and this sudden price rise is freaking me out a little.

Then, look at the way bitcoin is being whipsawed.

Smells like crime and manipulation...

I think AI speculation is the only thing propping up stocks... I think we might be in for a hard crash.

Highly likely, the current "tulip mania" cannot realistically continue much longer.

It may continue depending on demand versus industrial supply and will certainly set a new price floor. The issue with gold and silver is that the market is full of scammers and price pumpers at all times.

A lot of mine was passed down, and it holds sentimental value.

... the type of jewelry people in SE Asia buy as a savings account, and boy has it increased in value. Less than $40/oz back then!

But the good stuff, we're holding onto. Some "savings account stuff" we've sold for melt to get a modern piece. We do have a serious safe. It would two guys and a jackhammer to get it out.















1

Going out to rent a jack hammer and find another guy.

I’m on the way!

... magic marker putting zeros after the denominations of currency.

We need deflation which only comes with rough times.

A slightly weaker dollar makes our exports cheaper to the rest of the world, and makes imports more expensive, thus relieving pressure on local manufacturers without having to resort to tariffs. But it has to be micromanaged and watched like a hawk by serious professionals so as not to lead to runaway inflation.

dollar. It is a new world order in which the US is being left out.

Traditionally this was compared to the pound sterling, EQ, or one of the lesser currencies. That is changing and nobody seems to even notice.

THere are about $2.4 trillion of dollars in circulation. There is about $3 trillion of crypto in circulation. OK, nobody is buying their groceries with Bitcoin and most car dealers don't take crypto. But it is functioning as a real currency, enabling some of the biggest deals that are happening. And the stuff is literally conjured out of thin air.

Generally speaking, the crypto kiddies have never made anything real in their lives. They don't make cars or refrigerators. They mostly don't even make much software, and the software they do create keeps losing track of billions of dollars worth of coin. But they don't care. They can just create more.

If you thought it was insane to allow a few Federal Reserve banksters to control all our money, well this is even worse.

I don't know where this all leads, but it is clear that our lawmakers don't understand it, or maybe they just don't care, because they will happily take "campaign contributions" in any crypto you want to use.

Demand of industrial silver is outstripping supply. People have fled to gold and silver as a safe-haven. The availability of industrial silver is below what is required for next generation memory and gpu demand. The price is skyrocketing but the smelters are now not buying due to the price plus supply as everyone is selling. We’ll see what happens Monday in the market.

industrial applications. I'm just now starting to read about this...

Silver I own plus its impact on tech stocks. I’ll look into graphene. During periods of uncertainty, investments tend to flow into stable markets like heavy metals, plus the uptick in AI. Silver can just as easily fall quickly. Extreme price run ups in anything don’t tend to end well.

1979-1980. Two sons of the late oil magnate H.L. Hunt made an attempt to corner the silver market by buying futures contracts and taking delivery when the contracts expired. When the supply of physical silver dried up due to their manipulation, their scheme caught the attention of regulators, who stepped in to limit futures contracts, causing the Hunts' scheme to collapse. Consequently, they were forced to sell their holdings at huge losses, and eventually were forced into bankruptcy (although they nevertheless came out of it quite wealthy anyway). I think one (maybe both) of them was convicted of fraud for the scheme, fined millions of dineros, and banned from the commodities markets. It was quite a scandal, and led Congress and regulators to write some new rules.

As demand goes up, the cost efficiency of making graphene should improve substantially.
It's a highly energy intensive process so it will never be "cheap" but as it's possible to make to meet demand, unlike mined metals, the supply of which is finite). It will likely always be cheaper than silver, until enough graphebe is used to greatly lower demand for silver.
Graphene not only has better conductivity, but electrons actually flow through it faster than metal wires.
Every little bit of speed is probably a big deal to the tech manufacturers.

New battery tech is using more silver, especially in China. Some of the new solid state battery tech is also dependent on silver, some using around a kilogram of silver for each 100kwh of battery capacity.

Gold and silver prices are increasing due to the following:
Investors are moving money into gold as a safe haven rather than in currencies that are flat.
Softer monetary policies such as rate cutes .
Central banks are buying more gold
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gold-price-silver-whats-behind-the-surge/

I don't own gold or invest in it. The only silver I have is in the form of coins I collected when I was a teenager through my 30s. I don't consider them an investment because I just like the look and feel of them. For me, investing in precious metals is too risky because any change in the geopolitical landscape can spike or crash the precious metals very quickly.

mainly as an inflation hedge.

But imagine you had $50,000 to invest in gold or silver when Bill Clinton’s term ended. Confidence in the US economy was at a record high. Gold sank to about $250 an ounce, and silver was back down to about $4.50. If that represented 5% of your net worth, then you were worth $1 million then. If you held on to the position, your investment would be worth about $900,000 today, minus capital gains taxes. If THAT is 5% of your net worth, congratulations, because it means you’re worth $18 million (if we meet, dinner is on you). Of course, if you had invested that much in Apple stock and held on to it until now, I don’t think my calculator has enough zeros to tell me what THAT would be worth.

Tesla and his space program "silver". Seems like self serving advise. to me.

of dollars or more it makes more sense to buy gold at $4500.00

Personally, i don't touch crypto.

There's something to be said for investing in something you can hold in your hand. Something physical that you can touch, physical metals.

I don't like "paper" gold or silver. ie: stocks that give you shares in metals that you hold only electronically.

Can't even get a stock certificate these days for the stocks you own without paying for the cert and jumping through hoops. It's all electronic, and it's all manipulated.

There will only be 21,000,000 bitcoin EVER! We are at over 19,000,000 mined right now. I started buying btc when it was $9000. I'm at 10x my money. I avoid all the wierd coins and cryptos. Bitcoins the one. Better than gold.

so it isn't merely an economic speculative vehicle--- but does have a rarity.


From my non-professional observation, it may be an an even better bet than gold...

I hope to be able to invest a little in silver ETFs in the coming year,
with perhaps a little in gold ETFs as well...

Silver eagles...

90% junk coins, 1964 and earlier

Bars and rounds...

That's what I do. I like the whole collectability aspect of it mostly.

He likes collecting, searching for what he's missing, trading etc. I think he said it's the Morgan silver dollars that are his 'thing'. And I know he's sold off a bunch of his less desirable stuff and converted into bars. But he's put together some pretty nice collections over the years. Back in the early 2000s he sold off almost all of what he'd collected to pay for some huge medical bills. (He had no insurance then and didn't know he was eligible for care at the VA) Then in recent years he's gotten back into it but on a much smaller scale. I know he's spent a lot of time in the 'stacker' community online.

when I still had a car running, and it had reached a high price (I thought)
which was about one-third of THIS high--- LOL I kick myself,
but I had no other choice at the time....


So now, when I have no owned transportation,
the ETFs would seem a better option to purchase any position in silver
(and more based upon the spot price, without premiums for physical ownership)

Both metals are very good electrical conductors. You can look at any plug-n-play computer component and see gold contacts.

New battery tech is using more silver, especially in China. Some of the new solid state battery tech is also dependent on silver, some using around a kilogram of silver for each 100kwh of battery capacity.

this rise in the price of gold is despite the fact that Russia has sold China almost $2 billion (with a b) worth of gold in the last couple months...and that is just what has been reported. more than that is suspected.

so, despite the fact that Russia essentially dumping gold on the market (yes, I realize these sales aren't exactly "on the market", but they are filling a market that presumably would have been filled from other sources)...gold has gone from about $2600/oz to $4500/oz in about a year. Who knows what it may have been without these sales.

An aside: it seems to me China is hoarding gold for a big economic collapse. But that is an uneducated opinion.

Silver from about $30 to $80 in the same timeframe, but silver looks MUCH more parabolic in this one year timeframe, so I kinda think silver may "crash" back down to $50 or so.

anyway, just some idle thoughts.

This reduces worldwide supply, while demand remains status quo, or increases. Hence, it's at least a contributor to the price rise.

I haven't been following gold too much, but I'm going to research what China is doing with that...

double #2 China. Will Trump want take over Mexico next?

Meaning...that once silver broke a certain suppressed price resistance, it's off to the races.

It's too late

But I've been watching it every morning for decades, so I've been aware, but I'm too poor to buy more!

I read something a long time ago that has always stuck with me. I will paraphrase:

Gold is NOT a way to get rich.
Gold is a way to move a portion of your wealth from one side of an economic crises to the other side. That is all.

That is why I believe in holding ones gold/silver unless you have a real need for it like RIGHT NOW. If you die holding gold/silver/etc, pass it on to whoever with the above advice.

now might be a good time. Sadly, I cashed in the gold stash during a previous high. If anyone wonders, it's stuff I picked up at yard sales and found in a recycling shed at the town dump so it's not like I have a pile of Tiffany jewelry laying around the house.

Last edited Sun Dec 28, 2025, 08:49 PM - Edit history (1)

Like 2008.

I own my house outright. Even if the value of it dropped to $1, I still have a place to live.

As a side note, I keep getting calls and texts asking me to sell it. I tell them $10 million, cash, or FO. Strangely, I stop hearing from them after that.

Can’t tell you a date or time, but it’s coming

Very odd.

And putting it in precious metals.

but would take a loss.

Stash Wealth in a more stable place.

And they either pump it or dump it, depending on their needs at the current time.

I got caught up in the latest drop. Just tax loss harvested some Etha BMNR and Coinbase. Of course now they'll go up in January. But I've learned my lesson. No more crypto!

and passing it down to the next generation.

And its projected to increase greatly as more new technologies use more silver and more and more large batteries are needed, especially in China.

$15.29 increase in one week. 46% in one month. This is nuts.

The melt value of a single morgan dollar is $64, this is really changing the collectors markets.

You can buy 2025 proof Morgans and peace dollars for $95 right from the mint, couple more weeks of this and the melt value will be the same or more than the retail coin price.

Eta a mercury dime is worth $6 melt. Jesus.

I have rolls and rolls of mercury and Barber dimes.

Morgans, Peace dollars, Franklins, and Barber coins of all denominations. Some have numismatic value as well, but most don't.

That’s the mystery. People are buying more, but it’s the industrial usage of silver driving this. 70% of silver is used in industrial applications. China stopping shipping silver because their demand exceeds their production. The US needs to declare silver as strategic as well, or we will be short for chips, batteries and solar production.

Near the city if Taxco, there are (or were—I haven’t been there in decades) several mountains of such rich silver ore, it seemed they’d never run out.

Gold dropped to $4465 and silver dropped to $75. Of course, some traders will be representing global scale clients such as world-wide industrial users and/or central banks doing year-end close-outs of positions, and that can lead to exaggerated movements in the markets that have no other real cause.

$4365 or so.

Like I said—year end position squaring will cause some volatility.

Last edited Tue Dec 30, 2025, 03:42 PM - Edit history (1)

Link to tweet

This morning.

https://www.apmex.com/silver-price

has beaucoup rare earth minerals.

Damn.

Maybe in the next couple weeks.

Gold is about to top 5k/oz.

And tariffs.

Metals and Crypto can be stores of value for people.

😯

Unreal.