What happen to the Silver Market?

Because a thing has been used in a certain capacity does not preclude its use in another.

There are, in fact, plenty of "logical reason for silver not to be a monetary metal."

It has numerous medical applications.

It is easily formed or combined into alloys for use in electronics applications.

It's inexpensive, shiny and malleable, lending it to frequent use in jewelry.

It finds use in batteries, bearings, mirrors, water purifiers, and even "next generation" techs like solar power generation.

It still finds considerable use in photography, despite the surge in popularity of digital cameras. Silver-halide films still produce superior accuracy, and thus valuable for uses like Xrays, and silver-embedded paper is still preferred for high end prints.

In short, your error isn't one of history, it's one of logic. You're absolutely right...it's been used as a monetary metal for thousands of years. However, a VERY large chunk of its use is industrial or luxurious in nature..in many cases with no viable options.

Silver could become STRICTLY an industrial metal in the blink of an eye.

 

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I have some nice beads I'll give you for Manhattan.

 

I would dare say copper, (bronze), has been used as money longer than gold. There are examples of archaic money, or proto money, in the shape of cow skins that predate Lydian finds. The basis of Chinese money was bronze, and that of India was that of silver bars. Actually Lydia was unique amonst the three primary development centers of coinage to use gold at all. The main reason for that was they used electrum which was naturally found in local streams. There are also examples of large iron ingots being used as proto currency in ancient Babylonia and Assyria.

 

I wouldn't go that far. There is too much silver coinage and bullion, and too many collectors for that to happen. The combination of numismatic value and potential safety from currency issues will keep silver collectors happy for far longer than the blink.

 

Not what I meant. I phrased poorly.

I meant to suggest that were, for example, a magic wand waved which removed all silver coinage, silver would still find great demand as an industrial metal.

 

I don't deny that silver was used in the past for monetary purposes however it does not hold that role today. It's not used as currency and governments don't hold it as reserves.

 

This misses the point of the difference between metal being used to make currency as opposed to metal used AS currency. All of these metals at one time in history were quite valuable because smelting ore into metal was a difficult, dangerous and labor intensive process. Copper, bronze, etc at one time was very rare, in some cases more rare than gold.

What people don't always understand is the value of the currency was the metal. Government coining of the metal only establised a common unit of measure and convenient assay of said metal.

 

Not sure I follow. You say I don't understand the difference between copper being used to make currency and gold being currency, and yet you say copper was very valuable at times. I am not aware of any period where copper was more valuable than gold, when was that? Gold has always been rarer, but easily available.

What people need to understand about currency is the government has not once done this as a public service. The first coin in the world was underweight gold and overweight silver, but passed off as standard electrum. Because of this coinage may have died out in Lydia but for Croesus' reforms of making pure PM coins instead. Chinese coins were always more valuable than the bronze in them, as well as Indian silver issues. Yes, they were very close to the metal value, but slightly deficient.

So which am I misunderstanding? Gold, silver, and copper were used to make a currency that circulated at the proscribe value from the beginnings of currency. All three have a long, rich tradition of being used as marks of value and items for trading. All three have long traditions of being valued to craft valuable items that were wanted. The only reason the bronze oxhide does not qualify as coinage is that it does not have a mark of value, other than that they are of standard weight and trade widely. Out of all of this how is gold the only one of these three metals that is "money" and the other two aren't? I am assuming that is your conclusion.

Not being argumentative, just curious.

 

Copper more valuable than gold? Sure it was. Copper is one of the two elements that makes bronze and bronze was needed for military campaigns. It was controlled and produced by goverments. There are plenty of fables from ancient times about this including a reference in one of the Bibles about silver and gold being a common as stone in comparison. I did go look it up and according to wiki, 95% of all the copper ever produced was after the start of the 20th century. I saw a demonstration once of how copper was made in historical times and it's a long difficult process that involves a lot of labor. It isn't the ore that is rare, it was the production process that made the refined metal rare.

"What people need to understand about currency is the government has not once done this as a public service." Not true. From the US Coinage Act of 1972:

Sec. 14. And be it further enacted,Persons may bring gold and silver bullion, to be coined free of expense; That it shall be lawful for any person or persons to bring to the said mint gold and silver bullion, in order to their being coined; and that the bullion so brought shall be there assayed and coined as speedily as may be after the receipt thereof, and that free of expense to the person or persons by whom the same shall have been brought. And as soon as the said bullion shall have been coined, the person or persons by whom the same shall have been delivered, shall upon demand receive in lieu thereof coins of the same species of bullion which shall have been so delivered, weight for weight, of the pure gold or pure silver therein contained: Provided nevertheless, That it shall be at the mutual option of the party or parties bringing such bullion, and of the director of the said mint, to make an immediate exchange of coins for standard bullion.......​

It is as I said. Government coinage was nothing more than a convenient assay and denomination of the metal.

Finally and one more time, I have never said that gold is the only metal to qualify as money. If this is all you are getting from what I have said, then I simply give up having the discussion with you. You either don't consider the context, or are being obtuse. I can't figure out which but it really doesn't matter.

 

Well you still did not answer when, as you claimed, when copper was more valuable than gold. Just asking for a single example.

As to the US it is true that is what the law says, but they also were under orders to encourage the depositors instead to take, for a small fee, prestruck coinage. It was weeks to strike your own silver, and they used this to convince people to buy the coins instead.

And yeah, I must be blind since I could have sworn I have read 100 times at least that only gold is money, and everything else is fake money on this board. Maybe I am the only one to have read that. Anyone else read that?

Chris

 

sigh. King Solomon. You are offering an opinion on the law to distract from the fact that you were wrong about it.

This forum has a search feature. Go and find where I said that "only gold is money". Never happened.

 

sigh. King Solomon. You are offering an opinion on the law to distract from the fact that you were wrong about it.

This forum has a search feature. Go and find where I said that "only gold is money". Never happened.

 

sigh. King Solomon. You are offering an opinion on the law to distract from the fact that you were wrong about it.

This forum has a search feature. Go and find where I said that "only gold is money". Never happened. For that matter I will go with anything close.

 

sigh. King Solomon. You are offering an opinion on the law to distract from the fact that you were wrong about it.

This forum has a search feature. Go and find where I said that "only gold is money". Never happened. For that matter I will go with anything close.

 

Everything you've stated here is true, however no matter how much of a case there is for silver as an industrial metal, none of that precludes it's ability to also be a monetary metal. That would be like saying peanut butter M&M's can't be peanut butter because they're covered in chocolate.

Central banks were selling gold up until a couple years ago. You could argue that was being done because gold is not a monetary metal, but we all know that it is. In my opinion it is foolhardy to assume that the way things are done today are the right way to do it when it contrasts the vast majority of proven human history. There have been silver standards just as there have been gold standards. Right now we are amidst a failed experiment, but I suppose this is one of those vacuous arguments that can't really be proven one way or another. So I will let it be

 

This would be a silly argument. Central Banks sell gold by two methods. Indirectly through the 5 bullion banks and this is done to supress gold prices. This is well documented starting with the original London Gold Fix. The second method is to each other. In this case, the terms are not normally disclosed. There may not even be any movement of the physical gold.

The point is these sales proves exactly that it is a monetary asset. No other physical substance is used by these banks in this way.

 

OK no argument on this particular tangent You can go ahead and believe in what the banks are doing. I'll keep believing in history. Maybe I'm stubborn and wrong. We'll see. I would add though, that if silver is not a monetary metal, why are all the coin shops in my area out of ASE's, Maple Leaves, and bars? I highly doubt industrial demand came and gobbled them up.

 

What history? I've said nothing that can't be verified by a few searches. I never said that silver was not used to coin currency. However currency /= monetary asset. They also use linen to print dollar bills. This doesn't make linen a monetary asset. Central banks nor governments have stockpiles of either on their balance sheets. They do hold gold for this reason. I can't speak for your anecdotal observation of a few coin shops. Maybe they pulled the inventory until the prices go back up. I'd recommend asking them if you really want to know.

 

Except I'm not trying to demonstrate that silver can't be money, or isn't money, but rather that it does not have to be.

Repeatedly in this thread, the argument is made, in one way or another, that silver must be treated as a "monetary metal" because it has held that role in the past. This argument is summed up by the quoted phrase:

The argument is based on a false premise. There ARE "logical reasons" for silver to be something OTHER than a monetary metal.

It can be all of the above...and then some. It does not HAVE to be ANY of them.

 

So you cannot cite a single example of when copper was more valuable than gold like you claimed then? You are pretty good at changing the topic of the discussion. Just one please.

Edit: Btw

Gold is the only true measure of it's worth.


Read more: http://www.cointalk.com/t191545/#ixzz1ZFlzAq79

Since store of value, ie measure of worth, is one of the key definitions of money, you are inferring only gold is money. This is just one off hand I remembered.

Chris