[Revi]

Hard to tell what will happen. Silver is just one strategy to hold value. We'll see what happens. It works well in an inflationary environment. There are a lot of other useful things as well. I like old cast iron pans also. They are the new precious metal. If all else fails you can always fry up a squirrel in your cast iron frypan!

[AdamB]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')This article is reposted from Steve Rocco's website with the kind permission of the author. It illustrates a typical theme of the "Cassandra's Legacy" blog, the fact that all human enterprises are dynamic; they evolve, change, and adapt to the challenges generated by the environment. In particular, the mining industry follows a typical dynamic cycle of exploitation generated by the gradually declining profits that come from mining less and less concentrated ores. It is true for crude oil and it is true for gold as well. The latter is perhaps the mineral mined today at the lowest possible concentrations. For gold, concentration (or ore grade, if you prefer) is the crucial parameter that determines the cost of production. As a consequence, the gold mining industry is especially fragile and vulnerable to depletion coupled to market oscillation. The current situation is explained

[Revi]

It's crazy that silver hasn't gone up for years, while bitcoin is racing to the moon! We'll see what happens, but it seems like tangible assets are worth less and less while stocks and bitcoin go through the roof.

[Revi]

Silver is now around 16 and change! What is going on? Could it be that the appetite for crypto currencies has wiped out the market for physical silver?

[KaiserJeep]

Silver had a metals value as high as it had, because of it's use in currencies and in unexposed film stocks. Digital photography replaced film after silver coins were obsoleted.

Copper is eventually replacing silver as the #2 precious metal in a few decades. Unfortunately you'll then have to guard your residence from copper thieves who will rip wiring and plumbing out of your walls:

...which is happening already. In case you are wondering, copper presently has about $2.00 per troy ounce value, which is almost $30/lb. The pre-1982 US pennies are worth at least $0.23 because they are 95% copper, frequently more than that as collectable coins. (Modern pennies are a zinc alloy thinly electro-plated with copper.)

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'S')ilver had a metals value as high as it had, because of it's use in currencies and in unexposed film stocks. Digital photography replaced film after silver coins were obsoleted.

Copper is eventually replacing silver as the #2 precious metal in a few decades. Unfortunately you'll then have to guard your residence from copper thieves who will rip wiring and plumbing out of your walls:

...which is happening already. In case you are wondering, copper presently has about $2.00 per troy ounce value, which is almost $30/lb. The pre-1982 US pennies are worth at least $0.23 because they are 95% copper, frequently more than that as collectable coins. (Modern pennies are a zinc alloy thinly electro-plated with copper.)

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', ' ')
Copper is eventually replacing silver as the #2 precious metal in a few decades.

[KaiserJeep]

No, I didn't slip a decimal place. I Googled "price of copper troy ounce" since troy ounces are how gold and sliver are priced, and this was the top of the search response:

"Remember that the copper rounds are currently trading about $2-$4 per troy ounce. Copper prices however are quoted in pounds, not troy ounce. Since there are about 14.5 troy ounces per pound, the mints that produce these rounds are getting between $29 and $58 dollar per pound for their copper rounds."

...which does not seem related to copper scrap prices, but to .999 fine copper ingots. When you search ".999 fine copper per pound" the retail price is $18.50/lb for those:



This seems to correspond quite well with discrepancies between scrap gold ($450/oz) and .999 fine gold ($1278.63 as of 2PM Pacific time). For both metals, when minted as coins, there is a 50% premium over bulk ingot pricing, for .999 fine metal.

[vtsnowedin]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', 'N')o, I didn't slip a decimal place. I Googled "price of copper troy ounce" since troy ounces are how gold and sliver are priced, and this was the top of the search response:

"Remember that the copper rounds are currently trading about $2-$4 per troy ounce. Copper prices however are quoted in pounds, not troy ounce. Since there are about 14.5 troy ounces per pound, the mints that produce these rounds are getting between $29 and $58 dollar per pound for their copper rounds."

...which does not seem related to copper scrap prices, but to .999 fine copper ingots. When you search ".999 fine copper per pound" the retail price is $18.50/lb for those:



This seems to correspond quite well with discrepancies between scrap gold ($450/oz) and .999 fine gold ($1278.63 as of 2PM Pacific time). For both metals, when minted as coins, there is a 50% premium over bulk ingot pricing, for .999 fine metal.

[GHung]

Our local scrap buyer pays 50%-60% current spot price for scrap copper. Clean bare wire gets the higher price while used copper plumbing is lower. He wouldn't pay a penny more than 60% for KJ's copper ingots. Pawn and scrap gold/silver buyers wouldn't even bother.
I have some copper back plates in my shed from some old solar water heaters I tried to refurbish years ago; several hundred pounds worth a few hundred dollars. If copper goes up a few dollars a pound they may even be worth taking to my scrap dealer. Meanwhile, they remain in 'ship's stores' for my own use, good for electrical/battery terminals and backplanes for antennas; stuff like that.

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('KaiserJeep', '
')"Remember that the copper rounds are currently trading about $2-$4 per troy ounce. Copper prices however are quoted in pounds, not troy ounce. Since there are about 14.5 troy ounces per pound, the mints that produce these rounds are getting between $29 and $58 dollar per pound for their copper rounds."

...which does not seem related to copper scrap prices, but to .999 fine copper ingots. When you search ".999 fine copper per pound" the retail price is $18.50/lb for those:

[Revi]

I like to buy the following:
1) Pre 65 US silver coins. The older the better if I'm getting it at a fixed amount times face value. For example go for the walking liberties if you have the choice!

2) Cool old copper coins at low prices. I like any kind of coin that's from at least 200 years ago.

3) Foreign silver coins. They usually have no idea what they are worth, so I get them around the silver price.
I am "mildly numismatic". What I mean by that is that I like to get something at around the silver price, and then you can tack on extra value with the fact that it has numismatic value.

[Revi]

Sorry, Copper is priced in avoirdupois, which is 16 ounces per pound. Silver is priced in troy ounces, which are only 12 per pound. It can be confusing. I think copper is the best thing to collect, because it's as simple as keeping any pennies you happen to have that are pre-82. Get a piggybank, dump them in and you double your money!

[KaiserJeep]

Actually, troy ounces are 14.58333... per English pound. But when I Googled "Price of copper per troy ounce" I found an answer, and I did so to compare to gold and silver which are normally priced per troy ounce.

All this discussion is aside the point. Some people think that gold and silver will have intrinsic value as currency in a barter economy. I do not, like I said, gold has value as a metal, used for weights and bullets and jewelry. Since the free market acquisition cost for gold is very very high today compared to something such as lead or copper, it follows that gold is a very very bad place to park your money. Collecting gold was a very good idea when it was $35/ounce as it was for decades (Rooseveldt's 1934 Gold Reserve Act up until Nixon's 1971 currency devaluation). At $1200+ dollars per oz, it simply is unaffordable, considering that (I firmly believe) the only currency in use in a post-crash economy will be electronic online currency.

Feel free to disagree. After all, I was 20 years old when Nixon did his thing, I can remember (at least in theory, I never owned any) $35/oz gold and when all US banknotes were redeemable in silver (I never redeemed any either). I just think anybody paying North of $1000/oz stands to lose it all if gold is not part of an online exchange medium. Likely it never will be. It would be a tragedy to discover that your gold hoard could not be used to put food in your belly.

BTW, copper is rising in value because of scarcity. Some copper mine pits are 2 miles deep and yielding only marginal ore. Remember the Chilean copper miners trapped underground in 2010? Most of the copper used comes from recycling today, and copper prices will increase steadily. If the world economy were not going to crash, we could eventually use this price appreciation as a source of wealth, but it's gonna take decades.

Meanwhile, a curious change is happening in electronics. Quality heat sinks for cooling semiconductors were once largely cheap aluminum, not as good as copper, which in turn was not as good as silver in terms of heat conduction. But silver was so expensive that only NASA or the military used it, mostly in very high cost satellites. Now, with the return of all the silver formerly bound up in film emulsions, silver is relatively cheaper and heatsinks are appearing in silver again, displacing copper for high-cost applications.

I was using heatsinks with heat pipes in my own designs - copper or aluminum tubes with a partial vacuum and Freon refrigerant that transferred heat even better than silver, as long as you could chill the end with radiator fins low enough to condense the Freon again, which was then wicked up to the hot spot via a synthetic fiber wick. But silver would have some advantages, including operation in higher ambient temperatures than Freon-infused heat pipes.

[GHung]

"...silver is relatively cheaper and heatsinks are appearing in silver again, displacing copper for high-cost applications."

Pure silver thermal conductivity is only about 5% higher than pure copper. Considering costs, seems like a case of diminishing returns unless weight or space is an extreme factor.

[KaiserJeep]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GHung', '[')i]"...silver is relatively cheaper and heatsinks are appearing in silver again, displacing copper for high-cost applications."

Pure silver thermal conductivity is only about 5% higher than pure copper. Considering costs, seems like a case of diminishing returns unless weight or space is an extreme factor.

[theluckycountry]

Gold Remains Strong as Central Banks Sustain Upward Gold Buying Trend in 2024

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '
')“Gold continues to be one of the most important reserve assets globally, as evidenced by the significant purchases of gold by central banks in recent years."

– Hungarian central bank, September 2024

As we enter the final stretch of 2024 with the international gold price having made continual new highs during the last 8 months, it’s encouraging to see that central banks, on a collective basis, are still large net buyers of physical gold for their monetary gold reserves.

According to the World Gold Council’s just released Gold Demand Trend (GDT) report for the third quarter 2024, central banks (and other official sector institutions) added a net 694 tonnes of gold to their monetary gold reserves during the first 9 months of 2024.

Recalling that 2022 was a record year for central bank gold buying (with central banks net buying 1082 tonnes of gold), and 2023 was not far off that (with central banks net buying 1049 tonnes), then 2024 is set to be a respectable year also, independent of what buying might or might not occur in the fourth quarter of 2024, and shows that the investment rationale of central banks buying gold – store of value, safe haven, no counterparty risk, no sanctions risk, diversification benefits – are still intact.

First a few caveats about World Gold Council (WGC) central bank gold buying data – It comprises both reported gold buying by central banks (which the central banks report to the IMF’s International Financial Statistics database as well as publish on their own websites as international reserves data), but also comprises unreported gold buying by central banks (which the WGC makes an estimate of based on “market feedback" and which it describes as “confidential information regarding unrecorded sales and purchases."

This “unreported gold buying" component is also far bigger than the ‘reported’ component, with for example, the World Gold Council claiming that central bank and official sector institution gold demand was 507.4 tonnes in the first half of 2024, while only being able to explain 124 tonnes of this total as reported central bank gold buying over the same period. So that’s 383.4 tonnes of central bank gold buying ‘not reported’, but which the World Gold Council claims to know about.

We therefore have an absurdly unscientific situation where 75.5% of claimed central bank gold buying during H1 2024 is from unidentified central bank buyers, and only 24.4% is from central bank buyers who have publicly divulged their purchases. It is also the case that since the World Gold Council won’t reveal the information it claims to know about, then no one can scientifically verify its correctness, nor can anyone refute it...

This lack of transparency therefore makes it challenging for anyone outside of World Gold Council / Metals Focus to assess the veracity of their central bank gold demand claims, and the market is left to speculate on the identities of the unidentified buying entities. While the unidentified buyers probably include countries such as China, Saudi Arabia, and Russia, as well as various sovereign wealth funds (SWFs), it would be nice to have this in writing.

However, given that this is not possible, we can still look at the “reported buyers". And they are as follows:

On a year to date basis, Poland’s central bank is the largest reported gold buyer, buying 61.2 tonnes of gold so far in 2024, including in September. In second place is the central bank of Turkey, which in the first 8 months of 2024 up until August, added 51.5 tonnes of gold to its reserves. In third place is India’s central bank, which added 50 tonnes of gold to its reserves between January and September.

And in fourth place is the Chinese central bank, which even though it only officially added gold to its reserves between January and April 2024, still claims to have added 28.9 tonnes to its reserves over that time.



The article continues...

[careinke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'h')ttps://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/08/gold-ticks-lower-but-holds-near-key-2700-level.html

[theluckycountry]

Gold tracks inflation over the long term, or rather the deflation of the $US purchasing power. But on the short term it's very susceptible to the oil price, it trades similar to it.

Currently the WTI is $69, back in late October it was $76



And Gold over the past two months.



And Nov 2019





Obviously the charts aren't a perfect match but it's clear that when oil drops in price Gold knee jerks down as well. But have we had inflation in the past two years? You bet. And that explains Gold's steady rise while oil was floundering lower. Many other commodities no doubt follow this pattern and it might be due to mining costs rising? But it's inverse to the paper/Digital markets which love a lower oil price generally. Let's not forget the GFC with $147 a barrel oil and what that did to the paper markets globally.

The Gold price held up all through that though and only began falling in 2012



So why did Gold fall after that and then flatline for so many years when oil went up and down? Like I said, Gold tracks inflation predominantly, and after having risen all through the 2000's from a base of $250/Oz it settled back to $1000/Oz. It had covered the inflation of that decade, had overshot in fact then settled back, just like in the 1970's inflation. Gold can't be tricked, it knows what's happening to the value of paper money and it keeps pace with the devaluations, it always has.

Perhaps all the paper Gold out there trading back and forth generates these short term drops and hikes with oil, I have never looked too deeply into it because the physical metal sets the long term price and it's the physical metal I hold. Just like billions of Asian people, just like All Central Banks.

[theluckycountry]

China's "Secret" Gold Buying Confirmed



https://vblgoldfix.substack.com/p/china ... -confirmed

Just confirms what many have already known, that China is loading up on Gold in preparation for the $US collapse as the world reserve. Russia, one the leading Gold producers simply keeps it's own production to achieve the same ends. While people in the WEST load up on $US based paper/Digital assets, believing them to be the secret to future prosperity, the East/BRICS nations are preparing for what always happens, a switch to a Gold backed international monetary system.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n 2022-2023, the flow of Russian gold shifted to the East. Before the outbreak of full-scale war in Ukraine, it was exported mainly to the UK, but since 2022, the UAE, Hong Kong and Turkey have become the main recipients. However, as the data shows, these flows stopped in April 2023