Kim, thanks for the great article. I must admit I invest in many of these but did sell PSLV when it hit over a 20% premium....I just thought it might not be sustainable.

The reason I invest in these vehicles in an IRA is because I believe they hold the actual physical whereas the SLVs and GLDs do not hold all the physical. That said they are good barometers for the underlying buillon prices so I do hold them periodically but never believe that I am doing so for the physical.

As to premiums, they are starting to move up now to buy coins with silver in many places well over $2.49 an ounce just to buy it. (Tulving the cheapest by far is $2.49 premium per coin but requires big buys.) Then you add on shipping and insurance and the cost over spot gets closer to what these closed end funds are charging. The Sprott Silver concerned me with the high premium but am wondering at some point if silver really gets hard to find like many pundits are saying, why wouldn't someone with biggo bucks just go in and buy the fund and then have all the silver holdings.

One other point....traditionally when premiums got high like 8 - 10% in CEF, there would be another equity offering by the fund that would then drive the premium down sometimes to as low as 4% where I would be a buyer. It would then shortly go up. But this time there is no equity offerings forthcoming either in CEF or PSLV which makes me wonder whether there is a concern they could even find enough silver to buy at decent prices.