Y'all, custodian fees for Silver IRAs are highway robbery sometimes

• •Okay, I've been doing some serious digging into these custodian fees for my Silver IRA, and man, some of these companies are just wildin' out.
• •I’ve got about $180k in physical silver right now, mostly Eagles and Maples I picked up over the last three years.
• •Started small, built it up.

Okay, I've been doing some serious digging into these custodian fees for my Silver IRA, and man, some of these companies are just wildin' out. I’ve got about $180k in physical silver right now, mostly Eagles and Maples I picked up over the last three years. Started small, built it up. Planning on adding another $25k chunk once my latest shipment of goods clears customs next month. My current custodian, they've been okay, but the annual storage and admin fees are starting to feel a bit steep, especially with the silver price doing its dance lately.

I know storage isn't free, especially for segregated accounts (which I insist on, no commingled for me, ever). But I'm seeing quoted fees ranging from $150 to $300 flat per year on the admin side, plus typically 0.10% to 0.25% of the total asset value for storage. For my stack, that 0.25% alone is almost $450 a year. Add that to the admin fee, and we're talking close to $700 annually just to hold my metal. That’s bananas. I'm based here in El Paso, so secure, insured vaults are always on my mind – not just the cost, but the peace of mind. And yeah, I often think about the dual-currency aspect living on the border, but for my retirement silver, it's gotta be USD-denominated through a US-based custodian.

I feel like some companies try to hide those storage fees in opaque terms, or they bundle them and you don't even realize how much you're truly paying until you read the fine print. Are there any custodians out there that offer a truly competitive fee structure without skimping on security or customer service? I've heard some people talk about scaled fees, where it gets cheaper as your holdings grow, but I haven't found many that are transparent about that threshold.

Anyone here with a similar portfolio size for their Silver IRA able to share who they use and what their all-in annual fees look like? I'm trying to figure out if my current fees are par for the course or if I need to seriously consider a transfer. A few hundred bucks saved annually can buy a good amount of extra lunch for my crew, you know?