there's mint marks and you get them from reputable mints. Sunshine, TMI, there's a bunch of them, a bunch of reputable mints out there. And there's some that aren't so reputable. So when I purchase the silver rounds, it can also be called bullion. You can purchase gold or silver bullion in rounds, bars, all sorts of funky designs. It really, it really, it's really up to you, whatever, whatever you're feeling in that particular day. But I purchased silver rounds for investment as well as bartering, which I've touched on before. So the other day I was watching the price of silver, and it had dropped quite a bit. Well down from 115. I believe it was I was watching it, it was like$74,$75 per troy ounce. Just a few years ago, I might not even a few years ago, just a year ago, it was like$25 or 30. And we'll go into why I believe there's been such a huge spike, and why I believe, again, just my opinion, and I am a layman. I am not an economist, I'm not a metallurgist. Did I say that right? Metallurgist. I'm not a metals guy. I'm just someone who's got two eyeballs and two ears, and I like to read and I like to do some research. So when I purchased the rounds, it was roughly$76 for spot, which means that was the price at the time. Now, when you purchase, regardless if it's a coin shop or online, there's a premium or a markup. Now, a lot of coin shops, not all, a lot of coin shops, their premium will be$3,$4,$5 over spot. Because again, they purchased, let's just keep it simple. They purchased that one ounce silver round for X amount of dollars. Maybe they went through a wholesaler on a particular day, they got it for$72 per ounce. Well, they have to pay the rent, the utilities, employees, insurance, they need to make a living. So they're gonna add a few dollars to that profit. And the crazy thing about it is they purchased it at a price, and very easily, when you come in two or three days later, the price could have dropped. So if they purchased it for$75 and all of a sudden the price drops to$68, they're probably gonna take a loss on that particular round or whatever they happen to purchase for$75 that particular day. But then again, they purchased it for$75, just like a couple weeks ago, it jumps to$115. So they sell it for like$118, and they've made a tremendous amount of profit on that$75, one ounce silver round, just to keep everything simple. Now, I have noticed the online retailers are taking advantage of the situation, and I get it. Capitalism 101, no issue with capitalism at all. But when I see$10,$12, and$15 over spot, that is crazy. Now in Virginia, there's no sale tax on gold and silver precious metals. So you go into a coin shop in Virginia and it's$75 and they add their premium. So let's say it's$78, you hand them$78 cash, and they hand you one ounce silver round. When you purchase online, there's taxes. And when you purchase online, the more you purchase, the less expensive it gets. So if you ever get into coin collecting, precious metals, whatever, try to go to a local coin shop. First, you have a relationship with them, might be a great guy, great gal, you may not like them at all. But when you establish a relationship, you're a trusted customer. And if their prices are fair, they're a trusted seller. And in the future, you may get cut a break, but who knows? So let's go ahead and break down a couple of three different factors that I think directly affect the price of precious metals. So one is interest rates. So Trump has nominated Kevin Walsh as the new Fed chairman to replace Powell. And I think his confirmation hearings start in the Senate, or maybe it's only in the Senate, and that should start here in the next week or two. So Walsh is no, he's not new. He's no dove. So back in 2008, he did not like the bailouts for the mortgage companies in the banks, and he doesn't like money just kind of floating around. He likes to have that assigned. He likes to know where money is going and what it's doing. But lately he said a few things like if AI output remains high and inflation is tamed, we can ease up on interest rates. Translated, potentially cut interest rates. It's not going to happen tomorrow, not gonna happen next week. But if he does, even half of a point, it's like opening a fire hose. Interest rates drop, banks then lend money at a cheaper rate, people then borrow that money. More money is then into the system, more money is available for things to be purchased. Supply and demand, the price of precious metals in that instance would tend to climb. But here's the wild card, or here's the kicker. Job numbers are the wild card, in my opinion. I believe it was late last week. The job numbers came out, and I think that I think we added 130,000 jobs to the workforce, which was a little more than what was predicted. So Wall Street goes bananas, they're celebrating popping champagne, and the dollar went up. The dollar on that information, on that good news, strengthened. Silver fell 3% before lunchtime. Strong jobs means no real rush to cut rates, no cuts, no weak dollar, precious metal prices will not necessarily increase. Let's say next month 150,000 or 200,000 new jobs are added to the economy. Dollar strengthens, inflation's held at bay, no rate cut, precious metals are not going to drop. A strong dollar is not a good recipe for precious metals and their prices to decrease. Here's another way I looked at this and decided to purchase some silver bullion, some silver rounds. My savings account pays 1.89% interest. Minimal. If I parked$1,000 there on January 1st, 2020, and this is some rough back of the napkin math, compounded yearly. Today I'd have about$1,125. Barely a move, barely a tick up. Now that same day, January 1st, 2020, I took that$1,000 and purchased silver. Spot back then was roughly$18. It was$17.90. So let's say$18 per troy ounce. That would have yielded me at the time 56 ounces, 561 ounce silver rounds. The current price, give or take,$79 per troy ounce. Those 65 rounds are now worth$4,400, a 400% increase. This is something I just looked at. It's not because I'm a financial wizard, but because metal tends to hold its value long term over time. Whereas the US dollar in currency is much more volatile in its own way and has several other aspects to it that will increase or decrease its strength, the strength of the dollar worldwide. So here's another spot since we're talking about the dollar itself. So the strength of the dollar, the DXY. Right now, the dollar is at 97, and that's just a number. I can't tell you if 97, how much better 97 is better than 95. It's it's just a number on an index. So currently, that's a strong dollar, relatively speaking. But in January, it was 92. So why did it jump up? Why did it strengthen? There were tariffs. Trump talks tough about tariffs with Canada, Europe, the price of steel, aluminum, even gold and silver itself. Tariffs jack up the costs of items that are imported or exported, and it has the potential to hurt imports. Inflation would tend to tick up a little bit in reaction to hearing about these tariffs. So the Fed might hold rates a little higher to fight that inflation. High rates, dollar stays strong, strong dollar, gold, and silver gets pricier for everyone. Less demand, the prices tend to cool. But tariffs also scare people. Trade wars mean uncertainty. You hear tariffs, that's kind of scary. You hear trade war, and that sounds a little scarier. Uncertainty means they sell the dollar and buy metal. China, India, they're not waiting. They're purchasing a lot of precious metals. They buy when the dollar looks weak or gets it starts to wobble a little bit. So yeah, tariffs push both ways. Up to short term, down long term. Right now, the dollar's winning. Hence, the price of silver and gold dropped a bit. And here's the third part geopolitics. Not headlines, not CNN, but just things that are going on in the background. So in Q4 of 2025, China purchased 280 tons of gold. That's a lot of gold. They bought that for insurance as a hedge against tariffs or other things coming down the pike. The war in Ukraine is still going on. Russia and Ukraine are still fighting and people are still dying. Taiwan is still the flashpoint with China. Middle East, always something going on in the Middle East. So that's why gold is near 5,000 per troy ounce, and silver bouncing 78, 82. I really haven't checked it in the last 24 to 48 hours. But it's not tied to rates alone. It's tied to several different factors. And that's a very simple explanation. So here's the last piece. So you put all this stuff together. The Fed hints at a rate cut, dollar dips, tariffs kick in, geopolitically things start flaring up around the world. Each one feeds into the next one. The Fed eases, the dollar weakens, the dollar weakens, tariffs sting harder, tariffs sting harder, China buys more, China buys more, the prices climb, and before you know it, it's$200 per troy ounce,$300 per troy ounce. And we're talking about silver. So like I said before, looking to purchase online precious metals, silver or gold, is not for everybody. But it's something that I decided to look into. And the deciding factor for me was the interest rate on my savings account. So I purchased, let's see, when I was on the way, it was like 76.50 on the way to the coin shop. It went to 77. It was very volatile. Even when I left work, even the 30 minutes it took me to drive to the local coin shop, it had fluctuated a dollar up and down, 50 cents here, 75 cents there. And when I pulled into the parking lot, it was 76 even. So I'm thinking 78. By the time I got into the shop, it was not 76 even, it was 75.50. It dropped 50 cents per troy ounce. That's a big drop just in two or three minutes. And I checked the same website as the gentleman at the coin shop. Because some sites have different prices, they're within pennies of each other. But just so everybody's on the same page, we use the same website. And I mentioned the silver rounds, are they still$2 over spot? And he goes, yes. And he goes, What's spot now? And I said, Well, it was 76 a few minutes ago. He said, Well, it's$75.50 now. So he says, let's do$78. So it was actually$2.50 over spot, which is fine. If I searched, I could probably find somebody at$5 over spot, but I would have to purchase such a large quantity to get that$5 over spot, plus shipping, plus taxes. And here's the kicker. And looking at some of these websites, supply is dwindling. Demand is way up. If you look at the website and you make the purchase today, they're saying it could be two to three weeks before it's even shipped to you. Now I understand you go on Amazon, you go to Walmart, whatever things are on back order. I get that. Oh, they don't have a 2X t-shirt in my size or in my color that I want. It's on back order. Okay, here's your$20. You'll probably have it in a week. There's just something about making a purchase online with your hard-earned money and it being precious metals. And the company you're purchasing it from says, ah, you know what? It's it could be three weeks before we even ship it to you. Well, you're taking my money and investing it or purchasing more metals, whatever you're doing with that. And call me silly, but I don't like that. When I want to purchase something, I want to give you the money. If I'm at a store, I want you to hand it to me. If it's online with Amazon or whomever, two-day shipping. Oh, it'll be here Wednesday. But if you hand someone one of the online brokers for precious metals, you give them$100 or$1,000, and we'll get it to you in about two or three weeks. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second. There's just something, I just don't like that. And I get it. They don't have it. You're locking in the price right then. The really bummer thing about it, if you were to purchase it at$85 per ounce, and then the dig it ships, silver's down to$81. And you can't really chase prices like that. You'll drive yourself bananas. Because I got mine at$78. Tuesday, it could be$72. I think, oh, I could have got it for$6 less. Well, yes. If I had purchased it nine months ago, I could have got it at$30, but you just end up driving yourself crazy trying to chase a price like that. You have to decide, can you afford it? Is this something you want to do? Does it make sense to you financially? So when it comes to precious metals and supply and demand, as per usual with Wall Street, things are purchased on paper without having the physical, in this case, physical silver or gold to back it up. It's all on paper. So until you have that physical piece of silver or gold in your hand, you haven't purchased anything. And Wall Street and these financial institutions are famous for just purchasing things on paper. Millions of dollars of this or futures in cattle, rice, whatever it happens to be, the futures market. It's all on paper. And where the problem is, is when people come to collect on that. Well, you purchased 16 tons of gold on paper. And now you're like, okay, I want my 16 tons of gold. And the person or company or entity or country that you purchase it from is like, ah, you know, about that 16 tons, I don't have that right now. But that's when things tend to get a little spicy, I guess you could say, when people want what they paid for and it's not readily available. So there is a chance that if some of these larger banks, and some of these large banks have more money than some countries, if some of these larger banks are like, you know what, all that silver, all that gold or palladium or whatever it happens to be that we purchased three months ago on paper, we need to take delivery of that because it makes sense to their financial situation. They see it upside, they're gonna turn it around and flip it because they think the prices are gonna go up, they're gonna make some money, whatever is in their financial plan, and they're not able to get their hands on it. That's when there's a run on precious metals. Again, this is just my opinion. I don't have any inside baseball, I don't have any super duper top secret information, my phone's not ringing, nobody on Wall Street or nobody from the precious metal industry is calling me in Richmond, Virginia, giving me advice. This is just hours and hours of research that I've done trying to get rid of all the noise, try to get through what the real deal is. Now, whether I got down to the bottom of it, whether I've got down to the truth or an assemblance of the truth, I really don't know. But what I do know is the price of silver is way undervalued. Just several months ago,$35,$45, and a week and a half ago,$115, and the jump has been parabolic. And it's it's difficult to find out why. The economy, there's no huge, huge issues with our economy. Nothing is going on with our economy now that wasn't going on two years ago. I mean, there is, there's been a lot of changes. It's there's a lot of upsides to certain portions of the economy, but nothing that jumps out to me where I can say, oh, that's the reason the price of precious metals has gone through the roof. People will say, well, I have silver stocks or I have stocks in gold and other precious metals. Hey, if that's how you want to spend your money, that's all you. But again, you're purchasing it on paper. Now, if you purchased$5,000 worth of gold and you have a piece of paper saying you own$5,000 worth of gold, is that gold sitting in a safe or sitting in a lockbox somewhere with your name on it? And you just can't necessarily call that person up and be like, you know what? Can you open box$1745 and can you drop that$5,000 worth of gold in the mail to me? Because I want to put it in a safe deposit box or I want to put it in a safe I have at my house. I don't think it works that way. Maybe it does. But then again, I'm the guy that wants to have that physical silver, in this case, in my hand. And I've talked about it being used for bartering. I've talked about investment. So let's say the the silver rounds that I purchase at 78. Let's say six months from now, it's 110. I should be able to take that silver back to my local coin shop and be, hey, local coin shop guy, I would like to sell you my silver round. I know I paid 78. Let's say the price is 115. He still has to make a profit. So he might purchase it for 105. So 78, 105, I've made a decent little profit. Again, he hands me cash. Now there's companies and corporations and countries that do this on a daily basis and they purchase tons of it. Again, many of it's on paper. So if JP Morgan or somebody Monday morning purchases 16 tons of silver on paper for$100 a troy ounce, and then two months from now it's$110 per troy ounce, and they sell their 16 tons to somebody else, another bank, another corporation, another country, again, it's all on paper. A big truck doesn't roll up the loading dock at JP Morgan and they load 16 tons of silver and they run it across town to the bank or to the company that purchased it. It's all on paper. And that's where things get a little squirrely when there's a call, when that person says, I want my gold, I want my silver that I purchased six months ago, six years ago. So, like I said before, I prep as a hedge on inflation, and these the the silver rounds will be exactly. Exactly that. If it ever gets to a situation where bartering needs to happen, then right now that one silver round is worth$76.50 when I purchased it. I'm sorry,$75.50 when I purchased it. Now again, I've talked about bartering before. That's how much I paid. I paid$78, the profit to the local coin shop. But what will that one silver round get me one day if it gets to the point to where we're bartering? And again, it's what people are willing to pay for the item that they're bartering for. Does one ounce silver round that I paid$78 for, does that buy me five gallons of gas? Does that buy me a five-gallon bucket of rice? Does that buy me an hour and a half on somebody's generator so I can charge my phones or run my fridge? It's all relative. And that one silver round for the five gallons of gas in Richmond, Virginia, will be completely different than what somebody is charging or wanting to barter for in Mississippi. It's like the price of gas in Richmond is not the same as it is in Mississippi, LA, Minneapolis, Chicago, wherever. I did an in-depth podcast on bartering probably two or three months ago. You can look back in the archives and pull that one up. But anyway, that's my story about precious metals. That's why I'm looking at it. And to boil it all down, I looked at the interest rate that my little savings account was getting. And then I looked at the price of silver and what it's done in the last several months. And to me, it was a no-brainer. Now, could I have made a big mistake? Absolutely. Could the price of silver continue to drop in six months from now, a year from now, it's 60, 50, 40,$20? Absolutely. So in a sense that I lose money on the silver rounds that I purchased for$78, I did. I don't necessarily see that happening. So it can always be sold later at a loss or a profit. It could always be used for bartering. Or one of these days, if I have grandbabies, maybe silver is$300 an ounce. And that here's a bunch of silver rounds. Now it costs them zero. So regardless of the price of silver at the time, if they decide to sell it, if it's$2 an ounce, they just make$2 per ounce,$2 per round. Obviously, if it's more expensive, they make more money. All right, folks, that's my little economic, non-economic, precious metal TED talk and what I think's going on, and the reason why I decided to purchase some silver rounds. Now, will I continue? I have no idea. I'm going to closely monitor the Fed chair nominee, the strength of the dollar, tariffs, interest rates, geopolitics, everything. And again, as interest drops, the interest rates drop, there's more money in the system. There's more money in the economy. There's more money for people to purchase things, including precious metals, cars, TVs, laptops. And with all of these things, silver and a lot of precious metals are used to manufacture those. EV batteries, solar panels. So as the demand of these prices increase, so will the price, and so will the price of the materials. So if you're able to get in, I don't want to say on the ground floor, but you if you're able to get in at a price that you're comfortable with, and you've done your research and you believe that the price is going to increase and you have the discretionary income, then it might be a prudent financial move for you. The folks in the EU, you've got the VAT, other type of taxes, and it really, you have to think about that. You have to add that in. So for example, and I'll keep it simple:$78 per ounce here in Virginia, there was no tax.$78 per ounce in Germany, I know it'd be in grams, but$78 in Germany, throw on 20% VAT, toss another$15 or$18 on top of it, or what other taxes other countries have, it's now$92 for the sake of conversation. So now instead of$78 and it goes to$80 or$82, oh, I'm starting to make a profit. You're looking at the price of silver to increase well past 92, 95, 98. Now you're starting to see maybe a little profit. So you're so the price of silver in some of these countries is going to need to increase a lot more for you to cover all the additional costs that are associated with purchasing precious metals. Again, do your homework. It could be great, it could be something you want to look into, do your research, or it could be something where you're just like, that is not for me. And I get that 100%. A lot of people like to keep their money in the bank. It's insured by the federal government, at least here in the United States, and more power to you. But getting into precious metals, and it's silver, it's not gold. Trust me, do not have the money to purchase gold. It's something that I think might be beneficial to me. All right, folks, thank you so much for stopping by. I have more emails to get to. I promise I'm going to get an email episode in as quickly as I can. Don't forget the affiliate link for August and Farms. It'll be at the top of the show notes. Use that affiliate link. I get a commission from the sale podcast prep at checkout for an additional 10% off. Folks, thank you so much for stopping by. Again, I really do appreciate it. And as always, take care of one another. Be careful out there. Happy Valentine's Day. And until next time.

SPEAKER_00: 28:08

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