So when I was browsing JM Bullion trying to round out my order for last week, I came across a round that gave me an idea for a way to pick what to stack. I found the 2oz Elemental Liberty Island High Relief Round:
Since my family and I had just been to New York and paid the Statue a visit, I though this round worked perfectly as a memento of that trip. And thus an idea was born.
My wife and I both travel for work a fair bit, occasionally those trips coincide with our son having time off from school, so we all go and whoever is doing business has to work while the other two go out and play. It is a cool way to get to see some places that we otherwise would never have the opportunity to visit, and the hotel room is paid for along with 1/3 of the travel expenses through our work.
One such trip was when my wife went to Portland a couple of years ago for a 3 week work conference. Of course, my son and I could not be gone from home that long, but we did go up and spend a long weekend there with her. Her boss gave her a day off while we were there, and we decided to make a quick road trip up to Mount Saint Helens. Unfortunately, when we got to the observatory, this was the view:
So it was a bit anti-climactic, but still a very interesting visit to the observatory station and some cool videos and educational session with one of the park rangers. We would have loved to have had a view of the volcano, but we still felt it was a worthwhile experience.
And by we, I mean I, and that's because I was 6 when the volcano erupted in 1980 and I remember the news story pretty vividly, so it was a meaningful visit for me.
So back to silver...
I was browsing around ebay the other day when I came across a listing for some Mt St Helen's Silver: Mt St Helens Round.
I was told to take everything on ebay with a skeptical view, so I tried to look up this round and couldn't really find any other information on it. There are a couple of other people selling the same round on ebay, but I couldn't fin anything pertinent to the mint or validity of this piece.
The guy runs this Buy It Now auction alongside an active bid auction that he starts at $14 and runs for 7 days. I had been keeping an eye on the live auction, and it ended yesterday with a final price of right around $25 with shipping. Not terrible.
So I made an offer to buy two pieces from him through the "Make An Offer" option. A little back and forth and we settled on a price, and I have two of these rounds on the way. Per the description on the back, only 5000 of them were minted, so they should theoretically have a good premium to them, but I bought more for the keepsake nature of the coin.
I will stick one on my stack, and give the other to my son as a remembrance of his time at the Volcano. Even if it is not a legit silver coin he will love it. So I have that going for me.
I've got a new mission in my stacking collection. Like I said above, we've been a lot of places. So I have a lot of mementos to find! hahaha
Fun times it will be searching for good silver remembering random places!