Don't know if I buy it all or not, but an interesting article: http://www.moneyweek.com/file/28810/why-the-silver-price-is-set-to-soar.html Wally
It's a pretty good summary of the case for silver made elsewhere by many analysts. The analyst here makes the classic error of naming both the price and timeframe for his predicted rise in silver, virtually guaranteeing that he will be wrong. It's also pretty daring to predict that silver will outperform all other assets. That's just an opinion, not analysis. That said, I like silver coins a lot. The path of least resistance for silver prices seems to be up, and I would expect most silver coins to be far more expensive in ten years than they are today. That would include everything from the lowly silver round up to the MS65 Morgan dollar.
An interesting article to say the least. I hope that silver does increase but I don't think we will every see the prices as high as the Hunt era.
Coins are more fun. Bullion is easier, and you will get approximately the same return as the increase/decrease in the metal less the dealer spread which can be large or small depending on who you deal with. With numismatic coins, you might get more or less than bullion and they are probably a bit more difficult to sell for fair value. A good compromise in my opinion is to do something like collecting silver eagles by date. Some folks will pay more for certain dates and for complete sets. A lot of morgan and peace dollars sell reasonably close to their bullion value also and combine a silver investment with a collectible.
I think silver will rise a little, but so will gas and milk, simply based on inflation. Like Dave said, the days of the Hunt silver spikes are done and gone. I just hope it doesn't explode, because I like collecting silver, not investing in it. If prices skyrocket, it's bad for the hobby, in my opinion. Guy~
gopher: glad to hear that it is down to only 300 million ounces. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to corner the market.
I don't think it's really gone, it's just being used. For one, the photography industry hasn't used silver since the turn of the century, with the invention of celulose film. Second, silver from technology is recycled in large amounts, as is gold and copper. There's probably a lot more available than they let on. The new trend seems to be alloys. Copper alloys, usually 1% copper and 99% other metals, are common in todays wiring and piping, and has cooled the market for the metal, somewhat. We should all be happy....if silver reaches insanely high prices, sure, we might make a little money...but we'll lose a big part of the hobby because we won't want to pay $300 for a common Morgan. Guy~
I'll wager that there wouldn't be many common Morgans left if the melt value went to $300... In terms of the amount of silver left, isn't there a fair amount of opportunity to recycle silver from these manufactured items?
With regards to recycling silver: As of now it is not economically feasible to recycle a lot of the silver used in industry. As it has not been economical to do so for centuries, a large portion of the silver ever mined is now dispersed into the environment and can never realistically be reclaimed. This is in contrary to gold which has always been recycled and therefore almost all that was ever mined is still in easily obtainable form. Going forward, as readily available stocks of silver decrease, demand rises and price goes up, it will become economical (at some point) to recycle silver. The question is at what price does this occur. Indeed, there may be multiple prices depending on what kinds of reclamation processes are needed. In any event, that price is probably a lot higher than $15/oz. Not being a chemist or industrial engineer I have no idea what would be involved in reclaiming lost silver. It just seems that if no idea was hatched when silver was (non-inflation adjusted) $45/oz which corresponds to $120/oz, then it likely that silver will have to go to at LEAST those levels today before recycling becomes a 'concern' for silver investors. The question is how much silver is in readily accessible 'hordes' that will stream onto the market as the prices take off? If there are untold tons of the stuff then this should put a cap on the price. If, instead, private hordes are less than estimated, the sky is the limit. Wish I knew.
I assume that you mean the turn of the century 20th to 21st. I had a client who developed film and did very well removing the silver from the film.
There is no doubt that there is still a lot of silver around, but at what price? A lot of silver that has been "used" probably could be recovered through expensive and energy intensive recovery processes. It might happen if silver reaches and stays at $40 per ounce, but almost certainly won't happen at $15 per ounce. Also, a lot of junk silver has already been melted and used during the last "great melt" in 1979-80. So most of what would be available below $25 is probably gone already. All of this is largely conjecture since it's hard to prove the case either way. I tend to believe that there is a high probability that future silver prices will be much higher than current prices. There ain't no going back to $5 silver.
