nicejim

Silver holding up better than gold at the moment. g:s ratio is 64.25!

I'm just going for a rummage in my cellar

What happened an hour ago? I've just noticed that the price of gold, silver, US stocks and treasuries all fell sharply at the same time. daily treasuries: http://money.cnn.com/markets/bondcenter/?

Darn, I'll have to look through my bag again. I'll get a magnet this time though.

I'm glad I'm not the only one. 3 kilos though! You must have been doing this a long time, or are you going out on raids? The ratio of old coins will fall as new ones are minted but also those who are allowed to melt them down for scrap will do so. Are you sure? I've only got 3 but they all make a very different noise to a 1988 coin when tapped and allowed to reverberate. They sound much more like a 2000 coin.

My sentiments exactly. It worked out to the equivalent of about £10 off an Elizabeth sovereign. There were no examples of this coin on ebay UK but ebay Austria had 6 on offer this morning. 550! Plenty of people felt otherwise then. If it was Britannias at spot I'd have bitten their arm off.

We can do it in the UK with copper. Before 1992 1p and 2p coins were made of copper, containing 3.45g of copper per penny. Not as good as silver but there have been times when they're worth more as scrap. I always check the dates and keep the copper ones separate!

And this one... From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCzvEyAHXLc $8 profit http://silvercoinsdirect.stores.yahoo.net/19kehado.html

Aye to that! I last bought silver Phillies (2009 edition) in January when spot was £8/oz and the netto price was £11.48. Today spot is 15% up and the netto price is down to £11.10.

1650 will be the new 1200

Perhaps 930 is the new 850.

Why not buy silver? The gold:silver ratio has just dipped back below 65, possibly on its way to <50. http://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=$GOL...id=p35412651819

Good find. That should be more shocking than it is - at the end I just felt "whatever, more of the same". If he wants to know where the money went he should audit goldman sachs.

In last week's "Cranford," set in 1843, one character receives a £5 note as an inheritance. He goes to a dress shop to buy a shawl for his girlfriend but the shopkeeper tells him the issuing bank is about to fail. Judi Dench's character hears this and, as her wealth is entirely in that bank, doesn't want it to be true. As if it will make a difference, she gives the man 5 sovereigns for his note. 5 sovereigns = £750. Would you take a £750 note to a small town shop and expect them to have change for a shawl? Would you carry £750, possibly more, on your person just on the off-chance you'll need it? I'm not sure if this exchange was in the original book or created by a modern screenwriter wanting to make a link to the credit crunch but who didn't know the value of gold! Edit: allowing for price reductions due to technological advances over the last 166 years, a 0.5% annual reduction equates to a factor of 0.44, 1% to 0.19. So with 1% "price deflation" £750 today would be worth £142.50 in 1843.

http://goldmoney.com/en/report-monthly.html Metal/Currency Amount Held GoldGrams - London 6,001,621.969gg GoldGrams - Zurich 6,770,676.786gg Silver - London 6,219,367.800oz Silver - Zurich 9,388,515.851oz Why are silver investors so much more inclined to use the Zurich vault, compared with gold investors?

I might start at 50 but agree it could well go lower. 65.98 now.

gold/silver = 66.36!

Insight: Gold standard debate roars on http://www.ft.com/cms/s/6c43927c-2456-11de...144feabdc0.html Unfortunately I'm up to my 30-day limit for free articles on the FT site but the above might interest people here, as may the below. I'll be reading them next week. Ten principles for a Black Swan-proof world http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5d5aa24e-23a4-11...144feabdc0.html

Perhaps there's an April thread...hiding somewhere

Nice vid, GF. Why should silver's price be based on its rarity compared to that of gold though? The cost to produce must come into it if gold and silver do become generally accepted as money. Incidentally, talk of shortages is off the mark. SLV has so much silver it can't fit it all in its vault... http://gata.org/node/7318 http://gata.org/node/7319 I hope everyone enjoyed the Dry Powder Moment today and appreciates the effort these bankers go to to get us our cheap metal.

What will this do to the velocity of money? Destocking at firesale prices will intensify in the next few weeks but it is just the sea going out before the tsunami strikes. A great time to buy - stick it on the credit card! Prediction on Economic Turning Point ahead - Going into deep Deflation and Asset Price Devaluation From: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Re2fnIyIdQ0

Stuff like this happens too often, and too conveniently, to be a coincidence. Price goes down as soon as NYMEX opens, then the FED announces QE and the price explodes upwards. Either they want to kick people out of their positions (make them nervous, trigger stops etc) to make a quick buck on the news they know is coming, or they want to suppress the price because, left alone, gold will tell the world the truth.

Naked shorting involves selling something you don't own, so I'm against it...unless it keeps the price of gold and silver temporarily suppressed. Imagine you know 2 people, one who likes to take big risks with his money and one who prefers to have his capital generate an income but can handle more risk than he can get from bonds. Suppose one owns part of a company that has grown from nothing in the last few years and now is a well known player in its industry with a steady stream of income. The risk taker would benefit from selling to the more risk averse person, and you are in a position to make it happen. You get the two together and broker the sale, taking a small fee for the introduction. So far there is no short term trading going on, but what if there is a bit of uncertainty introduced? The company is planning to expand its operations but the return on the new investment is less than the risk-taking owner can get elsewhere, so he wants to get his money out. The other potential investor doesn't like the sound of the planned expansion - he wants to see how it plays out before committing any cash. In this scenario you might decide to investigate the potential of the expansion and hold a stake in the company whilst the expansion takes place. This isn't very short term but you'd still effectively be a trader. More importantly, it is not the act of trading that has introduced the instability. What would happen if you knew the risk taker but not the other person? You might still want to buy his stake if you believe you can find someone to sell to at a later date. In this scenario you are purely a trader, and are speculating too. But what are you speculating on? It's not the stability of the price of the company, it's the possibility of finding someone to sell to at a reasonable price above what you need to buy for. You say trading is similar to gambling, but there are 2 ways to gamble. Which one are you? a) You guess the outcome and find the best price b) You make a guess at how many times an outcome would occur if the scenario was played out 10 times, then find odds which are better than that Edit: to be continued... http://www.greenenergyinvestors.com/index.php?showtopic=6295

I'm sure that no one would doubt the need for investing, so I was making the case for investing only to show that trading is a necessary part of the game, whose foundations are investments, and that there is anot necessarily a loser for each winner. Insurance, reinsurance, CDSs etc are all, when taken at face value, sensible products built on the same foundations. Clearly something went wrong but I'm not sure that the problems we face are from people making a fast buck, or that legislating against short-term investing either would be possible or could make things better. Perhaps it's simply the case that there was too much money to finance the finite extent of future growth, leading people to [metaphor type=badly_inserted]try to extend the building without increasing those foundations[/metaphor]. Yep, what people want is the thought that they can make lots of money by next week but what they need is to know how to prepare for their retirement or their kids' college fees. Unfortunately the market gives people what they want. Edit: that metaphor didn't read well ;-)