I noticed that too for months actually. Delivery is now 3-8 weeks out with limited amounts of coins. The Libertad is available with a price of 35€, or the Australian Emou for 34€. It seems that the retail is being starved for silver.

And what I find most amazing, traders are not very responsive in their proposition to buy silver at all (not that I am planning on selling). They adhere to the meager 7% above spot. In a market where retail is starved, one would think that the market forces have a bigger say in how to acquire some silver to satisfy your customer demand .... but no.

That leaves quite a interesting proposition to use silver coins for commercial transactions between people cutting out the idiots who want to force a 100€ threshold on monitoring bank transactions, citing money laundering, as if criminals want to pay 6€ per 100€ transaction to evade scrutiny after a deal of 100.000. So, it is not about that at all, but total integration of all services in a control system.

do they charge you sales tax when you buy physical silver or gold?

Just checked. The closest is a silver bar at 26 and change.

Yes. The price of physical gold is suppressed by the selling of vast amounts of "paper gold", see https://greatawakening.win/p/15K6qL54bB/rigged--rob-moodys--financial-pr/

Given that, the price of physical metal is still closer to the posted "official price" than you'd expect -- meaning the public doesn't understand or appreciate the difference. Yet. Someday soon, they will . . .