Although I have learned that there have been Government coin silver recovery programs at various times the surrender of silver within those programs has always been optional.
I really can't see any possibility for the compulsory surrender of silver back to the Government, especially when the U.S Mint is producing silver collector coins.
Yes, it is "legal", in the sense that a government can do pretty much whatever it wants with the objects that are within its territory. Whether its citizens wold rise in open revolt against such a government, is another story. But the government would need to have a very, very important use for all that silver, to go around trying to annex it all unilaterally.
When gold was similarly annexed in 1933, the government needed that gold to hold as backing for international financial transactions. Silver should be safe from such action now and for the foreseeable future, because (a) there's a lot more of it, and it's a lot less valuable than gold - so the government would need to own an awful lot of it to maintain an equivalent store of value. And (b), the rest of the world no longer expects to be paid in gold and silver. There is no longer a financial need to hold onto stockpiles of physical metal. The world has moved beyond using metal to back currency, for one simple reason: there's just not enough metal to go around.
The rate of increase of mining gold and silver is constant at best; the human population is still rising exponentially. By the laws of supply and demand, this can only mean that the price for precious metal will continue to rise and rise, making fixing the currency to it practically impossible unless you are content to live in a world with permanent deflation and freefalling wages. You'd need to either go out and find a bunch of solid silver asteroids, or start arbitrarily killing people to stop the rampant population growth, in order to reconnect metal with money.
Which leaves stockpiling silver because of other, practical uses of the metal. And sorry, but silver isn't really all that useful or necessary - especially at our current technological level. If we hadn't all gone digital back in the 1990s and silver was still essential for photography, it might have been another story.
If the American government needed silver, it wouldn't have to go to the radical step of "confiscating it" from everybody. All it needs to do is implement an active silver recovery programme, as most other countries have already done decades ago. All the silver sitting around in bank vaults would disappear overnight, and the privately-held stockpiles of silver would gradually decline as people who didn't know any better deposited old silver coins in the banks. All the silver the government could possibly want, and acquired completely voluntarily.
Don't say "infinitely" when you mean "very"; otherwise, you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. - C. S. Lewis
That's ok though, silver has a great many other industrial uses.
It is the best conductor in the universe and also the most reflective material.
I am certain it's applications will only increase as we go more digital. Every cellphone in existence had silver in it, last I checked.
These electric cars use silver, and especially copper.
Production goes down every year. Demand increases most years.
The fundamentals on silver are fine, if only paper contracts actually represented actual silver ounces, aye?
But then there is that inconvenience of silver being a monetary metal for 5000 years as well.
Not everyone has forgotten. It is entirely possible once the current fiat currency reaches its intrinsic value ( the good will and faith of our government) $0.
When that happens all bets are off. The treasury doesn't take well to competitors, nor do the banking cartels who now own them.
At any rate this is a fun exercise in " what if," if nothing else.
Well lets just say Government officials will not come over to every American household and demand you to turn over every piece of silver that you own . Heck no , they are not getting their corrupt hands on my stash that I've accumulated in the last 56 years .
The gold confiscation of 1933 occurred when the US economy was still based on the gold standard, the economy was in a crushing depression, and gold was undervalued. Since we have a fiat economy since 1972, silver would not be confiscated to prop up the monetary. But it could certainly be confiscated for any number of other reasons for manufacturing, as could copper, platinum, and other valuable metals. This isn't 1933 and the circumstances no longer exist. Personally, I was surprised to see so much "junk" silver coins still in existence after the price of silver went to $48/oz in 1979 ($140/oz in 2022 dollars). I was sure it was all melted down long ago. As an aside, I only just recently learned that the price of silver went from $1.50/oz in 1894 to 29 cents/oz in 1931.
If equities lose due to a black swan, and the dollar goes full Venezuela, commodities could reach a point or valuation which makes confiscation desirable.
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Posted 02/11/2022 07:13 am
