Lack Of Enthusiasm In The Stacking Community?

For me, personally, I learned how to turn .999 into $ without having to sell the .999 outright. Only labor is involved. If you're into ca$h and you love ca$h then just gamble and learn how to justify your addiction to cotton money. I don't gamble. I work hard. Back 6 years ago when I learned about fiat money and fractional reserve banking it was only about that. Today, for me, it's all about using that knowledge but still working hard at it. Lots of people want to buy and sell, hawk items like it's selling drugs. I fabricate. I manufacture. I work with my hands. I don't buy and sell; that's for idiots with lots of cash to burn into the atmosphere.

My takeaways this last decade:
1) learn about Forms. That is, why a certain element costs the way it does and the labor involved in making it. (Sheet vs tube vs wire vs coin vs shiny-shiny)
2) don't be a flipper. You're too far down the pipeline to make a profit even if you see the "spot price" (lol) going up. "Premiums" are just a better way of saying "real price" and "spot/melt price" is a nice way of saying you the market are being played like a sucker with fictitious fiat mumbo jumbo. If you don't buy gold daily then you don't know what the price is. For real. And if you're flipping daily you're being played. Think of PM as "stock" for your business. If you're unemployed and you think that PM is an out, then just get a job and save yourself a huge amount of heartache. I've never lost on silver or gold and it's because I know the business intimately, daily. If you don't work, then you're losing, and that's where the problem lies because all people see is fiat numbers instead of labor and hard work, how to make money FROM stock. Buying the coin or the shiny-shiny makes you zero money because you are the en-consumer.

Good stuff there, Libertad, thank you. I recently bought a couple silver bullion coins, not because I thought the price was nice (it isn't really, by my guess, but what do I know...) but because it's a bit of a fetish, and not much more. I like the shiny. I like the technologies and arts involved. As a pleb, I agree: the money in PM is if you work it into something of value, not in the mere possession of it. Be it wire-work, casting or other (I've seen some amazing rings made from old silver coins).

All that said, if the price were lower I'm sure I'd have bought more, lol.

like someone else said, the moves have been not "eye catching" in a sense.

As I have said tho, BREAKING A 4 YEAR PLUS DOWNTREND IS A BIG DEAL. But the general public cannot grasp the importance of this and as this continues to grind out higher, I think the public will continue to say "meh".

Perhaps if we can see gold get too and break above the all time high then some interest will start to grow there. But even then, I would imagine if we got to the all time highs around 1921ish, the public would say "oh its gone too high, no way it goes higher, its going right back down"... and gold breaks that and starts moving towards the 3s well then that might bring the frenzy....

I was a silversmith and goldsmith for over 30 years. Metals don't always behave the way you expect them to. They can fluctuate pretty wildly, and crash after a huge run-up, but nobody ever knows where the peak is. Nevertheless, precious metals do end up increasing in (dollar) value over a long enough period of time because of inflation. I've been stashing away silver for years (can't afford gold), primarily as a way to save. In the event of a "wheels come off the bus" scenario, identifiable silver coins like 1964 and earlier US dimes, quarters, halves and silver dollars will be accepted widely as a medium of exchange when when it takes a wheelbarrow full of paper money to buy a loaf of bread.

I think one point that people are missing on this thread and other places are that we can see equity markets rise AND PMs, together in tandem, despite economic conditions.

One does NOT need to see a "Depression" to see Pms rise, we are seeing that RIGHT NOW. Many equity markets are rising or at all time highs while PMs ALSO are at yearly highs.

What is there to talk about? If you're stacking you're stacking. Those that have been doing it since the last run-up have nothing new to talk about. A krugerrand is a krugerrand. You ought to see the decline in traffic on Paleo sites over the same period. Everyone's talked out.