COIN REVEAL: A Journey Down Memory Lane.

Today's coin reveal post is bit of a journey down memory lane for me. I started stacking gold and silver in 2013, I remember the year clearly as the Perth Mint Lunar Series II design for that year was the Snake design.

I remember buying my first roll of 20 x 1oz Snake coins from Ainslie Bullion, who are a well known bullion dealer in Brisbane, QLD. I they have even expanded and now have an office in Melbourne, VIC as well.

A good friend and I both started buying gold and silver at the same time. I think we were expecting a stock market correction after the post-GFC market boom, so as an investment for safety we turned our focus to silver and gold.

It did not take long before we got to know the team at Ainslie Bullion very well. Soon they were contacting us about trade-ins that they had received and if we were interested in them. That is when we picked up our first Perth Mint Lunar Series II Dragon coins. Such beautiful coins and so popular, it was at this point that we began to learn about coin design premiums.

When we were first offered the dragon coins, we were a bit taken back by the fact that they were so much more than the snake coins we had just bought. We were coming into this new world with an investor mindset and in our minds, silver was silver. Oh did we have a lot to learn. At that time we decided to only buy a couple single 1oz dragon coins each. If I knew then what I know now, I think I would have bought all the boxes of dragons that they had.

The next coin designs we were introduced to were the Australian Kookaburra series. Ainslie always seemed to have various years of the kookaburras available. So when we placed our regular Ainslie order, we asked them if they could included earlier year designs.

At that time they tended to have designs from 2009 up until the current year which was 2013. For all those kookaburra coin fans out there, unfortunately I never got lucky enough to get offered any 2008 design kookaburra coins.

We did get 2008 lucky one time though with the Lunar Series II Mouse coin. When we got the email saying that a box of 2008 Lunar Mouse coins had just come in, we jumped on it. We had learned our lesson with the dragon coins and we were a bit more knowledgeable and wiser by this stage.

Ainslie had priced them very reasonably too, so we were over the moon with that purchase.

Then came the various coin sizes. This threw a massive spanner in the works. I think by this stage we had caught the gold and silver bug so badly that we were no longer just investors, we were fast becoming collectors.

Not only were there 1oz coins, but you could get the same coin design in 2oz, 5oz, 10oz, 1kg and 1/2oz. My friend bought into this a bit more than I did. He was determined to collect each coin size, for each coin design for the Perth Mint Lunar II series. Those who have tried this or achieved this, you soon run into trouble, as certain sizes and years are extremely rare and attract very hefty premiums.

I was able to have a bit more constraint and my strategy was still more about accumulating ounces at reasonable prices, with the bonus of popular coin designs if I came across them.

My strategy today is much the same as it was then, but my buying threshold has gone up a bit further. My tolerance for premiums has gotten lower and my patience to wait to buy the dips has got greater.

I love looking back on those earlier years when it all got started. We were so green and so excited about this new world. I may not be as green as I was then, but silver and gold still excites me as much now as it did then. I think the future looks very promising for silver and gold, so just keep stacking.

Post authored by @strenue