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Message:: [QUOTE="Juan Blanco, post: 1591361, member: 41665"]Here are a few more contemporary accounts with details I consider noteworthy. The term "Bubble" appears occasionally but not so often as the Hunts action ( a cornered market) and the US government intervention (also not a 'free market action.') Fortunes were surely "won and lost" on the Spokane Stock Exchange, a tiny market that closed in 1991. It's not clear there was widespread instutional or retail participation in the 'Bubble' either ; the margin-called are unnamed, unnumbered. Nor is it obvious that 'economic activity was distorted' by spec; it certainly was by the COMEX/Government attack. There's also no mention of retail buyers, except that Tiffany customers STOPPED buying in mid-1979 and afterwards Kodak film prices had adjusted higher. Shouldn't a 'Popped Bubble' have witnessed LOWER prices than 1977/8? (That's true for tech stocks circa 2002 and RE in 2008.) Dips notwithstanding, Ag really didn't fall to 1977 levels until the late 80s.>>“Spokane Market Interest Fell with Silver” (Tri-City Herald, June 12, 1982 p.9)Spokane AP – The Spokane Stock Exchange is just a shadow of its former self these days. It doesn’t take an old timer to remember rollicking 1980, when Silver soared and fortunes were made and lost. Silver and metal prices are down today because of the recession and the ‘pop’ of the speculative bubble that saw silver prices climb from $6 a troy ounce in 1979 to a record $52.50 in January 1980. {…}Two years after the silver market’s dramatic crash, bullion prices stabilized at a mere one-seventh of their brief heady peak. After falling to a three year low of $6.965 a troy ounce last month, the metal climbed to the $7.50 level amid concerns over the Falkland Islands crisis. Like gold, silver prices gyrate during political and economic unrest. {…} In the silver boom of 1979 and early 1980, other factors were at work.Speculation by the Hunt brothers of Dallas and the investment firm of ContiCommodity Services, Inc. built up huge silver holdings and helped drive prices to record levels, according to a House Government Operations Committee report last December [1981] … But after silver hit its peak on Jan. 21, 1980, and new trading restrictions were imposed by the New York Commodity Exchange, prices plummeted to $10.80 a troy ounce two months later before leveling off. Meanwhile, inflation has been unwinding while interest rates remain high. Silver provides no interest payment to investors and high interest rates make purchases of silver on credit costly and less attractive than other investments. A large supply has been hovering over the market. The Hunt brothers’ holding total; 63 million ounces. And the federal General Services Administration was authorized last year to sell 105 million ounces over a three year period. << >>“Producers In Agony – Silver Mines Close But Film Prices Rise” (Toledo: The Blade, July 12, 1982 p.9)New York AP – The collapse of a speculative attempt to stockpile the metal, worldwide recession an unwinding of inflation, and persistently high interest rates have decimated silver prices and led to the closing of mines that produced nearly one-fourth of the nation’s silver last year.{…} Although pure silver is selling at 1978 prices, many products that use silver are not, especially film. Eastman Kodak Co. has steadily raised the list price of its most popular film for amateur photographers since October 1979, when silver was trading around $16 a troy ounce. Prices for Kodak’s most widely used x-ray film {…} have fluctuated with silver’s swings but are still 50 per cent above October, 1979 levels. {…} The photography industry [accounted for] 40 per cent of all industrial consumption last year. {…} Tiffany and Co., the exclusive Fifth Avenue jeweler, reports silverware business volume up about one and a half times [150%] this year from a year ago {…} Anthony Ostrom, president of Tiffany’s, says his factory is working overtime and is unable to keep up with demand. “When the price of silver got to $50 an ounce instead of the present $5, people were scared away{…} now people are interested in things they want to hand on to the next generation.” A popular five-piece sterling silver place setting, the Faneuil Pattern made by Tiffany, sold for $149.75 in February 1979 when silver was selling for about $7 an ounce. By March 1980 the price had soared to $508. But it has since declined to $195. {…}Among silver mines to shut down this year was Sunshine Mine, a 98-year old fixture at Kellogg Idaho, and the nation’s most productive silver mine. In 1981 output of 4.1million troy ounces represented over 10 per cent of the nation’s silver production. The Comstock Lode at Gold Hill, Nev. ended operations in June with the closing of its silver ore mill. Houston International Minerals Corp. said it could not earn money on the mine, which was considered the richest store of mineral wealth on Earth a century ago. {Also closed: the Bunker Hill, Star, Crescent and Consolidated Silver mines in ID; Taylor & Gooseberry Mines in NV; Pima, New Cornelia, Silver Bell, and Sacaton mines in AZ; Carr Fork Mine in UT; Sherman Mine in CO; Black Pine Mine in MT: output estimated at 97 mln ozt Ag and 24% of the national Ag ore production.}{…}New trading restriction were imposed on silver contracts on the New York Commodity Exchange, and as prices tumbled from $52.50 to $10.80 an ounce within 10 weeks, buyers were unable to meet calls for cash or collateral to back up loans for their silver purchases. Sell 63 Million OuncesThe Hunts finally arranged financing and agreed to sell {…} their stockpile hanging over the market was just one factor that contributed to silver’s further collapse. Last year the Government announced a program to sell 105 million ounces of stockpiled silver over the next three years. But only about 2 million ounces of the more than 11 million ounces of silver offered for auction last fall was sold, as the General Services Administration rejected bids it considered too low. The average auction price was $9 an ounce. Dave Bond, a Sunshine Mining spokesman, blames the Government’s action for driving down silver prices further and contributing to the closing of the mine in Idaho’s “Silver Valley.” <<[/QUOTE]

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