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Gold/Mining/Energy : Silver prices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TD who wrote (2998)	9/29/2000 12:49:11 PM
From: TD	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 8010

From : James Cook Interview @ investment rarities inc. Anyone remember silver guru Jerome Smith? SILVER SMITH Jerome Smith was a pal of mine. In the early 1970's he wrote a book, "Silver Profits in the Seventies." After I read it I couldn't get into the silver business fast enough. For two years I lugged 55 pound bags of 90% silver coins around in my trunk and delivered them to local customers I'd sold over the phone. The bags were around $1300 when I started. With a $1,000 face value they were the safest and best investment of the decade. Subsequently, silver multiplied in price over 25 times. I ordered dozens of Smith's book and gave them to my prospects. If they bothered to read it, they bought silver. Jerome's book had a powerful effect on the silver market. People began to buy silver because of it. Even Bunker Hunt was said to have been heavily influenced by "Silver Profits in the Seventies." Jerome Smith also wrote an influential monthly newsletter. He predicted with uncanny accuracy the rise in gold and silver. He followed that with a bullish report on platinum that was another home run. For me at the time, he was a giant among men. In 1979 he came to Minneapolis to visit us. All who knew of him treated him like royalty. I took him downtown to visit a silver dealer and the sales girl literally swooned when I introduced him. We stopped at a cigar store where he purchased some tobacco. He asked the clerk if they accepted paper money. It laid me away. I laughed for days at the great one's joke. Jerome did not manage his fame well. He drank. He could be downright cranky if questioned. Once at a monetary conference he took my head off for asking a question. Who could forget his long, rambling monotone speeches at these conferences. People would cheer him despite the fact he soon put them to sleep. One day I smelled booze on his breath before he spoke. It was my first clue about his drinking problem that grew worse and worse. In the early eighties his writing lost its verve as did the luster on precious metals. For Jerome, silver was now profitless. He soon had tax trouble. Perhaps it was purposeful. He despised the government. Once he told me they were the root of all evil. He claimed that everything wrong in the world could be traced to government action. Apparently he was pursued by the tax authorities. He retreated to Costa Rica where financial problems continued to plague him. His drinking grew worse. A printing business he owned failed. Soon thereafter he died. By chance I came across his ex-wife a few years ago. Barbara was a secretary for a mining company in Vancouver that I owned shares in. She told me of his severe drinking problem. It was a sad end to a troubled personality. In a sense, he threw away a decade of brilliant forecasting that should have been a solid business foundation. His personal devils bested him and he retreated into self-destructive drinking that shortened his life. Jerome's basic premise was that silver demand exceeded supply. Industrial demand was going to grow and higher prices wouldn't fix the shortage of silver. That was because silver supply came primarily as a byproduct of copper and gold mining. Higher prices for silver wouldn't cause copper miners to produce more copper to get more silver. It all made sense until the price of silver went up ten times. That unleashed a hoard of silver coins and scrap in America and elsewhere. People in the U.S. lined up to sell their silverware. This flood of metal confounded Jerome Smith predictions and helped to derail the Hunts. SILVER REDUX Fast forward thirty years and Jerome Smith's prophecies about a permanently higher silver price are at last ready to fall into place. But even he would be shocked at the level to which the price of silver may escalate soon. Jerome wrote about a historic confluence of bullish factors. Today these factors and others have come together once again to create an explosive situation the likes of which you will never see again in this lifetime. The new factors are both bizarre and incredibly bullish beyond anyone's ability to fully comprehend. What it will lead to cannot be plotted or guessed at. It's beyond prediction. It's just too fantastic. Basically, all the bullish trends that Smith argued for are intact but even more so. Superimposed on this super-bullish story are the actions of mining companies, central bankers, governments and big speculators to create an enormous market in paper silver, which has the most profound ramifications for the price of the metal. The whole story will take your breath away. Smith had a great line in his book about how great profit opportunities are rare, but if you had the patience to read his message carefully you would see such an opportunity in silver. Frankly, I believe this could be the 1970's all over again. Once in private Jerome told me, we would see the day that silver was worth more than gold. There's a chance he will be right.