# News in the silver market



## BillS (May 30, 2011)

A month ago people started buying physical silver like it was toilet paper at Costco a year ago. Coin dealers stopped selling because either they sold out of inventory or were afraid silver would cost $5 more when the market opened that Sunday night. What's amazing even today is how few kinds of silver are available. It used to be that they always had the overpriced proof coins but they don't anymore. It's harder to find monster boxes of silver. Delivery times are a month away. Minimum orders are higher. Coin dealers say that everyone is buying and no one is selling.

It appeared to start after the Game Stop short squeeze where investors bought up Game Stop stock after hedge funds shorted it to push the price down. Typically short selling creates panic selling by regular investors. That time it didn't work. Hedge funds lost billions. The people who caused that publicly turned their attention to the silver market and the fact that SLV and the COMEX suppress the price of silver illegally. 

There's a good chance that big industrial users of silver like Apple have been buying up 1000 ounce bars of silver for industrial use. It used to be that coins were always plentiful and so were the big bars. Now coins are harder to find and the big bars are too. The US mint will be closing down for two months starting in April. Supposedly to retool for the new American Eagle coins but more likely because they can't get silver.

The exchange traded fund SLV changed their prospectus in the middle of the night recently and admitted that silver might not always be available for delivery. Which is amazing because they were always supposed to have the silver before they issued shares.

I think we're going to see the COMEX either fail to deliver silver or it will become recognized as being irrelevant to the market. There are 8 markets that are controlled by paper trading. Oil, gold, silver, copper are among them. Rhodium is not. Rhodium was about $17,000 on January 1st. It was about $29,000 on Friday. It's up 70% in two months. I think we're going to see gold and silver move up like that eventually. Possibly very soon. As always, the time to buy precious metals is when you have the money. It's safer than trying to buy the dips.


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## FrankW (Mar 10, 2012)

Silver actually dropped a bit in last couple weeks.

If spot gets close to 30 again I may sell some.


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## BillS (May 30, 2011)

BlueZ said:


> Silver actually dropped a bit in last couple weeks.
> 
> If spot gets close to 30 again I may sell some.


Here's where it gets interesting. Last week I noticed that silver American Eagles were selling on eBay for $40 despite the fact that bullion dealers had them for $34. The difference is that shipping from bullion dealers could be a month away but eBay shipping is much faster. I've wondered if people were worried about getting their coins from the bullion dealers if the price went way up.

I think we're going to see high inflation this year. I wouldn't sell silver now unless you need the money.


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