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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (83877)	8/27/2008 7:41:45 PM
From: Little Joe	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116555

Mish: For what it is worth. When gold and silver made its major top, one of the signs of the top was that coin dealers would not pay prices commensurate with the price that was indicated by the price of silver and gold. This proved to be predictive of a top. Of course it may not work the same this time, but I suspect that prices will go higher as soon as the money starts dropping from the helicopters. Little joe

To: mishedlo who wrote (83877)	8/27/2008 8:59:07 PM
From: Proud Deplorable	Respond to of 116555

"just not the forms the small retail investor wants" think about this absurd statement of theirs.....then what kind of silver DO they want LOL and since there is obvious demand why aren't they addressing this? I would. It takes nothing on their part to melt those useless 1000 ounce bars and supply the public. If they are unwilling to do this it maybe as Hommel says...no supply. You mean ALL the mints don't have enough silver to supply a hungry public, even places that manufacture bullion...like this? bullion.nwtmint.com

To: mishedlo who wrote (83877)	8/27/2008 9:42:19 PM
From: Proud Deplorable	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116555

Auction: 25 silver 100 oz. bars, JM or Engelhards (First time auction!) Mish, this is not a solicitation but only to show what's happening out there right now in the retail silver market. Silver Stock Report by Jason Hommel, August 27th, 2008 I have 25 bars of .999 fine 100 oz. silver available for bidding, and available for immediate shipment. Terms: Available to bidders in the USA only. Auction ends August 29th, Friday, Noon. Bid over spot. Email me how much you are willing to pay, over the spot price. Spot price will be Friday's London Silver Fix, as listed: kitco.com Minimum bid: $1.50 USD over spot, per ounce. Specify the total amount over spot you are willing to pay, such as $1.75 over spot, etc. The winning bid will be about +/-$13.50 plus something over $1.50 = $15.00 x 2500 = $37,500+ All or nothing, whole lot only. No partial lot bids. Specifiy if you want JM's or Engelhards. Winning bidder will be notified via email, wire transfer instructions. Only bank wires will be accepted. No checks, no CC, no cash. Free, insured, shipping, to anywhere in the USA ONLY, included in the price. Upon receipt of wire, I'll ship. After the auction, I will release the range of bids, but not the name of any bidder. I accept no responsibility if your email bid gets lost and does not arrive, or gets lost in the spam filter. Email via "returned receipt requested" to help ensure delivery of your bid. ======================= Sales Pitch / Market Info: As you may know, most dealers are out of 100 oz. bars, cannot get any, cannot find any. I believe most major dealers regularly hedge in paper, as a standard business practice, and cannot now find bars from the public to buy, because the public is now buying more than selling. Dealers are getting hit by the disconnect, the premium on physical products, which is not covered by the futures contracts. Dealers who remain sold out, will remain out of business. Tulving is offering to buy 100 oz. bars at 60 cents over spot, but is sold out. tulving.com CNI is also sold out: golddealer.com Bulliondirect has only 1 bar on offer at $2180! Oh my! bulliondirect.com z).html APMEX has "APMEX" bars at about $1.25 over spot, but only 14 of them, and those are not JM. apmex.com Bars are selling at ebay for $1700, over $3.00 over spot, but usually only 1 bar at a time. Search "100 ounce silver bar" at ebay.com I expect these 25 silver bars to auction for between $2-4 over spot. Johnson Matthey is 8-10 weeks behind on orders, and is no longer taking orders. Johnson Matthey is reported to have a manufacturing capacity of only 300-400 bars per week, which is barely 2 million oz. per year, in a market that is demanding about 60-100 million ounces per year. All the "old" bars, manufactured over the last 25-50 years, are being tightly held by investors. I believe the current shortage of silver in nearly all forms, is not a manufacturing issue, because all of the old dates of eagles, and old bars, are also sold out. One current rumor is that a large trader placed an order for 50,000 Krugerrands. This vastly increased the premiums for gold coins across the board. This is a $45 million order, which is small change in terms of world finance, but huge in the tiny world of physical gold and silver dealers. Some people may wonder if I'm selling out. I'm not. These are bars from some of my readers, that I now offer to you. I'll sell mine, and use the cash to buy these, to insure no default to you, and help insure the highest possible price to the real seller. I will earn a small spread, and I'll get to test the market to see a depth of bids. Current market conditions are highly unusual. Physical silver 100 ounce bars are hard to find in large quantity except on ebay.com, yet the price of silver has recently dropped, which seems to contradict all known forms of supply/demand price dynamics. I can only understand it, and explain it, if the futures market is unduly and unfairly impacting the price. Bar price 'premiums' over the paper might not last. They might increase. Bidders are expected to know what they are doing. Further information on current unusual market conditions: Once-upon-a-time, in 'never-never' land, there were two competing silver prices Peter Degraaf Aug 27, 2008 321gold.com Special Got Gold Report - Silver Investors Sucker Punched by Two U.S. Banks By Gene Arensberg Aug 25th resourceinvestor.com Eagle Rationing: Where there's Smoke, there's Fire Monday, August 25, 2008 new.goldmau.com I'm surprised by the following editorial by Mark O'Byrne, who recognizes the shortage of physical silver and gold as something unique. I castigated this man severely a few months ago, for his "faith" in the promises of paper certificates. Gold Investments Market Update - U.S. and Russian Warships in Black Sea as Tensions Escalate Mark O`ByrneFont Scale: 25 August 2008 ibtimes.com ================= Be very, very careful about ordering silver right now. Demand to know exactly when they can deliver. If they can't guarantee delivery within a week or your full money back, then consider that they probably don't have it! In fact, now might be a good time to meet up other Silver Stock Report readers at YOUR LOCAL COIN SHOP. Usually, I might visit my local coin shop once a month. Usually, there are 0-2 other people in the shop, at most. Suppose if all buyers during a month show up all at once? Clearly, the shop will be sold out immediately, if it isn't already. I think that would leave an impression on the owner. This will serve several purposes: 1. You will find out that you are not alone. 2. You will impress upon your dealer the amount of demand for silver. 3. The coin shop owner will be more confident and more likely to raise his bids to get silver for everyone, so it's in your own best long term interests to show up. 4. Be sure to tell him about good sources, such as fidelitrade.com, amark.com ($50,000 minimum), wexfordcoin.com ($10,000 minimum) and others where he can buy in bulk, cheaply, if he needs to. I suggest that everyone visit their favorite local coin shop on September 2, at 2PM. That's Tuesday after next. (TWO's-Day) Easy to remember! Sincerely, Jason Hommel www.find-your-local-coin-shop.com www.silverstockreport.com www.miningpedia.com www.bibleprophesy.org

To: mishedlo who wrote (83877)	8/28/2008 12:04:31 AM
From: Proud Deplorable	Respond to of 116555

INDIVIDUAL PURCHASING AT HIGH LEVELS U.S. gold coin demand suggests Asian-style physical metal hoarding spreading to the West The problems the U.S.Mint has had in servicing demand for the popular one ounce Gold Eagle coins suggest that physical gold is again becoming a key store of value for the man in the street in Western economies too. Author: Lawrence Williams Posted: Wednesday , 27 Aug 2008 LONDON - Gold has long been considered a "safe haven" insurance policy by individual investors - and some institutional ones - against rising inflation and non-controllable political, natural and fiscal disasters. In Asian and Middle Eastern cultures this is especially the case with gold and other precious metals being kept against unpredictable needs - and, as a consequence, gold and silver are also used as wedding and festival gifts - indeed in some societies, particularly in India, such gifts are de rigueur in such ceremonies. In Asia and Middle East, private gold hoarding of this type is mostly in the form of jewellery which is usually sold by weight and without the kind of fabrication mark-ups seen in the West, which is one of the reasons jewellery demand is such an important factor in precious metals supply and demand and why a country like India is so important in global demand figures. However, because of big fabrication mark-ups gold and silver jewellery in the West does not carry the same ‘investment' handle and thus is primarily used for decoration, so is perhaps less likely to find its way back on the market in times of need. Therefore much more tradable gold, and silver, coins, with much tinier fabrication premiums, have become the private individual's preferred store of value in many cases, although this has been overtaken to a significant extent by paper holdings like Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) where physical gold is held in vaults to match the paper holdings. It is thus significant that what the U.S. Mint describes as ‘unprecedented' demand is leading to slow deliveries from gold coin dealers who can't keep up with burgeoning demand and, even more significantly the recent halt in deliveries of U.S. one ounce Gold Eagles by the Mint because it has run out of the blanks necessary to mint the coins. According to Richard Smith of coin dealers CSG Inc. in Phoenix writing here a few days ago - Another gold conspiracy unveiled! - the first two weeks of August saw 60,000 coins sold in the U.S. - around ten times the volume recorded in 2007 when sales were at around 12,000 a month. If anything should make the investment community sit up and take notice, this highly publicised temporary shortfall in supply will. Perhaps private sector demand is relatively irrelevant in relation to the volumes of paper and physical gold traded by major funds and banks, which in reality sets the price of the metal, but the pent up gold coin demand on dips in the gold price has to have a psychological impact on those within institutional investment firms and hedge funds who take the decisions on gold investment. It is also perhaps significant that the gold in the ETFs is currently more firmly held, at least at this time, than the recent market fluctuations in the metal price would suggest. Gold has been tracking the oil price very closely indeed, but there are signs in the past few days that there is some divergence between the two - almost certainly buoyed by the strong physical investor demand. Overall though, gold is likely to continue moving counter to the value of the U.S. dollar where the recent uptick has been stuttering. With markets uncertain, the dollar still in trouble, the credit crunch firmly in place and some worrying political strife around the world, gold looks as though it should remain a decent store of value, even if the high price rises anticipated by many at the beginning of this year do not yet materialise.