Friday Evening Post: Where were you when the lights went out?
keets
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Well, this is almost a Friday evening. I ended up at the local shop helping my pal get set for a show on Sunday and then had to work the graveyard, 6PM-6AM. So it is still my Friday.
One thing that comes up from time to time in discussion here is the big silver run-up in 1980. I missed all the fun as the train was picking up speed. Fresh out of the Navy, courting my future wife and hell-bent for leather!! But, man, I sure heard the crash!!! It's always amazed me how the Hunt Brothers were able to purchase so much silver and manipulate the price for as long as they did before their ploy was uncovered. What was it, something like 15 million ounces they had amassed?? Just incredible.
My pal who runs the local coin shop has told me some stories about that period a few times. Evidently, he had gone full-time as a dealer a few years prior, sometime around 1978. He tells me that at the peak of the rush it was all him and his partner could do to buy silver and move it along. People were coming out of the woodwork with anything they thought was silver. Flatware, tea sets, jewelry and lets not forget coins!!! There was just so much that they had no time to even check most of it for key dates or high grade. Just buy at $31 and sell at $33..................
He's told me of a few scams that were going on then, also. That figures, doesn't it? The one that sticks out involved 1973 Brown Box Ike's. I guess at the peak of the frenzy they were selling for something like $100-$120 and people were breaking them out and putting the clad proofs in the resealed boxes. What a scam!!
From what he's told me, it all came to a crashing halt on a Thursday night if I remember correctly. He says that the guy he would sell the "junk" silver to went to bed with a bag worth $16,000 and woke up with a bag worth about $7,000. That must have really sucked. That's also about the time I probably heard about the whole thing, the Hunt Brothers and all. It was quite a big news story for awhile if you're too young to remember.
My questions would be----Was a book ever written about the whole thing, perhaps some type of dialogue with one of the Hunts? And where were you when the lights went out on their scheme? Any stories about the craziness of the whole time that silver was climbing daily and the quick collapse. What about an intuitive opinion about how the whole "meltdown" affected the hobby with the destruction of all the coins involved?
Al H.
One thing that comes up from time to time in discussion here is the big silver run-up in 1980. I missed all the fun as the train was picking up speed. Fresh out of the Navy, courting my future wife and hell-bent for leather!! But, man, I sure heard the crash!!! It's always amazed me how the Hunt Brothers were able to purchase so much silver and manipulate the price for as long as they did before their ploy was uncovered. What was it, something like 15 million ounces they had amassed?? Just incredible.
My pal who runs the local coin shop has told me some stories about that period a few times. Evidently, he had gone full-time as a dealer a few years prior, sometime around 1978. He tells me that at the peak of the rush it was all him and his partner could do to buy silver and move it along. People were coming out of the woodwork with anything they thought was silver. Flatware, tea sets, jewelry and lets not forget coins!!! There was just so much that they had no time to even check most of it for key dates or high grade. Just buy at $31 and sell at $33..................
He's told me of a few scams that were going on then, also. That figures, doesn't it? The one that sticks out involved 1973 Brown Box Ike's. I guess at the peak of the frenzy they were selling for something like $100-$120 and people were breaking them out and putting the clad proofs in the resealed boxes. What a scam!!
From what he's told me, it all came to a crashing halt on a Thursday night if I remember correctly. He says that the guy he would sell the "junk" silver to went to bed with a bag worth $16,000 and woke up with a bag worth about $7,000. That must have really sucked. That's also about the time I probably heard about the whole thing, the Hunt Brothers and all. It was quite a big news story for awhile if you're too young to remember.
My questions would be----Was a book ever written about the whole thing, perhaps some type of dialogue with one of the Hunts? And where were you when the lights went out on their scheme? Any stories about the craziness of the whole time that silver was climbing daily and the quick collapse. What about an intuitive opinion about how the whole "meltdown" affected the hobby with the destruction of all the coins involved?
Al H.
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Comments
Pennies make dollars, and dollars make slabs!
....inflation must be kicking in again this dollar says spend by Dec. 31 2004!
Erik
He was buying loads of silver, people were coming out of the woodwork with the stuff. He was just a small dealer, and he couldn't afford to take the risks associated with the overnight price moves. He had to "lay off" (sell & get a price commitment over the phone from a buyer) every night before he went home. He was moaning about how he had to stay late on a holiday night (New Year's Eve? I can't remember for sure) and work the phones, but he finally managed to sell all the silver he had bought that day - quite a lot of it (for him). When he came in the next business day, it turned out that he would have made over $7,000 more had he waited. But he was pretty sanguine about it, he knew he could be ruined if he played the game & it went the other way, and he was making good money at it. I never did see him after the crash, I was back at my duty station by then.
It was an amazing time. Looking in the piles of stuff people were bringing in you saw lots of coins from recent proof and mint sets, tons of Walkers, and a fair amount of Barbers. Also loads of silver Canadian stuff (lower price, of course, due to less silver content). You could go in the shop most any time & there would be several people waiting with little bags, jars, boxes, and coffee cans full of coins. Another thing I remember was seeing the shop owner ripping coins out of 2x2s from his stock & pitching them into the pile for sale as melt.
Coinlearner, Ahrensdad, Nolawyer, RG, coinlieutenant, Yorkshireman, lordmarcovan, Soldi, masscrew, JimTyler, Relaxn, jclovescoins
Now listen boy, I'm tryin' to teach you sumthin' . . . . that ain't no optical illusion, it only looks like an optical illusion.
My mind reader refuses to charge me....
3 "DAMMIT BOYS"
4 "YOU SUCKS"
Numerous POTD (But NONE officially recognized)
Seated Halves are my specialty !
Seated Half set by date/mm COMPLETE !
Seated Half set by WB# - 289 down / 31 to go !!!!!
(1) "Smoebody smack him" from CornCobWipe !
IN MEMORY OF THE CUOF
I cannot remember exactly what recourse was taken against the Hunts. I think they never spent a day in jail, but I am thinking they had to pay a huge fine. Does anybody remember ? I am pretty sure the end result cost them a few of their billions.
I had almost forgotten about the Hunts, until recently, when Benchmark Ventures, e-mailed a listing of their inventory. David Hunt was listed along with Christian Briggs, Peter Cabral, and Todd Griffiths as principals of Benchmark Ventures. In fact, the very last e-mail from Benchmark Ventures says David Hunt of the Texas Hunts,
and Christian Briggs will be giving a lecture this weekend on 'PRECIOUS METALS' in Las Vegas. Other dealers have told me that David Hunt is the main backer of Benchmark Ventures.
Anybody got silver ??
N.B. Hunt* might have actually made a lot of money if the rules weren't
changed to cause the whole thing to collapse. He was essentially ruined. It took all his money to
pay off for the outstanding future's contracts and he was left with nothing but a small mansion and
a fairly decent pension from his oil career. Other members of his family also lost significant amounts.
His total physical holdings were estimated at well over 100 million ounces and he owned nearly as
much in the futures market when it came down.
The lines to sell silver formed after the price collapse, though there was a huge amount of trade going
on before the collapse also.
*removed "never broke any laws and" in edit.
Well, I was a coin collector (Whitman boards and big eyes at the coin shop) and for some strange reason...at the age of 11 asked my parents if I could take the money out of the bank and buy a bag of silver. They encouraged me not to but said it was my money and that I could if I wanted to. So, I did and bought a bag of silver for 3x face. About 18 months later silver took off. I decided to sell when it reached 40x face. So my $3K turned into $40K. I was overwhelmed with relief and satisfaction.
We really were almost living in poverty, so I kept $3K and gave the other $37K to my parents (at about the age of 13). This then became the money that my family lived on until my father's death when I was about 18. I still had to go to work when I was 14 and had three jobs at one time my senior year. However, that whole experience was a life lesson that has served me well and that I wouldn't trade for a million dollars. (This experience with a wild market had a big impact on my exiting the stock market in 1999.)
So, I have always been very grateful for the Hunt's silver fiasco and its very positive impact on my life.
Sorry to take up so much space with a boring personal story, but you always have to remember that for every big loser in a wild market there are also quite a few winners.