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Message:: [QUOTE="harrync, post: 2857007, member: 58588"]The silver futures market [at least when I was dabbing in it] had a stair-step kind of pricing; each month out was just a little more than the previous month, by an amount that was just about what the carrying costs [lost interest, storage, etc.] would be. [Google "cantango" for more info.] Say you buy a contract a year out. The year goes by and you have to either sell the contract or take delivery. On my 1000 oz contract, I had put down maybe $500 margin; since the price I had agreed to pay was $3500, I had to come up with another $3000 to take delivery. Most traders were in for the leverage; they had better uses for that $3000  [maybe buy six more futures contracts?], or didn't have the $3000 immediately available. They would sell their current month contract, and buy a new contract about a year out [again, at a price premium about equal to the carrying costs.] A few years later, I sold a contract, and when it came due, I had a "good delivery bar" in an approved warehouse to "deliver". That is, my broker sent me a notice that I no longer had a bar in storage, and the buyer's broker sent him a letter saying he now had one in storage. I never got into the details of taking actual physical delivery; IIRC, my broker said it was not worth the trouble. I came out ahead of the "rolling over the contract and putting the $3000 in a CD" approach, but not by much.[/QUOTE]