Precious metals supply/demand during this panic

Finance
#1

From Texas Precious Metals email. They are clearly trying to sell product but it shows how the precious metals market is ill-equipped to handle this panic. Something to consider if you are holding precious metals for just this kind of scenario.

As of this morning, the United States Mint is out of Silver American Eagles, and the backlog is tremendous. To ramp up manufacturing production to meet demand will likely take weeks, if not months.

The effects of these events will cause an increase in premiums on the sell side as well as the buy side. We have begun raising premiums on products to compensate for supply/demand constraints. To put it simply, inventory is getting more expensive for us. Additionally, we will be raising our buy back prices aggressively on popular products to help offset demand.

We have been aggressively buying hundreds of thousands of ounces of silver to create a pipeline of future supply. Some of this inventory will hit our facility next week. When these products arrive, we will make them available to you and announce this availability via email. We will sell them on a first come, first serve basis. Expect products to move quickly as investors seek a safe haven for assets during this uncertain time.

**see update below **

#2

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#3

I have a few silver eagles bought at off price a while back. However, after due consideration:

They are not for sale.

So far my purchase of those eagles is proof positive that from time to time even the blind squirrel finds an acorn. :grinning:

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#4

Won’t matter. Toilet paper will be America’s new currency.

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#5

I don’t see how silver coins would be useful in this situation at all. Aside from few being able to assay authenticity, seems like one would want to avoid touching hard surfaces. I guess you could have the buyer throw the payment in bleach before inspecting it…

Edit: silver price has been falling…
https://www.kitco.com/charts/livesilver.html

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#7

Purell and N95 masks too.

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#8

I noticed how gold didn’t respond like past economic crisis. I guess when the chip is down and the crisis on a true global scale, gold just isn’t all it’s crack up to be.

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#9

I like silver better. It’s more granular.

#10

I still have a few 1oz silver coins, spiff (sales incentive) from my days as a retail computer sales person. At the time it was worth about $5 each.

#11

Just got this from Texas Precious Metals. Notice the confusion with the Mar 15/16 dates. Looks like things are getting unhinged there.

  • Thursday, March 19th will be our last day of shipping. All existing orders, as well as any orders placed on Monday, 3/15, will ship this week provided we receive payment before 12pm CST on Tuesday.

  • If you have selected “Payment by Check” and you do not believe your check will arrive by Tuesday at 12pm CST, please email operations@texmetals.com (mailto:operations@texmetals.com) and we can send you documentation that will allow us to pull funds from your account directly.

  • If you order on Tuesday, March 16th, or after, your only shipping option will be to store at Texas Precious Metals Depository (https://texasdepository.com/) . We are offering two months of free storage to all customers who open an account in the month of March. When normal operations resume, you can choose to continue storing at normal rates, or we can ship your metal to you. If you intend to use this facility, please open an account at texasdepository.com (http://texasdepository.com/) .

  • Effective immediately, we are temporarily raising our minimum order quantity to $1,000. This will not affect any pre-existing orders.

edit: I do not think I will be storing any gold purchases at their depository :grinning:

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#12

I looked back a bit. When things are bad, gold goes up. When things get REALLY BAD, gold goes down. I think its a case of folks that are over-leveraged having to sell anything and everything in order to cover – including selling gold.

I suspect that today is a part of gold going back up (unless things get way worse again.).

To me, gold is a great hedge when you don’t TOTALLY need it and not a hedge at all when you really do need it.

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#13

Difficult for me to comprehend why this thread is not seeing heavy activity at this time. Precious metals prices are going nuts. However, I need your help with gold.

My gold stash consists primarily of several pounds of old 386, 486, and also some old AMD microprocessors. Also have a lot of old boards, with gold flashing on their contact fingers, that plugged into the old MOBOs. This stuff is from back in the days I used to build and repair computers.

I have been holding onto my stash for a number of years because gold prices were, in my view, pretty low. Well:

Things have changed big time, gold is up and rising, and time has come to unload my gold. Also I’m not gonna live forever . . . so this is it! Question is: who will pay the most for my entire gold stash?

Anybody know?

#14

I know this is months later, but I don’t see any confusion. Am I overlooking something?

#15

Outside of CPUs, probably local is better to avoid shipping costs. 386/486 CPUs should be somewhere north of $100/lb. AMDs probably a quarter of that so $25-30/lb. Memories maybe $10/lbs. MOBOs and PCBs $1-4/lb so definitely don’t want to bother shipping those.

Make sure you also look at their requirements. Some have minimum weight amounts, most require battery removal and aluminum/steel stripping or they’ll deduct it from prices.

P.S.: That was from a fund raiser e-waste recycling drive I organized from the school 2 years ago so prices may be up a bit since then.

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#16

Thank you, Shandril. It is very kind of you to pass that information along, and I appreciate it. However:

Need to make a confession:

I’m already, yes so soon, having second thoughts. This has nothing at all to do with your information which, again, I appreciate.

It’s just that I’m not seeing anything, any likelihood, gold prices will turn around and descend. Even bitcoin, sometimes thought of as “digital gold”, is skyrocketing. And the American dollar is doing ever more poorly.

This trend will obviously run its course at some point. We may not be there yet.

#17

I understand. Timing for best gold price is tricky.

Note that there may be a bit of a pricing delay with the recycler. Basically for us, they gave us a price ballpark but it depended on the market prices after they were done with processing which takes apparently 2-4 months. So we got a slightly different price than originally quoted based on weight of e-wastes we sold them.

Research your favorite recycler and see if they use a similar pricing scheme as that could condition the timing of your sale.

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#18

I hadn’t even noticed that gold was on a run.

Guess the gold bugs haven’t been able to get any air time.

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#19

Scripta has noticed. He is finagling some sort of precious metals deal. But he is keeping lots of shade on it and has not posted yet here on our precious metals thread.

#20

Ha. I wish I was finagling anything.

I was gonna sell a few coins in April to make up for some of my other losses, but I’m glad I dragged my feet. I think I’ll continue dragging my feet a little longer just to see where this goes.

Also I only noticed the silver run-up because of your silver eagle thread. Usually I only pay some attention to gold.

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#21

Gold and silver continue up strongly, gold now above the magical $2000/oz. price point. However

Gold remains cheap, on an inflation adjusted price basis, vis a vis 2011-2012 pricing. Hence, gold price continues to have upside potential.

1 Like