Will Silver Hit 1980-S High Then Crash

what is eft?

There's a whole bunch of people who were trading in paper silver futures a few years ago (ETF's, exchange-trade funds such as iShares Silver Trust Fund, NYSE listing SLV) , who now want real physical bullion.

Why? When the Dow went kablooie in fall 2008, the big boys cashed out their "precious metal" paper ETF futures to pay for stock market margin calls.

The spot prices for gold and silver dropped even as small-scale investor demand for physical gold & silver was at record highs.
ASE's were going for $8 over spot locally, so even when spot silver dipped to its $8.83 low, the actual ASE bullion coins were still flying out the door at $17.

The Hunts were basically trying to buy as much silver as they possibly could via contracts, but their goal was to obtain the physical metal. The typical ETF traders of yore (pre-2008) didn't really want physical silver, or even care if there was enough physical metal to back the ETF's...

bibd's post makes excellent points as to why there could be a correction period after silver passes the symbolic $50 barrier.
As he said, we (the posters on this thread) won't be buying @ $50, and would in fact consider a correction from $50 down to $30 as a "buying opportunity". because we agree with bibd about the long-term prospects.

"Based on the overwhelming optimism here in this thread, I fear silver is close to done."

That is a conclusion based on psychology while ignoring the fundamentals and the global marklets and supply/demand situation.

Ozzie, there is a nice chart of silver price going back to 1840 on a website called wikipedia. I went to the site and searched "silver prices".
But here is a curiosity to consider... my (former) landlord, started buying physical gold when it was at $400. He is absolutely ecstatic over current prices. But he doesn't dare sell... if he sells all his gold... THEN WHAT? What will be his hedge against inflation? Interesting delima. I am convinced he'll never cash it in.

sounds like an interesting game plan hockingzig. What do you plan on growing?

I bought my first gold coin, a sovereign for $15 in 1968 as a teenager, but I was NOT looking for gold as an investment then. I have bought perhaps sixty gold coins since then, and in each case, the bullion factor was never my motivation.

I have about 35 gold coins now, ranging in age over perhaps 2300 years, but the vast majority of them are less than 150 years old. With these coins, I have been forced to consider the factor of the gold value in the purchase, but always the numismatic interest has always been the dominant deciding factor.

In my case gold coins have to be part of my collection, because they occupy a legitimate place in numismatics, and have to be considered like any other metal.

The only coin I have bought for purely bullion reasons is the Australian platinum one ounce Koala, which I bought in 1996 for $AUD 500. The U.S.$ price at the time would have been around $350. I still have it. I like Koalas, and I like the design of the coin.

Even so, numerically, only about 1.5% of my collection is of gold coins.

Good stuff Hockinzig we are on same page, being ready just in case, as opposed to getting caught with pants down unprepared. Ammo an weapons, water purification an first aid kits, land an mre's....

I found this below on ebay an thought about buying one of these five gallon buckets. It alone is 275 servings (a 3 month supply for two people), and a shelf life for 20 years. If anything did happen perhaps this 128 dollar investment could buy you 3 months, and who knows that could be the difference between life and death....

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-MRE-FOOD-EM...em1c1a0f8b81