Silver Price Madness

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How many of you are following the ups and downs of the silver price on the world markets over the past few weeks? Not many, I'm sure, and perhaps that pretty much reflects the indifference of the mainstream media to this subject and consequent lack of coverage, and even the suspicion amongst silver fans that certain powerful interests (most notably JP Morgan Bank) have persistently suppressed the price over the years. The price recently hit an all time high of more than $80 before being forced back down to around $72 in a matter of hours, something that has happened before in spectacular fashion, notably in 1980 and 2011.







There's been a huge amount of YouTube videos on this recently, featuring extraordinary characters like Lynette Zang and Peter Schiff. These people have a point of view well worth listening to, even if you are fundamentally opposed to it (though most of humanity is probably just fundamentally indifferent to it).

I am glad I am a silver stacker.

I somehow had a feeling that you might be a stacker!

Lol You were right. I started buying silver when it was in the 20's and 30's. I dont view it as an investment...I just view it as insurance and a hedge against the dollar and a store of value.

So now what? if silver gets too high rumours of Citizens owning it , becomes illegal , And it becomes like gold .
Did when we went off the gold standard , And somebody decides ,it is a stategic reserve? Welcome to how the USA gets to do business . Just Sayin..? What If ?

^ Not absolutely sure that I follow your gold reference, Jakki. If you meant Roosevelt's confiscation of privately owned gold in 1933, the USA didn't go off the gold standard then - it's just that Roosevelt revalued the metal upwards by more than 60% after the confiscation, thus swindling the previous owners (though perfectly legally).

The USA remained on a modified version of the gold standard until 1971, when Nixon cancelled the dollar's convertibility into gold: this was supposedly a 'temporary' measure, but is still in force to this day!

How widely owned is silver in the USA? Probably quite extensively, and I'd have thought it would be an administrative and practical nightmare for any administration that tried to confiscate it. More likely, I'd have thought, would be the introduction of taxes on the purchase or sale of the metal - we already have this to a large extent in the UK, with 20% VAT (a purchase tax) at the front end and Capital Gains Tax (18%-40%)on disposal, though there are some concessions in terms of the latter (eg no CGT on silver Britannia coins).

The Feds could take the silver like FDR did with gold did in the 30's. Nixon took us off of the gold standard in 1971. The dollar has been fiat currency ever since.

Update: Silver reached a record high of $102 today. Three months ago the previous record was $50 in 1980.

the 50 dollars in 1980 is nominal not real....in real dollars that 50 would be close to 200 dollars per ounce.

It was real at the time! Paradoxically, it was also highly artificial, with the price pushed to that level by speculative activity.

Ya i was referring to real dollars adjusted to today's dollars. Ya the Hunt brothers tried to corner the silver market and went broke.

I have been actively watching silver prices since the early 1980s. Back then, you could pick up ounces of silver in the $4-5 range and "junk" 90% silver coins could be bought at 4-5 times face value for nearly a decade. As I grew up, my coin dealer mentor trained me on how to find "cheap" silver (and gold) on the market. He "lost" big on the silver crash caused by the Hunt brothers. Seems he bought a 1000-ounce silver bar when the price hit $50/oz. Well, it soon fell down, down, down. He decided to use it as a door holder for his walk in safe at his coin store. It was only sold when he had to sell the store many years later due to his health (Parkinson's and dementia eventually got him). His family got $14,000 out of it when it did sell.

Coin shows were a favorite event for me, as I could still find early date coins in the junk piles back then. I actively searched these piles and put together a full set of Mercury dimes (including the 1916-D, 1921-P and the 1921-D) for under a dollar apiece. (I actually have another four sets missing the 1916-D keys that I was going to finish one day.) Dealers back then simply did not always take the time to look at large silver coin lots that they bought and would allow kids to pick through the "junk" silver before they sent it to the smelter. The same is possibly happening now as people are rushing off to dump their coins for fast cash.

I also collected antique sterling silver and gold items when I could. Garage sales are a gold mine if someone does not know what they have. I cannot tell you how many times someone "dumped" their tarnished silver on me, thinking that I was just a dumb guy. Little did they know that I know how to read the hallmarks on the back of the blackened pieces. Georg Jenson and Tiffany & Co. are some of my favorite finds. Early wrist and pocket watches are a specialty of mine. I have some that are made of platinum and have intact radium dials. I will stop now as I know that I am going on too long on this subject...



My copper two-cent piece (advice) on silver market is as follows:

Having the silver (and other precious metals) rise so fast is not a good indicator of the real economy. The stock market prices are artificially high at the moment and are poised for a major correction. While silver is rising in price, I am not selling any of mine as it may be needed later on to survive if the US dollar becomes essentially worthless. I learned to be a bit of a planner by my grandparents who survived the Great Depression. They told me to always set aside something for a rainy day. What we might face soon is more like a major flood.

I could see a possibility where both gold and silver get confiscated from the lower public classes (and paid back in digital currencies, which can be controlled by those in power). The upper classes will have protections from that act, as they can move their assets around much easier. If that happens, it will lead to a future brutal class war, mark my words.

I thought I might share where I get my silver market information. I use kitco.com and apmex.com for spot prices on metals. The apmex site has a silver melt value for junk coins if you are interested in that information.

Now, because of the high movement in the silver market, silver dealers are not paying full price for stuff lower than .999 fine. Smelting facilities do not have the capacity to process so much silver being passed to them, so it will take time to get that done. Until the refineries can get that done, silver buyers do not want to pay full price just in case the market goes down on them.

uncle Sam would not have to confiscate silver, they could just make it very expensive and non-productive to own via concatenated taxation.

True, they could do that also. It is best to plan against that situation if you can.

I feel that the silver on the market right now is being stockpiled by the wealthy as a hedge against a weaker dollar. They do not want to watch their buying power erode over time.