silversky

Such a shame that I lost most of my metals in a boating accident. Still, they can have my stack of copper 1's and 2's. I've been waiting for them to fall off from being legal tender so I can scrap them...

How can it be completed if some remains? I got the feeling that the deal was about appeasing the USA by not demanding all of it. When you have to strike a deal that doesn't include full payment of debts, it's some sort of write down. Maybe in the future they'll get the rest, or at least be able to use it as leverage in another deal, but I doubt it. When clawing back debt from a bad debtor, one has to be careful not to scare the horses.

I saw on RT that apparently some of Russia's gold reserves have been frozen. No idea how much if indeed that's true. One has to wonder how much they were foolish enough to hold in someone else's bank vault? I recall the Germans found that repatriating their gold from the USA was near impossible. Not sure if they ever got it all back? I seem to remember some multi year deal being struck to get it. Clearly something was up with that and if a country can't manage to get their gold back, what chance would smaller investors have? Edit: There's a lesson somewhere here... Something like Hold it Own it!

Yeah they're very nice. I've got the three Santa Maria coins from that series.

Yeah I've got a couple of the Proof version as well. Really nice coin. The Kraken one from 2016 is great as well. My lad's always excited to see "silverbug island" when I dig out the treasure as a treat. It puts a grin on the face.

My favourite silver round has that written on the treasure chest! Welcome to silverbug island. Complete with an "X marks the spot" and a boating accident as well

It's actually often the other way round. The silver is a bonus from mining the base metals. When base metal mining becomes too expensive due to energy costs, the silver supply is affected as well. Currently scrap cars are over £400 for the crusher. This indicates that iron supply is under pressure.

How much nickel is in that steel coinage we've got these days? Wondering if that'll go the way of the old 1's and 2's that were ¬90% copper (worth more than the face value on the coin)

Anyone think it will exceed last years supply shortage panic by the end of the month? I honestly cant imagine that the supply issues are any better than back in Jan 2021. If we think back to the weekend of the spike high, dealers stopped selling over that weekend because of fears of supply shortage. I'm not sure, but the pressure now seems far more likely to cause supply shortage and it's two pronged this time. Geographical supply due to politics, as well as energy price squeezes on mining output. Curious to know where and when people think this move is going to top out?

So is nickel currently suspended? Looks like they're trying to work out which shorts to burn before setting the market live again.

Putin just abolished VAT on physical gold in Russia. News is slowly creeping out into the English speaking media on this subject. My understanding is that up until yesterday, gold was VAT free only as a paper investment, but for physical gold, individuals had to pay VAT. Not sure if that was a margin scheme system or if it was on the whole value of the bullion, but it has apparently now been abolished on precious metals. Not quite sure where silver sits in that. I assume that more details will come out on kitco and zerohedge in the coming days. https://www.txtreport.com/news/2022-03-04-vat-on-the-purchase-of-bullion-of-precious-metals-in-russia.S1Nx3dJbc.html

Anyone have any links to people chatting about the physical market? Curious to know whether it's just paper shorts being closed, or whether there's a demand on delivery.

One has to wonder how bad the next set of inflation numbers are going to be? Oil at $120 a barrel can't be good... There's a bit of desperation starting to creep into the controlled media narrative. We've even got news anchors suggesting that buying Iranian oil might now be an option. You couldn't make it up.

I still think my call that it will exceed last years high by the end of this quarter is possible. Think it was just shy of £21 the Jan high. Not far to go now.

So, Brent seems to have fallen off the radar a bit with all of the other chaos going on. But it's put on 20% in the last 4 days. This is on top of the 25% it put on since the beginning of the year... By the looks of things, there's no sign that this economic war will end soon. If anything it's getting bigger. Months, if not years is the outlook. In a high energy price world, base metals become less economic to extract. And much of Silver production is a by product of base metal extraction. One really has to wonder just how much the cost of producing Silver has risen in the last two months, and whether less of it is actually being extracted? Certainly the cost must have risen dramatically, and just thinking out loud, I imagine that there must be a supply shortage in the pipeline now. Whether there's a demand shortage as well is yet to be seen, but I doubt it.

I just had a look back at palladium's rise over the last 5 years. Makes silver look very unloved.

Are we at £50 yet?

I refer you back to my post about wee Gogs and his claim to have cured boom and bust. That was a case of extreme hubris. He most certainly was in the "it's different this time" camp. ie. the "it can't happen because we've fixed it" brigade. Of course it's different in terms of force and magnitude. But that wasn't the point. The point was that one will definitely come no matter what they try to do and that they come cyclically. I believe it will come around the middle of this decade but I'm open to hear reasons why I might be wrong on the timing.

It's running out of room in the big triangle to decide which way it's going to break. While interest rates are still so low, and inflation is clearly so high, I just can't see it breaking down. I thought there might be a spike down briefly a few weeks ago, but it never materialised. Maybe it won't!

I see that Gold is trying hard in USD to break above that psychological 1900 level. Could be another bounce back down on the cards but who knows. If it pops then silver really should start to pick up a bit more interest. On the Silver GDP chart, this rise looks rather corrective. But if gold leads the way through 1900, then that could all change. It's certainly approaching the end of this long triangle.

Exactly. Once you realise that CO2 is not the cause of any variability in the planet's temperature (lots of physics Nobel laureates discuss and prove this in lectures but no one pays them the slightest bit of attention), a whole new understanding of why the madness is taking place is possible. It was always about tax and about creating a new and expensive industry. It's easy to get people to pay more if they think they're saving the world. In reality though, they're just being milked.

The "different this time" is a reference to those who say they've cured it altogether. The Gordon Browns of this world, who proclaim that they've cured boom and bust. That the end of history is here! etc etc. The Hubris of that monkey is off the scale. But the magnitude of a decline is a whole different variable and one which is most certainly different each outing. Harmonics echo back through ten generations in a civilisation, with many similar patterns and mindsets being repeated across the growth and collapse phases of different ancient civilisations. We manage today to rhyme with many of those same mindsets and I recommend a short book called "The fate of Empires" by Sir John Glubb which was written in the 70's. It's a treatise on how an empire (or civilisation) grows and collapses, and it's an exploration as to whether it's possible to avoid the collapse at the end. He compares a number of different empires and explores their common features and durations. He was exploring the option of whether the EU might kick off a new civilisation in the west which would hold things together for a reboot. A bit like the second Roman Empire did. Obviously that's not panning out but pretty much the rest of the predictions are coming true. Given the order of magnitude of the multiple problems stacking up just now, it does seem reasonable to expect something a bit more severe is brewing. I fear that the globalist cabal will try to start a war this time to cover up their tracks. But who knows.

Money is coming from the arrival of foreign cash that's helping to boost prices. Lot's of money coming from Hong Kong (a lot more to come), and things will continue like this until immigration either dries up, or capsizes the boat. There is absolutely zero chance of a proper government, or of an opposition, who will finally put a stop to this enormous disaster. Zero chance. So plan accordingly. They are suppressing a fire by hosing fuel on. It actually works for a while and they'll try hard (against the will of the British people) to increase immigration to keep that dependent flow of foreign cash coming, but in the end it won't be enough, and suddenly the flames will take hold. I keep saying it, but 2024/25 is my timeframe to see property tank based on the cyclical price of land and new large folly properties due to complete. Add two years of pain before a rough bottom can safely be bought, and you're looking at 2026/7 to take on a property debt. Just my opinion of course and not advice. In the meantime it's best sticking with stacking, and chilling for the day when those with some "real money" savings, can go out and pick up a nice place on the cheap. It will come. It always does. And it's NEVER "different this time".

Viz used to call the Euro, "Bumwad from the bank of toyland". That always made me chuckle, but it can be applied to pretty much all fiat these days.

There is a giant end of cycle top heavy age distribution in the UK. Simply vast amounts of property will likely come onto the market over the next few years. It may not seem like it now, but I believe that property will tank as the number of gen x'rs selling their parent's houses picks up. This is secretly why the government is so desperate to encourage and allow as much legal and illegal immigration into the country. They think (wrongly) that they can avert a crisis in the pozi scheme, by bringing in more patsies to fill out the bottom of the pyramid. This is precisely why Hong Kongers were given preferential treatment. They have money. I now have a couple of neighbours who are new arrivals from Hong Kong. Nothing in the controlled media about this of course. It will certainly be contributing to the housing market for now, but when the new imports run out, and the boomers start dying in large numbers, there's only one way the housing market can go. Five years from now I think there will be plenty of cheap houses for younger people to buy. The only problem will be that borrowing will be much harder.