Interesting article from October 2025 Major Refineries Stop Taking Silver - Phoenix Refining excerpt: Silver is now in massive backwardation, a unique and often alarming market condition where spot prices exceed futures contracts. This implies that investors are placing more value on physical ownership in hand today than promises of future delivery. This is rare in precious metals and almost unheard of at this scale. Normally, backwardation indicates one of two things: either acute short-term supply chain disruptions… or the market no longer believes paper silver (such as COMEX contracts) can be physically settled.
I think it’s both. Paper silver can’t be trusted (you would have thought a lesson from the 1980’s would have taught that one) and supplies are short and have been for over five years.
What is a fair price for a Morgan Silver Dollar if silver is at $110 ? I know based on silver content it should be about $78...what are the dealers offering ?
Shanghai vault inventories dropping according to this website. China Silver Price today: Trends, premiums and Market Insights
Probably not. One day data set maketh not a trend. Let's wait through the rest of this week...at least.
All around the mulberry bush the monkey chased the weasel The monkey thought it was all in fun, POP goes the weasel
I have never had any problems carrying anything in to China, and have been there probly 40-50 times over the years.
There's some interesting reading about the Comex right now if you google it. They purport to have 418 to 440 million ounces with 124 million classified as being "deliverable" The physical stockpiles are kept at various banking and non-banking facilities within 150 mile radius around NYC and moved between them. Says in January, they had 33 million oz go out in one WEEK. So if they only have around 124 million deliverable and 33 mil oz went out in a week, we may end up finding out how much physical is actually there and how much is just on paper. This is what we've always talked about but never seen an actual squeeze where the silver was needed. Apparently now it's needed. This is all coming after a well above average year last year needing to provide deliverable silver. Another report I heard from another source indicated that everything from refiners is going straight to comex as fast as they can produce it. So for the collectors market, the coin shops are rapidly running out of cash to buy it but the places with big bucks or who need it in industry have not. This year could get real interesting.
This is a SS from a video I just saw showing deliverable amounts and changes from previous years. Unless something changes IDK how they will sustain this. Top chart is contracts, bottom chart is physical oz delivered. China is a major producer that may have been able to be relied upon in the past that they probably can’t get anything from now. Keep in mind for Jan 26 number, there’s still 4 days to go. Who knows how much more is yet to be pulled out this month.
I read that this morning that the comex futures was around $110 while Shanghai closed at $125, which showed the glaring difference between the paper price and physical. The author posited that the bullion banks would pull out the stops attempting to drag the price down in order to cut bullion bank short losses. There is so much information out there that it is difficult to get a handle on what's happening. But I am with @ldhair on this: My intention is to leave everything to my kids. They can sell it using the stepped up valuation thereby bypassing capital gains taxes.
I’m sure Chinese customs would confiscate it ALONG WITH YOU, long before you could sell it. Fixed it for you Alegandron probably knows people? Would it be worth the effort for 10% extra? I've never been there but I sure wouldn't make my first trip with a Carry On full of precious metals... maybe that's just me though, as long as it doesn't smell like weed you might be fine.
Post #1345 above with that Shangahia chart, assuming it's correct,would indicate at least that source which was stable for many years is now rapidly being depleted over there too. Doesn't China hold a lot of US dollars? They could release those dollars to buy up anything they can get from anywhere and send prices soaring to the moon. We may not have seen anything yet. Wonder how much silver the US mint or it's suppliers has on hand to implement their program this year?
Silver jumped and then took a small step back today..........................and it's popping again in overseas markets after hours. Back to over $111.