Mom invested in silver - concerned about a few things

I'm helping my mom with her investments, and I'm a bit concerned about a couple of things from this chap she has purchased from (we'll call him K.E.) who pushes the silver (seemingly on religious / conservative women over the age of 70). I don't disagree with her that precious metals makes for a nice hedge (especially with some of the warning signs that we've been seeing), but as I was reviewing these purchases, it seems that K.E. is charging somewhere between a 12% and 17% premium on each silver transaction (depending on whether he pays the spot silver rate or a wholesale silver rate).

Here are a couple of screenshots of the math I did. K.E. made over $8K on $55K worth of transactions and my mom is only up $2.5K right now (this is physical silver that she stores in a safe deposit box) assuming she could re-sell at this current spot silver price of $29.50 or whatever.



Further, she rolled another $90K+ into an IRA from this same chap and on paper it was a good investment. She bought last year when the spot silver price was only $18.75 and today it's $29.50 or thereabouts. On paper her portfolio should be worth $130K+, but when I logged into her account it's only worth $90K and the advisor we spoke with on the phone said that the actual value would have to be determined by a silver broker / melter (of which this same K.E. is their recommended source).

I'm very new to this world, but thought I'd run this by you lads to see what we should do and if these high commissions are as egregious as they seem to me? Assuming we wanted to exit and invest in precious metals through a more legitimate source, I know there are resources on this board that I could explore as well.

Thanks in advance, you lads are quite a vaulable resource and I appreciate you all so very much