Intro – silver price 2025
The silver spot price chart for the last 12 months pretty much speaks for itself – significant gains as it started last year somewhere around AUD 45 and finished up north of AUD 120 !
Even more interesting is the fact that it took roughly 9 months to pass AUD 60 and only the latter 3 months to double up after that.
In other words, its value has been not only increasing, but also accelerating recently.
Those are historical facts, what’s driving it and whether or not it’s sustainable are not the subject of this post, which instead looks at the implications for Australian predecimal florins – my two cents’ worth…
Setting Values
When it comes down to it the vast majority of collectors basically understand that the selling price of a coin is largely determined by factors such as:
- condition
- demand/desirability
- availability
Thinking about Aussie florins, it’s not that the spot price of silver has no relevance at all – it’s definitely important, but really only for the lower grades.
Still, a worn out key date coin might be expected to fetch a premium on account of its scarcity…
And then, at which grade does the metal value become less of a consideration…?
It all depends on your point of view – for what it’s worth, I’m in the camp that thinks VG and F coins have benefited the most, and Unc coins the least, from the change in metal value.
This means that it looks like higher grades are better value these days…
Online Catalogues
You might reasonably expect catalogues and pricing guides, especially online ones, to provide a solution, but, frankly, they’re not much help at all.
This is because they’re never really updated often enough. In a lot of cases, estimates for low grade coins are only a fraction of melt value so they are literally months out and who knows what that means for high grade stuff ?
Recently and for some time past, the best indication they can give is an idea of relative value only.
Buying vs Selling
At the moment (Jan 2026), optimistic sellers would likely expect all prices, regardless of grade, to have trebled since that’s what the spot price has done, whilst, in turn, optimistic buyers would likely expect only the VG and lower grades to have increased and then no higher than the intrinsic precious metal value.
The potential for disagreement here is fairly clear… and perhaps that’s the main effect of the overall rise in bullion value, that there is currently:
- a wider difference in expectation than we have been used to
- a larger risk of missing out on possible profit or, indeed, being stuck with a loss (!)
In times like these, many will opt to wait and see what happens – let the invisible hand do what it does…
Going Forward
The good news is that opportunity definitely exists.
Realistic buyers and sellers will still be able to reach a price point where everyone is satisfied with the result, although it may well require more work than previously…research and information remain key.
Gresham’s Law, or some coin collector equivalent, is in operation with the consequence that people will hang on to what they regard as ‘good’ coins and let go of the ‘bad’ ones – yet since one person’s trash is another’s treasure, win/win outcomes have not gone away…
Happy Collecting!
Many thanks for reading!
If you liked the post, please consider following the blog in order to receive notifications of new posts by email.
ralw1723.com 
You must be logged in to post a comment.