A fellow I know was considering entering the market so I called him this morning and said "If your going to do it, this week's correction is the perfect time"
So off we went down to Scotia Bank where there was a modest line of people making currency and metal transactions.
Being 5th in line it took about 10 minutes for us to get to the front giving me time to watch those being served and be nosey. In that time I saw at least 3 metal transactions take place and 7 oz or more of gold leave the building. One person asked a question and walked away muttering.
When I got to a teller I found out quickly what the previous client was probably annoyed by;
There was no silver
None, zip, squat, zilch.
No silver maples, no silver bars large or small, they had nothing.
Scotia claimed they should have got at least some maples this week but did not, they said "try again later".
There has been recent talk of silver shortage at the retail level and I now have proof. I tried 2 currency exchange places which had nothing and I still plan on dropping in to a coin store but I know they don't readjust their prices to market (at least downward) in a timely manner.
As far as I'm concerned today was an excellent entry point and it's a shame my friend missed this opportunity.
If the retail supply is this tight the banks should be drawing off the COMEX to re mint and fill orders but I somehow don't think they will bother. The banks while selling metals have been involved in shady behaviour for decades, case in point the Morgan Stanely incident where they were not buying bullion when certificates where purchased.
The big banks have little interest in supporting metal ownership over fiat currency and have great interest in NOT seeing the COMEX stocks drawn down.
I'm at a loss on how to advise you to acquire silver at this time. APMEX is short, Northwest Territorial Mint has been habitually late in filling orders and smaller vendors are scrambling to find bullion. The U.S.mint has not been able to keep up with silver eagle orders and even Ebay listings are thinner than I remember 2 years ago.
All I can say is try every vendor you can find, the price is too good to ignore. If you already hold metals don't panic, this kind of correction was expected and is not a problem.
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24 comments:
I decided to buy thanks to the lower prices today. When I was talking to my dealer he was saying he's never seen anything like the silver shortage that's going on right now. He was saying he hasn't been able to get his hands on any physical silver or gold and doesn't expect to have any in for another couple of weeks.
I'm thinking perhaps I should have a running post where we can all announce which vendors in which cities has bullion(after you've bought your of course.)
Let me think on how I want to do this and if you are buying and actually find some let us know who, where and how much left.
I have found that during corrections, a lot of times the local coin shop will not even sell you the silver or gold on hand as they are upside down on it due to the new lower price.
I was lucky enough to find 400 oz of silver US eagles at my local (So Cal) coin shop on Monday. Even though silver just dropped by about 2-3 dollars per ouce since i bought them, i am not mad as the US eagles have been hard to find.
I have made a couple of orders of silver coins from Northwest Territorial Mint, and there has been at least a 2-3 month lag between the date i wired the money and i got the silver. In fact, i am still waiting on a shipment and have been calling for the past 2 weeks without a response. I am sure i will get the order in the next month. If anyone has not seen their Pan American coins or 5oz and 10oz bars, they should check them out as they are the nicest i have seen (and own).
FYI, even though the precious metals demand here in the US is still practically non-existant (i have tried getting numerous family members and friends into it, and only recieved wierd stares), I have noticed that silver is hard to come by, although gold has been pretty available.
I agree the nwt products both their own label and the pan american are very nices pieces, I've seen them up close only once, they are a bitch to find in Canada.
Of what I have my favorite bar is a 10 once bache, kinda rare and a participant in the Hunt brothers fiasco, the more modern extruded bars like those at nwt mint and the Canadian Royal mint are so much nicer than the old rough bars.
If you think the metal story is under the radar in the States you should see it hear, less coins stores, less vendors period and certainly the same stares and comparisons to survivalists which are even more frowned on here than down south where guns are considered good clean fun.
While I don't doubt coins stores hold back or don't change prices I don't think a big place like scotia bank does and by the sound of it they had nothing on monday when the price was still strong.
Good on you for making a 400oz find, I guess it is out there if you look enough.
thanks for the comment
Ok a warning to all you assholes trying to run scams by post something for nothing schemes on my site, BITE ME! I will not tolerate it!
Hi Lord... an update on my NWTM order. I guess my voicemail message yesterday was the charm. Although i never got a call back, i did get an e-mail late last night from Fed Ex stating my package was just picked up and in transit. FYI, i have read some blogs on NWTM about how they have been short getting the raw silver. So that seems to be the delay. As the price dropped, i am likely going to place another order, but will see if they can give me some type of reassurance on a time frame for delivery.
Do you know of any Canadian private mints that make nice bars and rounds, and are pretty good on delivery dates? I wouldn't mind diversifying my collection. (No Don Cherry collectibles though).
Go Ducks!
Good news on your order. 400 eagles and a NWTM order, you are doing some serious accumulation.
By the way, Pick youself an alias, it gives conversations a little more continuity.
As far as I know there is no private mints in Canada these days. The markets were so soft so long most mints everywhere went under and dispite the resergence in metals the current supply problems don't make for a good buiness model for new ones to open.
I don't know about premiums or delivery issues but I do have some Libertads and they are a very pretty coin. There was an old design and a newer one, the new one is best and they came in 1,2,5 oz
Are prospector rounds still produced?
I have Mexican 1 oz silver coins.. are the Libertads from Mexico? I dont think the make Prospector coins anymore. I have some of those in a tube of rounds i got when i first started collecting.
Thanks Charles,
yup, the mex coins with lady liberty on them are Libertads, there was one design in the 80s they went out of production for a time and a new design came out. The new design is much cleaner. I only have the old ones, which I got on ebay, I've never seen them up here in any coin store. For pure novelty value If I could get 100 libertads I could flip them up here at a premium.
I've read some of the literature by Hugo Salinas Price, It would be a major coup if he could convince Government to monetize silver again in Mexico. He also offers free storage for mexicans who wish to save Libertads at his Azteca banks, doing a great service for the poor allowing them Inflation/devaluation proof savings. Apparently all bankers are not evil scum, who'd have thought.
Curious about NWT policy when they delay shipments of Morgan dollars. They must have these in stock yet claim they are a month out.
it makes no sense to sell something you don't have in a bull market, by the time you deliver it you are taking a loss. To sell something that is not in production is even crazier, you may not be able to get them at all.
I don't understand how they even fix a price on new product when they can't meet immediate delivery,
Do they delay waiting purchasing for price dips or are they hedging to even the price fluctuations? Dammed if I know.
All I know is if the comex has silver it should be working down to the retail market. For stores to be empyt and prices dropping can only prove manipulation.
Maybe it's time small investors formed investing cooperatives, 5 people chip in buy a full contract on the comex, demand delivery and split the 5 bars. The cooperatives could group together use their bars to feed a private mint, have dies cut and produce thier own rounds. Sell or hoard the new rounds as the individual investors see fit but continue the process till we run the Comex dry.
great idea.
Holy crap... I was planning on heading down to the Scotia this week to pick up a few hundred ounces... And yet, spot silver continues to get hammered eh? Now I've seen everything.
If I go to Scotia or my local TD on College, will they be able to order silver for me? And, as a practical matter, is it 'better' to have one type of physical silver over another? (I recognize that this is largely a matter of taste, but concretely, I just don't know what kind of silver to buy...)
I've been in SLV for a while now, but with all this whispering about the dangers of counterparty risk, I'd like to eliminate as much risk from the equation as possible, and that means switching to physical metal. It sounds like this might be a bitch to do, but your post has lit a fire under my ass to act quick on this...
Great blog, btw...RSS worthy, even. Very helpful to a newbie metal investor like me. Found it by googling 'Toronto Silver Bullion' heh.
Thanks Dan, I do try. It started out as an excuse to share my economic fears and work on my much degraded writing skills, can't say I've made much progress on #2.
I know the metal story and my blog are catching on as hits and a meagre stream of revenue from the click ads are up, the most rewarding thing is for people to make comments, some weeks even a idiot troll would be welcome. This post has certainly been more interactive and enjoyable.
It frustrating to think a retail shortage will make this blog redundant.
To buy silver you have to decide why you want it. If you think fiat money will expode and want something for commerce/barter you want small bars, rounds, junk silver. If it's purely a inflation hedge or you believe in silver shortages, go big bars as they have the lowest cost per ounce.
Of course right now, buy what you can find;)
My buying pattern has usually been get the best price for what I can afford to spend at one time. This has left me with 70% 100s, with a mixure of 10s 20s, and 1oz rounds and bars. I also have some silver dollars, halves, and junk. I really should have more junk just in case but unless you're buying full bags it's hard to source junk other than ebay or gouging coin stores
I also had to factor in my end goal which is a hobby farm. Since I will eventually convert my silver to land, large bars are more easily dealth with. The smaller stuff was bought when I could not afford to go big or on a whim when some winfall cash came around.
Scotia claims they will have maples soon, but how many was not known. As far as I know they will not sell forward, it's cash and carry, else my friend would have pre ordered Thursday. I'm not terribley liquid right now but I probably would have taken 10 maples for each of my kids at last weeks prices. Maples have a large premium so the ones I buy for my kids as a collectable/investment are usually the only ones I buy for the year.
I suppose you could call and hound scotia daily, they really should add a web page showing a live stock level. (every one should email this request to them)
They may also have other products at a differnt location that will get brought in, we'll have to see. I new things were getting tight when the old rough bars were gone and nice new RCM extruded 100 bars started showing up. That said the old glut was gone and new material was being sold.
I may go in and talk one teller I've often dealt with on the off chance he would be willing to call me when something comes in.
I asked about silver at TD once, they claim to sell it on some obscure web page but when I asked at the big branch at BCE place they were absoulutey stunned and knew nothing about it.
Let us know how you make out.
Thanks for the excellent advice, CSB... that answered many of my questions.
I'd be getting silver as an inflation hedge of course, but also in case a currency crisis takes hold and the USD precipitously fall. And this is why I've been getting antsy holding SLV -- I can't go audit their vaults, and I'm essentially trusting that there's no dodgy counterparty risk, and as metal traders are fond of saying, when one holds the physical metal it's no one's liability. Given the current situation, I suppose I'll just grab whatever I can get!
My stepdad says that he thinks metals are in a bubble, because "even NYC taxicab drivers are buying gold". I don't see that at all though(unless one calls a 20 yr cycle a bubble) -- from what I've gathered in my informal, and admittedly unscientific, survey is that metals are still very much underground... gaining in demand and popularity(gold $1000 and silver $20 didn't hurt). Still not in the mass conciousness, but the bullishness is definitely there among the gold and silver bugs, and that has me encouraged.
I'll take a walk on over to Scotia tomorrow to see what they have to say... I appreciate the thorough response, and will definitely report back!
-Dan
I would say to your step dad that a great many NYC taxi drivers come from countries where they have witnessed the destruction of a fiat currency before. You don't need to be highly educated to learn by experience. North Americans have been stable and safe in our slow motion devaluation for 100 years, That does not mean it can never blow up here. Consider it economy insurance that if not used this decade will eventually aid your family.
Just don't leave yourself short for day to day stuff and a little emergency fund.
Dan, get out of the silver ETFs. Hold the physical metal. Store it away and forget about it, unless you are like us, and will continously add to the position on dips. If you live in the US, like i do, you have greater reason to hold it as I believe some dark times are ahead for us and the US dollar. If you can, get some cheap silver rounds as they hold the least premium. Then get some 10 oz and 100oz bars for the rest of your holdings. Who knows, if silver takes off, and on ounce is worth $50, then you probably will want to use 1 oz rounds for cashing in when needed. Also, how can the bubbleheads on TV watch the housing bubble go parabolic for 6 years without calling it a bubble, then gold and silver make one major move this year and it is suddenly "a bubble". It's not a bubble until everybody you know is buying, and everybody tells you "it will go up forever." So far, that has not happened, and other than foreigners, the PM market is still not on the US radar. The hardest part of getting into the physical market is making that first purchase. Go to the bank, get some cash, go to your local coin shop and just do it. It was hard for me to get off my a$$ the first time to do it, but once i did it, i have been consistently buying, and happy to be doing it. Also, see if you can find a coin shop where you can buy silver (under the $10K reporting limit) without giving your personal info. Who knows what the US government will do if things really hit the fan. Good Luck!
Alberta here i ordered a large amount of silver 1oz maple's yesterday at the royal bank ..no problem . also order some bars 2 weeks ago again no problem .
we have silver at scotiabank downtown Toronto in large bars and old maples.
http://canadiansilverbug.blogspot.com/2008/03/scotia-silver-drought-showing-signs-of.html
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