Of silver, high demand and jammed phone lines

Silver is up 88 cents this morning as I write this. It is trading at $26.53. My usual morning ritual of checking the Kitco website shows that gold has bounced up a bit, too, to $1,354.30 a troy ounce.

But for this morning, it is all about silver rather than gold. With tomorrow being the big opening day of sales for the 2010 proof silver American Eagles, a firmer tone to the bullion market should help push up the level of interest in the coin.

Collectors are checking their bank balances, or credit card statements, to make sure that they have the means to acquire whatever number of coins they want.

The Mint says on its website that it expects an unusually high level of demand at the noon Eastern time commencement of its coin offering.

Perhaps the website will be slow for a time, or the telephone order line will be jammed for the first few hours. We’ll see.

But the 100-coin order limit will not change, so that means the Mint pretty much expects to be able to meet the demand from all comers.

If many collectors buy that quantity, they will soon become interested in selling the 99 coins that they don’t need.

If that happens, the adrenaline rush provided by jammed order lines and slow website response could be replaced by the anxiety of trying to figure out how to get a decent price on the secondary market.

Perhaps it might be better to wait a day and order in the peace and calm of the weekend – that is, of course, unless you a jammed phone line junkie.