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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Juan Blanco, post: 1582971, member: 41665&quot;]What an <i>absurd </i>claim. Retail coins and bullion are sold by almost EXACTLY the same vendors &amp; businesses. To whom? The same clientele, just another year older? Investors in Gold Coins versus Gold bars are the same type(s), the overlap is obvious. The US demographic cohorts are essentially identical. Don&#039;t take my word for it, go ask your LCS. </p><p><br /></p><p>To be sure, <i>some </i>Gold-Bugs love &#039;coin collecting&#039; and others distrust the &#039;coin premium&#039; altogether. Any other distinction is silly, a trifle: they&#039;re still <i>both </i>Gold-Bugs! (Foreign Gold-Bugs might be different, I&#039;ll grant.)</p><p><br /></p><p>My calc from ICI stats illustrates how only ~0.023% of US households owning mfs own a PM ETF ( ~12,000 US retail investors: <a href="http://www.cointalk.com/t217554/#post1574053" class="internalLink ProxyLink" data-proxy-href="http://www.cointalk.com/t217554/#post1574053">http://www.cointalk.com/t217554/#post1574053</a> ) In the USA, that&#039;s where any &quot;growth&quot; in US Gold-ownership has been (in Paper!) and that&#039;s still &#039;almost no Americans&#039; frankly. </p><p><br /></p><p>Americans have been SELLING their Gold &amp; Silver (real asset), net-net. WGC stats show declining bullion sales in the USA, and the US turned into a net exporter in 2012: there&#039;s the big picture folks. Like coin collectors generally, PM coin and bullion buyers are a stagnant, aging, <i>contracting </i>demographic. Read it and weep. Someone on another thread half-jokingly pointed out that ANA membership hasn&#039;t increased in 30 years - well, the population of the USA was 229.5 mln in 1981 and it&#039;s 312 mln now, 36% higher. So YES, on a relative basis the overall mkt has probably <i>shrunk by 1/3rd</i>. Those numbers run hard against the illusion of &#039;collector/bullionist growth.&#039; And burden of proof is on those who fanatsize otherwise: who/where are all these imaginary new bullionists/numismatists coming from?</p><p><br /></p><p>Another professional perspective, elsewhere: famed commodity speculator Jim Rodgers polled a money manager conference in Prague in 2009. Of ~300 professionals/HNW investors, 76% of these sophisticates had NEVER held owned or held Gold in their or clients&#039; portfolios. And that audience was what, 80% European and skewed German? If like-minded investors (who go to see a <i>commodity guru</i>!)don&#039;t hold an esoteric asset class like Gold, you can be pretty sure the mainstream isn&#039;t either. Jimmy Rodgers mocked the IDEA of Gold Bubble: &quot;How can there be a Bubble if no one even owns it?!&quot; And that&#039;s true, simply.</p><p><br /></p><p>Finally: beyond the crackpots, loons, and tin-foil hatter conspiracy theorists, almost ALL talking points of bullionist rhetoric coddle &#039;older White Guy anxieties.&#039; It&#039;s a very reasonable conclusion that particular appeal is market-driven, not merely coincidence. (And truth be told, my foreign friends think most American Gold-Bugs sound more anti-American than Soviet or Islamic extremist propaganda ever was!) </p><p><br /></p><p>I&#039;m a bullionist, but there&#039;s waaaaaaay too much nonsense on Gold sites about &#039;how popular&#039; Gold/Silver are. Truth is, PMs aren&#039;t (yet.) By the numbers, we&#039;re <i>not even close </i>to a major trend-change. </p><p><br /></p><p>Show the stats otherwise; anything else is just buggy blather. </p><p><br /></p><p>[video=youtube;3w4B7QxL_n4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3w4B7QxL_n4[/video][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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