Has the secondary silver market hit the market saturation point.

[Fenlander1]

Due to a member not being able sell a monster box for a normal market reasonable price my question is.

Has questionably cheap silver finally caused the small silver market to hit critical saturation point where silver bought through authorised dealers as an investment is no longer a viable option. 

There will always be a race to beat the price of a fellow dealer but is the current situation made worse by an influx of silver of a questionable origin.

[Shinus73]

Questionable origin? A bit cryptic…

it’s always been difficult to sell a monster box and it’s currently quite difficult to sell any larger volume, as money is tight.

That’s it really.

[Fenlander1]

The monster box has brought it to light for me personally as is an example  it is getting harder to sell Singles at anywhere near there true inflation value. 

Questionable origin isn't meant to be cryptic but when new silver can be sold at less than spot plus 20% it is of a questionable origin to me personally.

[Shinus73]

37 minutes ago, Fenlander1 said:

The monster box has brought it to light for me personally as is an example  it is getting harder to sell Singles at anywhere near there true inflation value. 

Questionable origin isn't meant to be cryptic but when new silver can be sold at less than spot plus 20% it is of a questionable origin to me personally.

Pre-Brexit it was fairly common for silver to be available slightly below spot +20%, reflecting the lower VAT rates in the EU. I guess people have found new ways of sourcing silver from outside of the UK.

[Fenlander1]

That's sort of my point really has the silver sourced elsewhere falsely deflated the UK secondary market making silver an unattractive investment.

Edited March 18 by Fenlander1

[treetop1280]

2 hours ago, Fenlander1 said:

Due to a member not being able sell a monster box for a normal market reasonable price my question is.

Has questionably cheap silver finally caused the small silver market to hit critical saturation point where silver bought through authorised dealers as an investment is no longer a viable option. 

There will always be a race to beat the price of a fellow dealer but is the current situation made worse by an influx of silver of a questionable origin.

As per usual @Fenlander1 , you are taking out of your arse ( I’m the metals except on the form) nobody cares about belgian libartards, or Canadian Noah’s ark, or Mexican maples,or Chinese kangaroos, all boring and wxxxk, 👎, Daffy Duck, Star Wars , alladin, spider man coins sell for more profit , so that is the answer to your stupid question , now get a grip of your coin sales , or I’ll get a grip of you????

[Spyder]

It the same old thing that you see all the time. Members starting out, buy the cheapest which is silver, then after while decide that gold is where you make your money, so they end up selling for gold. Too many sellers forcing down the price.  The £25oz Britannia will be gone for a while and if £ ever strengthen against the $ to the normal rate of £1/$1.50 guess what the selling price in £ will be, yes even lower than it is today. 

[cjbcomm]

Certainly seems to be lots of Brit bullion for sale at the moment.

People looking for value will buy gold rather than a pile of silver bullion as gold is available close to spot whereas the silver premium kills it.

With the economy being c**p and people without so much disposable income then value comes first I guess

[bluemoon]

I may be misunderstanding the point, but if sellers have found a way around the VAT then TSF's ecosystem won't change the market economy.

You can actually get around 20% VAT from the big bullion dealers too, if buying pre-owned coins under their special VAT scheme. So it's not new.

Edited March 18 by bluemoon

[Pete]

Silver is a commodity and priced like any other commodity, including coffee and orange juice, according to global demand.
Like the UK CO2 emissions effect on the planet, we stackers will not influence the price of silver even if a monster box is up for sale.
Only the big boys exchanging paper contracts in the thousands of tonnes make a difference on bullion spot prices.
Currently silver is taking a back seat.
What is interesting though were the American "experts" ( hah hah ... ), a few years ago, with their daily metals videos on Youtube hard selling silver.
Silver was being forecasted to over $100 per ounce - so get it while you can - before China and India take the lot and the mines cannot fill the orders.

Platinum is another example.
Not so long ago ( in investment terms ) Platinum was priced higher than gold i.e. it was more precious and definitely rarer and more expensive to mine.
Why therefore is it less than half the price of gold ?
Could it possibly be that gold is overpriced and will face a massive correction at some stage ?

Gone are the days of buying a silver coin from the EU at £13 then flipping it in the UK for £25 but whatever you hold hopefully should retain value unlike fiat due to inflation.
With the unavoidable VAT on silver ( and platinum ) in the UK you definitely lose 20% immediately selling back to any dealers - unlike gold.
Importing silver into the UK is subject to VAT also unless transporting in person within your allowance.

 

[Fenlander1]

2 minutes ago, bluemoon said:

I may be misunderstanding the point, but if sellers have found a way around the VAT then I'm all for it. TSF's ecosystem won't change the market economy.

You can actually get around 20% VAT from the big bullion dealers too, if buying pre-owned coins under their special VAT scheme. So it's not new.

It's not a question of whether it is a good or bad thing anything that's stops these taxes I am all for it. The point I was trying to raise was. There must be a critical point where a small market can be influenced by prices. Its all relevant buying cheap is great but its when you come to sell you will see the issues.

The spot price will never be influced by the secondary market but the small market on the TSF has definitely been influenced as has places like Facebook and ebay but at what cost overall. Is silver still a worthy metal to invest in or is gold the safer bet as it cannot be so heavily included by outside forces.

[Jimmock]

I think what @Fenlander1 may be getting at(I may be totally wrong)😁 is that recently,there seems to have been an increase in members who are able to sell seemingly limitless amounts of silver at, what seems to me, a very low premium. Thus making it virtually impossible for the everyday stacker to turn over a few oz here and there,without having to sell at a loss.

[Fenlander1]

7 minutes ago, Jimmock said:

I think what @Fenlander1 may be getting at(I may be totally wrong)😁 is that recently,there seems to have been an increase in members who are able to sell seemingly limitless amounts of silver at, what seems to me, a very low premium. Thus making it virtually impossible for the everyday stacker to turn over a few oz here and there,without having to sell at a loss.

Unfortunately this was always going to be the side effect of a small market being flooded it started with Britannia’s and is now hitting the more collector items, from what I can tell and in my personal opinion the secondary market has hit the critical saturation point as there are only so many of us stackers/collectors out there and most people are stocked up rightly or wrongly on the cheapest available so the only way for price to go is down the so called race to the bottom.

I was just curious as to others thoughts.

 

 

[treetop1280]

16 minutes ago, Jimmock said:

I think what @Fenlander1 may be getting at(I may be totally wrong)😁 is that recently,there seems to have been an increase in members who are able to sell seemingly limitless amounts of silver at, what seems to me, a very low premium. Thus making it virtually impossible for the everyday stacker to turn over a few oz here and there,without having to sell at a loss.

Jim , of course he’s got it wrong , he always does   😀 couldn’t sell sand to the Arabs 😀👍

[Fenlander1]

Just now, treetop1280 said:

Jim , of course he’s got it wrong , he always does   😀 couldn’t sell sand to the Arabs 😀👍

Not selling anything you ejit, leave the grown ups to talk.

[treetop1280]

1 minute ago, Fenlander1 said:

Nope

Is your new 50p on its way the millennium sparrow or whatever its called.

 

1 minute ago, Fenlander1 said:

Not selling anything you ejit, leave the grown ups to talk.

Nope , I can feel it in the force , young Jedi ??? 

[sixgun]

A monster box will always be a hard sell on the forum - the obvious thing would be to break it up or fine it just doesn't shift.

i was watching a video this morning where Steve St. Angelo and Bob Coleman were talking about prices, the retail / wholesale markets and COMEX in silver. Bob Coleman runs a US precious metal depository and Steve St Angelo is a commentator. 
Their views are very US centric. There was no mention of the Global South and how India is vacuuming up silver at the moment. This isn't happening in their world and somehow or other Bob Coleman thinks the US stacker market is influencing the silver price. St Angelo thought people were selling silver to get into US Treasuries - which is beyond deluded.

The price of silver is rising - there is buying pressure in the 100's and 1000's of tonnes especially from India.

i don't actually think there are that many people here who are on the buy for silver. There is a good deal of gold and silver coming up for sale. i wonder if members are thinking now is a good time to sell and those who trade are getting metal offered to them. i don't really have any idea what it is like in the UK at the moment but i get the impression times are hard for a good few. The temptation is there to sell and so the market balance shifts. What happens on the TSF is a reflection on what is happening with private collectors but no reflection on the world. So if members are growing jaded this doesn't mean the price of silver is about to crash; there will be corrections but price rises are inevitable. It may well be the price is too rich for some people here and they are dropping out.  

It would be interesting to have a poll - are you net buying / selling / treading water when it comes to silver.

Personally i keep buying - some here, usually older bars and some silver inside the EU. The GS ratio is still over 85 - and this is cheap to me, so i keep topping up almost as a reflex.

Edited March 18 by sixgun

[treetop1280]

@HonestMoneyGoldSilver and @MrStacker, immediate graph printing required on  sales of tin scrap monster boxes over the last 20 years , , king regards ashley

[HonestMoneyGoldSilver]

Objectively the minimum price of 1oz of silver in the UK should be spot + 20% = £23.57 at current prices, + shipping

If you sell below that you're either taking a loss or breaking the law. Would a trader survive if they were selling at a loss? Ergo ....

I feel for the ordinary stacker who probably paid £23-25 and thought they were getting a good deal, and they did get a good LEGAL deal

Mass migration is a net killer of lower and middle class wealth but there also some positives. People from the Indian subcontinent (inc Pakistan) have much more favourable views towards precious metals than the average westerner. This is out of necessity as their currencies are worthless relative to USD and GBP/Euro. The privileged "golden billion" up until the 21st Century had largely been insulated from these global market forces.

We have imported 1 million more migrants this year alone, mostly from countries that love precious metals. If each person brought in their legal tax-free entitlement of £390 or whatever, that would be a lot of silver. I look around out of interest at other marketplaces and yea, I see a whole lot of foreigners selling cheap silver and tobacco, hmm, I wonder how they can afford to sell at those prices? Could it be they didn't pay UK taxes? Yep, and I don't blame them. It's what people do. When we go on holiday we assume our laws apply wherever we go and so does everyone else when they come to the UK. You guys used to do it on TSF, right? The VAT-free silver from Estonia? Yep, there ya go

It will rebalance in time especially if silver spot continues to go up and holds strongly above £20/oz. We do need to reduce the official VAT on silver in the UK though

[HonestMoneyGoldSilver]

There are more than a few UK born sellers who exploit international travel and connections. I'm sure you all know who they are but if folks travel they seem to be able to offer much better prices on silver. What a strange coincidence. 

[sixgun]

6 minutes ago, HonestMoneyGoldSilver said:

There are more than a few UK born sellers who exploit international travel and connections. I'm sure you all know who they are....

Who are they?

[HonestMoneyGoldSilver]

On 18/03/2024 at 16:53, sixgun said:

Who are they?

I'm not going to cast aspersions or make unfounded claims. I think it's common knowledge amongst those who keep an eye on prices who is and who isn't paying VAT. Perhaps if you send a message to @Panda6Pack he might share some of his theories with you. He gets pissed off because he knows the prices he is paying direct from manufacturers and then he sees other sellers on TSF and elsewhere offering the same items at prices below his breakeven point. I'd get pissed off about that too. Hard to compete with sellers who don't pay taxes

Edited March 29 by HonestMoneyGoldSilver
Aspersions not dispersions you dimwit

[Shinus73]

Just now, HonestMoneyGoldSilver said:

I'm not going to cast dispersions or make unfounded claims. I think it's common knowledge amongst those who keep an eye on prices who is and who isn't paying VAT. Perhaps if you send a message to @Panda6Pack he might share some of his theories with you. He gets pissed off because he knows the prices he is paying direct from manufacturers and then he sees other sellers on TSF and elsewhere offering the same items at prices below his breakeven point. I'd get pissed off about that too. Hard to compete with sellers who don't pay taxes

Personally, I pay North of 30% income tax on my salary already. If a way presents itself to not pay tax on something I'm buying from my already heavily taxed salary, I'll be taking it.

[Fenlander1]

2 minutes ago, Shinus73 said:

Personally, I pay North of 30% income tax on my salary already. If a way presents itself to not pay tax on something I'm buying from my already heavily taxed salary, I'll be taking it.

Normally I would agree and if it was the odd tube here and there it wouldn't be a problem but the situation we are in now where the market is flooded is when you come to sell your cheap silver your investment has failed to keep up with inflation due to external forces and you are forced to make a loss.

 

[HonestMoneyGoldSilver]

5 minutes ago, Shinus73 said:

Personally, I pay North of 30% income tax on my salary already. If a way presents itself to not pay tax on something I'm buying from my already heavily taxed salary, I'll be taking it.

I think we're all in the same boat mate. Shocking how we much we get taxed and how little we get in return. Wait until next month with council tax up 10%, utilities (broadband, phone contracts, etc) up 8.8%. It's a joke, some might say theft and I might agree