Anybody else remember the great silver boom of 1979-1980?

What a wild time that was! At the time I had a full time job but worked nights and weekends for a rare coin company owned by one of my friends in Houston to help handle the mob of sellers and sort out the silver coins by fineness for shipment to the refinery.

Lines stretched out the door and the company had to hire off-duty cops to keep things under control. Virtually EVERYTHING with a gold or silver content came in including gold teeth! It really broke my heart to see so many nice world coins going into melt bins. I did manage to rescue one (a really nice 1933 Martin Luther German 5 mark coin) that I sold a few years later for a nice profit. I also bought my wife a nice Thai baht gold necklace made of small little rectangular gold bars which she still has.

US coin bags reached a high of about $24,000 per $1,000 bag, but dealers paid well back of that price because the refineries were all backed up and payment was slow to come in.

 

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I remember it well. I made a $600.00 profit the day before the market collapsed. Small in the bigger scheme of things but about two weeks net pay for me at the time.

 

It’s kind of crazy how many coins survived decades and decades only to meet their demise whenever there’s a big metal price spike

 

All of the ones I purchased did not meet up with the smelter. I was able to fill a good many holes with Mercs, WLH, Franklins, and a few Peace $.

 

That was very kind of you to open a coin refugee camp during those times

 

What I remember is the guy who I worked with sinking his home equity into silver three days before the crash. That’s always been a lesson to me.

 

What was sad was that the dealer I sold to was a really nice fellow. Sadly he took a $60K hit that weekend and had to close his shop after being there 20 years.

 

That was the event that got me out of numismatics.
I build a nice US stamp collection after that.
Then along about 1990 I stopped doing stamps and went back to coins.
About 1995 I sold my US stamp collection and put that money into coins.

That money got me some of the the keys.
I finished my Morgan date/mm business strike collection.
I finished my Lincoln date/mm business strike collection.
I finished my Buffalo date/mm business strike collection including the 3-leg.

Oddly enough all of those sets are now gone.
They have been replaced with an MS FE/IHC set (missing only the 1897).
And a close to complete type set
And a few other early 1800's sets.

 

I had a friend who worked at COMEX at that time as a runner. He assured me gold was going to $1000. I said it will probably go back to $200-$300.
Eventually it did go to $1000 and beyond. But first it went back to $200-$300.
Is it really a boom, when some greedy guys are just trying to corner the market and driving prices up? More like a bubble that is destined to burst.

 

Ouch...

 

Only greed kept me from selling my 90%. Kept holding on for the return of higher prices, but as we know, it never came. Still got 'em!

 

Yes I do recall it very well .....and all you need to do is google Nelson Bunker Hunt and his brother Herbert.

 

Well, I wasn't born yet. So no, I don't remember it....

But I've heard plenty of tales.

 

There is an excellent book about this, written in 1980, Silver Bulls by Paul Sarnoff.

 

I can remember my dad dumping 64 Kennedy half dollars like 15 to 1 .....dad worked for the Fed. he knew it was a short lived spiked.... he sold all the silver my parents owned...then he and mom when to Ireland for a month and six months later Hawaii for a month.....and still had money left over...

 

Wow -- I thought they spiked higher than that during the 2011 run-up, even though the nominal price of silver went slightly higher in the 1980 blow-off. I remember buying $5 or $10 FV from one dealer at 25x, picking out a couple of pieces I wanted, then walking over to the next aisle at the show and selling it to another dealer for 26x.

 

Are there any books with a more long-term historical perspective?

I try to avoid books that were written during (or shortly after) the events they describe. They just don't understand the long-term ramifications and the historical context of the event. A book written in 1980 can describe the events leading up to the event, but we've been feeling the effects and influence now for almost 40 years.

As an analogy... There are many books describing the housing bubble and collapse of 2007-2008 (or the dot.com bubble of 2001) that were written within a year or two of the collapse. However, I view books written 10 years after the event as more reliable because they have more information, and understand the implications and results better.

The books that come out within a few months often have a political axe to grind - they're trying to convince the public of some fact, and influence the response. The books that come out 10 years later have allowed the controversy and feelings to subside, and can provide a more objective analysis of the event.

 

I wasn't kidding about the gold teeth. I was working the counter at that time and handled the transaction. I asked the guy where he got these (he didn't look old enough to be one of the US Marine "treasure hunters" in the Pacific during WW2) and he told me he worked at a funeral home.

Maybe that's why when my wife and I purchased prepaid funeral arrangements this year we chose cremation!

 

That’s a very good point. It often takes time to be able to get real facts which may still be open to interpretation but at least at that point there is real data to work of of.

 

In April 1980 I visited Australia and I had a bunch of worn 1950's Australian silver coins (50% silver) which I took with me and sold to a Sydney coin dealer for $22.