Those are $64,000 questions my friend. The premiums on silver have basically never been higher (they were a bit higher in March/April/May this year). You can almost never buy precious metals at spot (ask) price. Almost never. That being said, the bigger the purchase, the lower the premium.

Premiums low to high (right now): 1000oz bar -> 100oz bar -> Kilo bar -> 10oz bar -> 5 oz bar -> 1 oz rounds -> Constitutional silver -> Sovereign 1oz coins.

The premium depends on supply, demand and availability. I haven't looked at prices in a few weeks, but suffice it to say, $3-$5 over spot (per ounce) is probably the norm, where 100oz bars are $3/over and sovereign coins are closer to $5/over. The 1000oz bars may be under $1/over spot, but those are hard to deal with. You have to pay shipping on those bad boys too. Not many people buy those. I'd personally rather have ten 100oz bars.

Where's price going? Eventually? Probably $2500 - $5000 ounce in the not-too-distant future (2-5 years). Tomorrow, next week, week after that? It's anybody's guess. If you haven't joined WSS on Reddit yet, you should. All your questions will be answered. The cabal is running MASSIVE volumes of shorts on silver right now - like 1.5 million contracts a month (a contract is 5000 ounces) since March of this year. Prior to that they were able to manipulated the market with 10K-50K monthly contracts.

As you can see, there's apparently no limits to their fake paper silver contracts. Can they trade 10 million a month? 100 million a month? 1 billion a month? Unfortunately, I don't see why they can't do this. They're the deceivers, cheaters, manipulators, and the one's who make up all the rules. They're already trading 1000x contracts then they were only a year ago. Such is the situation we're currently in.

The only way to beat them is likely for we-the-people to dry up the physical market, which is what the WSS boards are all about. Once nobody can find any physical for sale, their fake paper markets will be totally exposed as the fraud that it is and always has been.

Personally, I think the game is over by next April. But that's just a date-phagging hunch. I don't know anymore than the next guy.

Historically, including March 2020 (when the scamdemic started) when the stock market tanked, the "PAPER" spot price of silver dropped to like $10-$11/ounce for 2-3 days. That was down from around $17-$18/ounce just before. Seems like waiting for the stock market tanking is the way to play it, right? There was only one teensy-tiny problem. Nobody, and I do mean NOBODY was selling anything for nearly a week until the prices stabilized. And this type of thing has happened in 2011, 2008 and in earlier years. And worse yet, once the prices stabilized, there were so many people freaked out that all the bullion dealer's inventory dried up within 24 hours. Bottom line, when the panic starts, silver becomes "unobtainium" and gold becomes "unaffordium". Bullion dealers will sell some scraps at ridiculous premiums when they smell blood in the water.

Net-Net - When the price drops due to stock tanking margin calls, you'll almost certainly have a hard time being able to find anybody willing to sell. The online bullion dealers are likely averaged in on their investments in the $20-$22 range overall. They simply won't sell if price slips below those levels for a few days/weeks.

My advice is to, at a minimum, take at least 50% of what you want to invest at this moment, and buy now. You can then dollar cost average in with spending 10% each week or two going forward.

You're not going to care whether you paid $25-$30/ounce today, when it's worth $50-$100/ounce in the coming months, no less $250-$750/ounce which is very realistic at this time next year.

I recommend a good blend of sovereign coins (not American Eagles at this time due to their absurd premiums) and Constitutional silver if you can get your hands on it. Roosevelt and Mercury dimes are the best - followed by quarters and Kennedy/Franklin half dollars. If you're spending big bucks, mix in some 100oz bars - for every 100oz bar (say they're $2700 right now), get yourself $2700 worth of 1oz sovereigns and Constitutional silver. Keep it balanced. Those dimes might be your "grocery money" some day if SHTF. They're 1/14th of an ounce of silver and a lot easier to part with than a full 1oz coin, let alone a 100oz bar when the grocer can't make change. Hopefully you catch my drift. 100oz bars for wealth preservation, Constitutional dimes for fast and easy trade/barter/grocery/gas requirements.

Right this minute, a pre-64 Constitutional Roosevelt dime is worth $1.79, with silver spot at $24.68. Thus, with silver at $250/oz, that dime is suddenly a $20 bill. Outside of 1942-1945 War nickels, you can't buy silver in any smaller fractions either, other than some rare 1/20th oz coins, like Libertads, which carry a ludicrous premium.

Net-Net - In a crunch (in the USA), everybody and their mother will want those dimes as everybody recognizes them as being real and safe.

Obviously there's no reason to go all doom and gloom on this, but it's smart to play all the angles. Big bars for wealth preservation, sovereign coins for trustworthiness and collectibility, Constitutional for fast transactions and SHTF scenarios.

Good luck!