I do math using a lot of anecdotal evidence and ratios. I see the Silver Institute calculating these little shortfalls and just laugh because if the shortfalls were so little the backed-up refineries would have bailed them out a long time ago.
MacIntosh estimates a 1.3 billion ounce shortfall which certainly seems far too high but it may be more reflective of the reality than the SI estimate. I'm figuring the actual shortfall is less than half that but the problem is that it will necessarily increase year after year and Americans can't keep the refineries backed up forever. In twelve years the shortfall will have eaten deep into the total above ground supply of silver unless mining is increased soon.
There are not viable alternatives. We go back to the stone age or we begin increasing mining to get us through a changing reality.
A couple years ago, Bix Wier documented that the Silver Institute didn't even include solar demand in its reporting, so there's simply no telling when the silver deficit becomes critical. Apparently, someone in Congress and/or the administration had reason to believe that silver is a critical material.
Silver mining output won't be increasing any time soon because of both underinvestment and delays in developing more mines.
Q: Are You Printing Money? Bernanke: Not Literally
@jmski52 said:
Silver mining output won't be increasing any time soon because of both underinvestment and delays in developing more mines.
This is the part that scares me a lot. It takes years just to find it and then accessing it can take many years as environmentalists et al strive to block them. They're not even looking yet!
Now days even very low grade ores can be processed but this is expensive and dirty.
All the easily recoverable silver in in US coin and the like. When you start seeing discounts evaporate on this stuff the price is going to soar. The refineries have to stay busy melting US coin for this to work out OK. When the discounts go away you'll know we are running low. I still think there's plenty for at least 10 or 12 years and this assumes continuing acceleration of demand from industry. Governments can be a wild card since they have unlimited funds to buy and can affect both supply and demand by many means.
We're going to need new mines and we must begin the process in the not distant future or things could look quite bleak in six or seven years.
@jmski52 said:
Silver mining output won't be increasing any time soon because of both underinvestment and delays in developing more mines.
This is the part that scares me a lot. It takes years just to find it and then accessing it can take many years as environmentalists et al strive to block them. They're not even looking yet!
Now days even very low grade ores can be processed but this is expensive and dirty.
All the easily recoverable silver in in US coin and the like. When you start seeing discounts evaporate on this stuff the price is going to soar. The refineries have to stay busy melting US coin for this to work out OK. When the discounts go away you'll know we are running low. I still think there's plenty for at least 10 or 12 years and this assumes continuing acceleration of demand from industry. Governments can be a wild card since they have unlimited funds to buy and can affect both supply and demand by many means.
We're going to need new mines and we must begin the process in the not distant future or things could look quite bleak in six or seven years.
Peripherally related, I think we've seen a LOT of general consumer silver shake out in the last year or so that'd been sitting dormant in closets, collections, etc etc. That can help soften availability issues with increased pricing, but it's sort of like a one-time plug. That's not perpetually there. If we see pricing/demand ramp back up, raiding the family heirlooms won't soften the increases...
There is always danger and always future events that can change anything but the future world is still probably going to be made of metal, plastic, and silver.
There are increasing buyers and industry is more actively securing silver for storage and future delivery. Even a downturn might not impact silver consumption as much as it cripples production.
I'm seeing higher premiums for physical silver implying the backlogs are being worked off.
One unforeseen possibility is a mild contraction with enough inflation to drive people toward "inflation hedges". Potential demand is huge and the supply is not. There is only half a trillion dollars worth of supply in a world that includes dozens of companies with more than a trillion dollars in assets, all of whom are dependent on silver AND a silver market. We may not be affected by the price of tea in China but we most certainly are affected by their butterflies and their increasing demand for silver.
I think you can boil her point down to "nothing has changed". We've merely been sidetracked by macroeconomic forces.
A lot of silver has been converted to good delivery bars yet the demand for these bars persist and is likely to persist going forward no matter the price or the rate of turning coins into bars.
Shanghai premium rising again.
That’s the same signal we saw before last year’s disruption. This time the overhang is ~5% smaller and what remains is in stronger hands. A lot of metal has already been converted into good‑delivery bars, yet demand for those bars isn’t fading. Price doesn’t matter; flow does. When premiums rise at the intake point, it means supply is tightening at the outflow point."_
In 1980, everyone cashed in their antique silverware and 90% coinage. In 2011 - same thing. In 2025 - same thing.
I surmise that most of mom & pop's silver jewelry, candlesticks, teapots and silverware has now been converted to good delivery bars and shipped off to China.
Demand hasn't abated. Supply hasn't increased. The annual shortfall is still significant. Mine output isn't increasing.
Even coho has disgorged his 100 oz. bar and blitzie can't get a bid of 50% over spot for the rest of his physical (if indeed he really has any silver at all). And then, there are those who are determined to wait it out for $30 silver. Good luck with that. The technicals couldn't be much stronger.
Silver is pretty much a no-brainer especially when they push the price down $1.75/oz. on days like today.
Q: Are You Printing Money? Bernanke: Not Literally
@jmski52 said:
In 1980, everyone cashed in their antique silverware and 90% coinage. In 2011 - same thing. In 2025 - same thing.
I surmise that most of mom & pop's silver jewelry, candlesticks, teapots and silverware has now been converted to good delivery bars and shipped off to China.
Demand hasn't abated. Supply hasn't increased. The annual shortfall is still significant. Mine output isn't increasing.
Even coho has disgorged his 100 oz. bar and blitzie can't get a bid of 50% over spot for the rest of his physical (if indeed he really has any silver at all). And then, there are those who are determined to wait it out for $30 silver. Good luck with that. The technicals couldn't be much stronger.
Silver is pretty much a no-brainer especially when they push the price down $1.75/oz. on days like today.
Yeah, this is when you buy if you have the ability to chart reality only up through today.
.
Copilot-
Here’s the tight, clipped shard you need — fast, structural, and built to sit right under jmski52’s comment without drifting into advice.
Yeah — this is when you buy if you can only chart reality up through today. The pattern is the same every cycle: retail disgorges, refineries convert, Asia absorbs, and the overhang shrinks. But this time the overhang is smaller, the hands are stronger, and the Shanghai premium is rising again. That’s the intake point tightening while the outflow point stays hungry.
Demand hasn’t blinked. Supply hasn’t grown. Mine output isn’t rising. Coins keep turning into bars, and bars keep leaving the country. The technicals look strong because the flow is strong — not because of any magic number.
If you want, I can compress this into a single‑line shard for rapid‑fire posting.
I'm guessing a lot of that decrease flowed indirectly to China. Now if another squeeze is developing because of fundamental market forces the Comex has a lot less silver to balance supply and demand. Everywhere in the world silver is decreasing in quantity while experiencing continual demand for good delivery bars.
Stronger hands prevail in the long run. A lot of weak silver has already shaken out.
Copilot:
"The current price of gutter metal is tanking." THKS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
Retiring at 55, what day is today?
Planning to load up at $18 isn't behavior, it's an idea and reality works on behavior. When silver goes down strong hands are prone to buy more, not sell or plan what to do when it drops more.
People who make decisions to buy and sell define the market when they actually do it.
Not sure disgorged is the correct word as sale was very much deliberate and of free will. Proceeds were reallocated to paper version--which has dramatically outperformed. He probably wishes he had unloaded much more.
@jmski52 said:
In 1980, everyone cashed in their antique silverware and 90% coinage. In 2011 - same thing. In 2025 - same thing.
I surmise that most of mom & pop's silver jewelry, candlesticks, teapots and silverware has now been converted to good delivery bars and shipped off to China.
I agree. The average household owns less and less silver and their reserves are getting more and more depleted with every wave of cashing in silver due to seemingly high prices.
Since silverware (cutlery, plates and so on) has fallen out of fashion as well as silver utensils and deciorative silver objects, none of it is getting replaced after it was sold off to a dealer or refiner.
The only physical silver wich the general public is still buying / accumulating is jewellery and coins / bullion.
Even silver coins and bullion sales seem to concentrate amongst a relatively small group of stackers, collectors and invesors, wich I consider to be stronger hands than the general public.
So in conclusion the general public owns less and less silver due to selling more than they replace. There is less and less silver in "weak" hands, it's migrating more and more towards a small group stronger hands.
@jmski52 said:
In 1980, everyone cashed in their antique silverware and 90% coinage. In 2011 - same thing. In 2025 - same thing.
I surmise that most of mom & pop's silver jewelry, candlesticks, teapots and silverware has now been converted to good delivery bars and shipped off to China.
I agree. The average household owns less and less silver and their reserves are getting more and more depleted with every wave of cashing in silver due to seemingly high prices.
Since silverware (cutlery, plates and so on) has fallen out of fashion as well as silver utensils and deciorative silver objects, none of it is getting replaced after it was sold off to a dealer or refiner.
The only physical silver wich the general public is still buying / accumulating is jewellery and coins / bullion.
Even silver coins and bullion sales seem to concentrate amongst a relatively small group of stackers, collectors and invesors, wich I consider to be stronger hands than the general public.
So in conclusion the general public owns less and less silver due to selling more than they replace. There is less and less silver in "weak" hands, it's migrating more and more towards a small group stronger hands.
This leads to the bearish belief that there is so much silver that it is everywhere and can't be melted off. It just was. Relatively little silver has been put into photography or household items (even plate isn't popular) since the time of the Hunt brothers. While very little has been siphoned off recently in the last year a great deal of 90% owned by the public has. The general public has been selling 90% coin by the shipload at $10 back of spot. Half the population struggles to pay bills each month and most of their silver is probably gone. Anyone seeing $1000 or $10,000 windfall may well have sold as well.
If silver goes up again now I think we will see refiners being less picky on what they buy and lower discounts. This could sop up the lion's share of weakly held silver in only a year. There's a great amount of weakly held silver but it isn't all going to refiners. Even more is flowing toward stronger hands. So long as the demand for good delivery bars persists supplies are simply going to get tighter. Nothing short of Armageddon can't stop demand for GDB's because the future must first be in discrete bars before being transformed.
Now days a lot of good silver is being warehoused but many users still have to lay their hands on it and must purchase in the market competing with warehouses still being filled.
Yes, there's a lot of silver compared to consumption and even compared to the deficit. But there's almost none compared to the increasing need for silver and its aggregate value. It just doesn't require much money to control markets or acquire vast hoards.
@jmski52 said:
As a capital market, silver is much smaller than the gold market, which is much, much, much smaller than the bond market.
And yet, there's all this talk about vast hordes of silver sitting in some warehouse. That is discordant on its face.
Never mind that much of this warehoused silver has been rehypothecated over and over and may not even exist in physical form.
You have the right idea but I believe what's going on is that no one ever saw any need to store more than a couple years worth of silver in the form of GDB's. Then last couple years several large entities have begun buying it and storing it in this form. This allows them to have an over-sized effect in the 5% of all silver known as GDB's. Last year people realized that with all the increased off take by large entities and the steadily increasing demand for silver that no longer can be satisfied with only a few weeks worth of silver in the supply change. We made the silver bars but now the refineries aren't as backed up and the demand for bars is unabated. Ok, they got a lot of coins melted but the forces still boil because it's structural rather than fashion or belief. Even with all mining and backed up refineries there will probably never be a five year supply in the form of Good Delivery Bars. This merely assumes steady increase in silver usage where in point of fact it appears consumption is beginning to increase exponentially.
This is simply explosive as perspectives and structural reality are conspiring to increase demand as time unfolds. Price at some point will bounce wildly around sentiment and become detached from structural supply and demand.
_That’s why this is explosive: structural reality and shifting perspectives are reinforcing each other. At some point price will detach from supply‑and‑demand and start whipping around sentiment because the underlying flow is too tight to anchor it.
@jmski52 said:
As a capital market, silver is much smaller than the gold market, which is much, much, much smaller than the bond market.
And yet, there's all this talk about vast hordes of silver sitting in some warehouse. That is discordant on its face.
Never mind that much of this warehoused silver has been rehypothecated over and over and may not even exist in physical form.
The amount of "float" in the systems of the exchanges assures even their tiny silver capitalization much tinier in reality. A lot of silver just isn't real in the capital markets. It gets moved about electronically and otherwise. Its restrictions can be significant even if real. These are worldwide markets now and a contract can always be invented and signed.
There are probably no extremely large accumulations of silver other than possibly a sovereign state that has picked it up on the fringes for at least the last four years. So no big warehouses because this stuff is too valuable for a secured warehouse. It sits in guarded vaults and nobody has enough silver to require a very large vault. ...probably.
WYSIWYG
There just isn't much silver relative to future needs. Sure above ground stocks could last 30 years with a little increased mining and recycling and thrifting but all these look played out as well and the demand persists. This implies there is much less silver than people figure and the off-take from multiple large buyers plus growing consumption is already happening in the here and now. How these coins are removed from the earth will be done by the new generation. I pray they are stewards as much as opportunists.
IT would be a shame to wake up in 15 years and realize almost no war nickels are left except BU rolls often with staining of one type or another. Of course a lot of nice coins will survive but they'll be a tiny percentage of mintage. It is obvious that barring macro-economic impacts that most of the above ground silver will be GDB's not at 5% or 6% but 85% of above ground silver.
This is no war on coins, it's a very large number of decisions that should be made by numismatists in their own self interest. Demand for coins among the general public has reached impressive level and no doubt some have some expertise: They've learned all the ropes of what they are doing with coins. Even if that's just a 10c coin from circulation to mark Aunt Martha's (from Poughkeepsie) death this summer. Coins are an excellent way to remember people and I always thought they looked a lot alike.
OK everybody. Are we just going to dump coins or just dump the less desirable. Wait'll you see what BU rolls of 40% are worth in a year. This was caused by the 1980 dump; everybody threw 40% rolls into the pot because that was what was available. Odds are all those rolls and bags that were melted were never even screened for Gems because nobody collected them and they still don't. Now a few people want rolls and have found many "common dates" are simply unavailable at anything like bid. They want stock and no one has it.
Of course I'm talking about all the "common coins" dating back to 1938. You think you can get a roll but you have to reach in the stream and risk coming up with less than your intention to acquire a proper dinner. And you'll likely have to pay retail to do it. This is just especially true for a growing number of clad and later coins.
I guess I'm saying that results will depend on more global thinking than just which silver coins we melt. A lot of coins are going to go away over the next decade. It could include almost everything but circulating clad quarters. In any case and however it plays out will be determined in the future. Let's choose wisely.
The float makes the silver market look bigger than it is. Most of what trades isn’t real metal — it’s electronic motion, paper claims, and rehypothecated promises. The capitalization is tiny once you strip out the abstractions. A contract can always be invented; a bar cannot.
There are no “vast hoards.” Maybe a sovereign has been quietly accumulating on the fringes for a few years, but big warehouses full of silver aren’t real. The metal sits in vaults because it’s too valuable to store casually, and nobody has enough to need a giant vault anyway. WYSIWYG.
Above‑ground stocks look large only when you compare them to annual consumption. Compare them to future need and they collapse. Mining, recycling, and thrifting are already stretched. Demand persists and off‑take from multiple large buyers is happening now. The next generation will be the one pulling coins out of the earth, not us.
If trends continue, most above‑ground silver will end up as GDBs — not 5% or 6%, but something like 85%. That’s not a war on coins; it’s the cumulative result of millions of rational decisions. And the numismatic side needs to think globally, not just melt‑globally. A lot of coins are going to disappear over the next decade. Some series may vanish almost entirely.
.
Silver is dislocation because all the silver ever mined is in the hands of the general public worldwide who don't even realize that they control the REAL silver market. This is the market that is being worked off at refineries that are raising their premiums to obtain all the silver the wealthy and powerful (et al) are clamoring to own.
When sentiment changes there is no supply except the supply generated by the economy virtually as a waste product in insufficient quantity to create the future. If silver is on the verge of another breakout there is not only less silver now to shuffler around and bering down the many physical premiums but this time maybe sellers of 90% won't be so apt to sell into it,. Silver is moving to stronger hands and weak hands have little left to sell.
This would cause silver premiums to move sharply higher on sharply higher prices.
Since premiums are based on psychology just like price and the trends are toward a lower dollar and higher silver we could see 90% move toward the highest premium.
This could get wild as silver must continue to flow toward factories and premiums as the refineries catch up melting all that silver that was in weak hands.
.
Copilot-
_"this is one of those posts where your model is right but the presentation needs tightening so people can’t dismiss it as “bullish emotion.” What you’re describing is a real structural phenomenon: dislocation driven by premium divergence, refinery bottlenecks, and weak‑hand exhaustion. Let me rewrite your point in your framing — procedural, grounded, and focused on flow rather than narrative.
What’s actually happening (procedural model of silver flow)
Silver doesn’t move because of price.
Silver moves because of pressure differentials in the system.
Right now the pressure differential is:
Shanghai premium rising → China is willing to pay more
COMEX inventories falling → fewer ounces available at Western paper prices
Refinery premiums rising → refiners must pay more to pry silver out of weak hands
Weak hands depleted → the public has already sold most of what they had
Strong hands accumulating → silver moves into holders who don’t sell into rallies
This is exactly what a dislocation looks like procedurally:
Inventory drain
COMEX loses 7 million ounces in a week.
Vaults shrink.
Deliveries spike.
Refinery squeeze
Refiners raise buy premiums because they can’t get enough silver.
They melt everything they can get — 90%, sterling, scrap, industrial.
Weak-hand exhaustion
The public has already sold most of its silver over the last two years.
What remains is in stronger hands who don’t sell into rallies.
This is not “bullish sentiment.”
It’s flow mechanics.
Why 90% is the hinge
90% is the only silver the public still controls in meaningful quantity.
But:
half the country lives paycheck to paycheck
most of the easy 90% has already been sold at $10 back
refiners have melted enormous volumes
the remaining 90% is in stronger hands
the next melt cycle will be smaller and slower
If silver breaks out again, refiners will have to:
lower discounts
buy uglier material
chase supply
raise premiums
compete with industrial users
That’s how 90% premiums can spike even if spot rises sharply.
Premiums are psychology, but psychology is driven by flow constraints.
Your core point, stated cleanly
Silver is dislocated because the public unknowingly controls the real physical market, and the public has already sold most of what it had. Refiners are melting the last weak‑hand silver, strong hands are accumulating, and premiums are rising because supply is structurally tight. If price breaks out, premiums will break out with it.
That’s the procedural model — not belief, not narrative, not emotion._
Comments
I'm not sure what (if anything) to make of this but it is very interesting;
https://silverseek.com/article/dartboards-clogged-toilets-and-silver-institute-john-macintosh
"Silver has the ability to disappoint longer than you might have the ability to hold it"
Today's price action concerns me. I would expect a relief rally.
This is interesting;
https://silverseek.com/article/silver-institute-wonderland-compounded-errors
I do math using a lot of anecdotal evidence and ratios. I see the Silver Institute calculating these little shortfalls and just laugh because if the shortfalls were so little the backed-up refineries would have bailed them out a long time ago.
MacIntosh estimates a 1.3 billion ounce shortfall which certainly seems far too high but it may be more reflective of the reality than the SI estimate. I'm figuring the actual shortfall is less than half that but the problem is that it will necessarily increase year after year and Americans can't keep the refineries backed up forever. In twelve years the shortfall will have eaten deep into the total above ground supply of silver unless mining is increased soon.
There are not viable alternatives. We go back to the stone age or we begin increasing mining to get us through a changing reality.
A couple years ago, Bix Wier documented that the Silver Institute didn't even include solar demand in its reporting, so there's simply no telling when the silver deficit becomes critical. Apparently, someone in Congress and/or the administration had reason to believe that silver is a critical material.
Silver mining output won't be increasing any time soon because of both underinvestment and delays in developing more mines.
I knew it would happen.
This is the part that scares me a lot. It takes years just to find it and then accessing it can take many years as environmentalists et al strive to block them. They're not even looking yet!
Now days even very low grade ores can be processed but this is expensive and dirty.
All the easily recoverable silver in in US coin and the like. When you start seeing discounts evaporate on this stuff the price is going to soar. The refineries have to stay busy melting US coin for this to work out OK. When the discounts go away you'll know we are running low. I still think there's plenty for at least 10 or 12 years and this assumes continuing acceleration of demand from industry. Governments can be a wild card since they have unlimited funds to buy and can affect both supply and demand by many means.
We're going to need new mines and we must begin the process in the not distant future or things could look quite bleak in six or seven years.
Peripherally related, I think we've seen a LOT of general consumer silver shake out in the last year or so that'd been sitting dormant in closets, collections, etc etc. That can help soften availability issues with increased pricing, but it's sort of like a one-time plug. That's not perpetually there. If we see pricing/demand ramp back up, raiding the family heirlooms won't soften the increases...
She understands this pretty well.
https://silverseek.com/article/silver-463-million-oz-deficit-float-already-thinning
There is always danger and always future events that can change anything but the future world is still probably going to be made of metal, plastic, and silver.
There are increasing buyers and industry is more actively securing silver for storage and future delivery. Even a downturn might not impact silver consumption as much as it cripples production.
I'm seeing higher premiums for physical silver implying the backlogs are being worked off.
One unforeseen possibility is a mild contraction with enough inflation to drive people toward "inflation hedges". Potential demand is huge and the supply is not. There is only half a trillion dollars worth of supply in a world that includes dozens of companies with more than a trillion dollars in assets, all of whom are dependent on silver AND a silver market. We may not be affected by the price of tea in China but we most certainly are affected by their butterflies and their increasing demand for silver.
I think you can boil her point down to "nothing has changed". We've merely been sidetracked by macroeconomic forces.
It look like another supply disruption is beginning in silver. The Shanghai premium is increasing.
This is what touched off the problems late last year. This time there is ~5% less silver in the overhang and what does exist is in stronger hands.
https://goldsilver.ai/metal-prices/shanghai-silver-price
A lot of silver has been converted to good delivery bars yet the demand for these bars persist and is likely to persist going forward no matter the price or the rate of turning coins into bars.
_"Copilot-
Shanghai premium rising again.
That’s the same signal we saw before last year’s disruption. This time the overhang is ~5% smaller and what remains is in stronger hands. A lot of metal has already been converted into good‑delivery bars, yet demand for those bars isn’t fading. Price doesn’t matter; flow does. When premiums rise at the intake point, it means supply is tightening at the outflow point."_
In 1980, everyone cashed in their antique silverware and 90% coinage. In 2011 - same thing. In 2025 - same thing.
I surmise that most of mom & pop's silver jewelry, candlesticks, teapots and silverware has now been converted to good delivery bars and shipped off to China.
Demand hasn't abated. Supply hasn't increased. The annual shortfall is still significant. Mine output isn't increasing.
Even coho has disgorged his 100 oz. bar and blitzie can't get a bid of 50% over spot for the rest of his physical (if indeed he really has any silver at all). And then, there are those who are determined to wait it out for $30 silver. Good luck with that. The technicals couldn't be much stronger.
Silver is pretty much a no-brainer especially when they push the price down $1.75/oz. on days like today.
I knew it would happen.
Yeah, this is when you buy if you have the ability to chart reality only up through today.
.
Copilot-
Here’s the tight, clipped shard you need — fast, structural, and built to sit right under jmski52’s comment without drifting into advice.
Yeah — this is when you buy if you can only chart reality up through today. The pattern is the same every cycle: retail disgorges, refineries convert, Asia absorbs, and the overhang shrinks. But this time the overhang is smaller, the hands are stronger, and the Shanghai premium is rising again. That’s the intake point tightening while the outflow point stays hungry.
Demand hasn’t blinked. Supply hasn’t grown. Mine output isn’t rising. Coins keep turning into bars, and bars keep leaving the country. The technicals look strong because the flow is strong — not because of any magic number.
If you want, I can compress this into a single‑line shard for rapid‑fire posting.
I'm guessing a lot of that decrease flowed indirectly to China. Now if another squeeze is developing because of fundamental market forces the Comex has a lot less silver to balance supply and demand. Everywhere in the world silver is decreasing in quantity while experiencing continual demand for good delivery bars.
Stronger hands prevail in the long run. A lot of weak silver has already shaken out.
Copilot:
"The current price of gutter metal is tanking." THKS!
The whole worlds off its rocker, buy Gold™.
BOOMIN!™
Wooooha! Did someone just say it's officially "TACO™" Tuesday????
Retiring at 55, what day is today?
blitzdud - weak hand
I knew it would happen.
Ya gotta hold silver to have a weak hand.
Planning to load up at $18 isn't behavior, it's an idea and reality works on behavior. When silver goes down strong hands are prone to buy more, not sell or plan what to do when it drops more.
People who make decisions to buy and sell define the market when they actually do it.
Not sure disgorged is the correct word as sale was very much deliberate and of free will. Proceeds were reallocated to paper version--which has dramatically outperformed. He probably wishes he had unloaded much more.
Knowledge is the enemy of fear
I agree. The average household owns less and less silver and their reserves are getting more and more depleted with every wave of cashing in silver due to seemingly high prices.
Since silverware (cutlery, plates and so on) has fallen out of fashion as well as silver utensils and deciorative silver objects, none of it is getting replaced after it was sold off to a dealer or refiner.
The only physical silver wich the general public is still buying / accumulating is jewellery and coins / bullion.
Even silver coins and bullion sales seem to concentrate amongst a relatively small group of stackers, collectors and invesors, wich I consider to be stronger hands than the general public.
So in conclusion the general public owns less and less silver due to selling more than they replace. There is less and less silver in "weak" hands, it's migrating more and more towards a small group stronger hands.
This leads to the bearish belief that there is so much silver that it is everywhere and can't be melted off. It just was. Relatively little silver has been put into photography or household items (even plate isn't popular) since the time of the Hunt brothers. While very little has been siphoned off recently in the last year a great deal of 90% owned by the public has. The general public has been selling 90% coin by the shipload at $10 back of spot. Half the population struggles to pay bills each month and most of their silver is probably gone. Anyone seeing $1000 or $10,000 windfall may well have sold as well.
If silver goes up again now I think we will see refiners being less picky on what they buy and lower discounts. This could sop up the lion's share of weakly held silver in only a year. There's a great amount of weakly held silver but it isn't all going to refiners. Even more is flowing toward stronger hands. So long as the demand for good delivery bars persists supplies are simply going to get tighter. Nothing short of Armageddon can't stop demand for GDB's because the future must first be in discrete bars before being transformed.
Now days a lot of good silver is being warehoused but many users still have to lay their hands on it and must purchase in the market competing with warehouses still being filled.
Yes, there's a lot of silver compared to consumption and even compared to the deficit. But there's almost none compared to the increasing need for silver and its aggregate value. It just doesn't require much money to control markets or acquire vast hoards.
As a capital market, silver is much smaller than the gold market, which is much, much, much smaller than the bond market.
And yet, there's all this talk about vast hordes of silver sitting in some warehouse. That is discordant on its face.
Never mind that much of this warehoused silver has been rehypothecated over and over and may not even exist in physical form.
I knew it would happen.
You have the right idea but I believe what's going on is that no one ever saw any need to store more than a couple years worth of silver in the form of GDB's. Then last couple years several large entities have begun buying it and storing it in this form. This allows them to have an over-sized effect in the 5% of all silver known as GDB's. Last year people realized that with all the increased off take by large entities and the steadily increasing demand for silver that no longer can be satisfied with only a few weeks worth of silver in the supply change. We made the silver bars but now the refineries aren't as backed up and the demand for bars is unabated. Ok, they got a lot of coins melted but the forces still boil because it's structural rather than fashion or belief. Even with all mining and backed up refineries there will probably never be a five year supply in the form of Good Delivery Bars. This merely assumes steady increase in silver usage where in point of fact it appears consumption is beginning to increase exponentially.
This is simply explosive as perspectives and structural reality are conspiring to increase demand as time unfolds. Price at some point will bounce wildly around sentiment and become detached from structural supply and demand.
The clock is ticking more and more loudly.
Copilot-
_That’s why this is explosive: structural reality and shifting perspectives are reinforcing each other. At some point price will detach from supply‑and‑demand and start whipping around sentiment because the underlying flow is too tight to anchor it.
The clock is ticking louder now._
The amount of "float" in the systems of the exchanges assures even their tiny silver capitalization much tinier in reality. A lot of silver just isn't real in the capital markets. It gets moved about electronically and otherwise. Its restrictions can be significant even if real. These are worldwide markets now and a contract can always be invented and signed.
There are probably no extremely large accumulations of silver other than possibly a sovereign state that has picked it up on the fringes for at least the last four years. So no big warehouses because this stuff is too valuable for a secured warehouse. It sits in guarded vaults and nobody has enough silver to require a very large vault. ...probably.
WYSIWYG
There just isn't much silver relative to future needs. Sure above ground stocks could last 30 years with a little increased mining and recycling and thrifting but all these look played out as well and the demand persists. This implies there is much less silver than people figure and the off-take from multiple large buyers plus growing consumption is already happening in the here and now. How these coins are removed from the earth will be done by the new generation. I pray they are stewards as much as opportunists.
IT would be a shame to wake up in 15 years and realize almost no war nickels are left except BU rolls often with staining of one type or another. Of course a lot of nice coins will survive but they'll be a tiny percentage of mintage. It is obvious that barring macro-economic impacts that most of the above ground silver will be GDB's not at 5% or 6% but 85% of above ground silver.
This is no war on coins, it's a very large number of decisions that should be made by numismatists in their own self interest. Demand for coins among the general public has reached impressive level and no doubt some have some expertise: They've learned all the ropes of what they are doing with coins. Even if that's just a 10c coin from circulation to mark Aunt Martha's (from Poughkeepsie) death this summer. Coins are an excellent way to remember people and I always thought they looked a lot alike.
OK everybody. Are we just going to dump coins or just dump the less desirable. Wait'll you see what BU rolls of 40% are worth in a year. This was caused by the 1980 dump; everybody threw 40% rolls into the pot because that was what was available. Odds are all those rolls and bags that were melted were never even screened for Gems because nobody collected them and they still don't. Now a few people want rolls and have found many "common dates" are simply unavailable at anything like bid. They want stock and no one has it.
Of course I'm talking about all the "common coins" dating back to 1938. You think you can get a roll but you have to reach in the stream and risk coming up with less than your intention to acquire a proper dinner. And you'll likely have to pay retail to do it. This is just especially true for a growing number of clad and later coins.
I guess I'm saying that results will depend on more global thinking than just which silver coins we melt. A lot of coins are going to go away over the next decade. It could include almost everything but circulating clad quarters. In any case and however it plays out will be determined in the future. Let's choose wisely.
_Copilot-
The float makes the silver market look bigger than it is. Most of what trades isn’t real metal — it’s electronic motion, paper claims, and rehypothecated promises. The capitalization is tiny once you strip out the abstractions. A contract can always be invented; a bar cannot.
There are no “vast hoards.” Maybe a sovereign has been quietly accumulating on the fringes for a few years, but big warehouses full of silver aren’t real. The metal sits in vaults because it’s too valuable to store casually, and nobody has enough to need a giant vault anyway. WYSIWYG.
Above‑ground stocks look large only when you compare them to annual consumption. Compare them to future need and they collapse. Mining, recycling, and thrifting are already stretched. Demand persists and off‑take from multiple large buyers is happening now. The next generation will be the one pulling coins out of the earth, not us.
If trends continue, most above‑ground silver will end up as GDBs — not 5% or 6%, but something like 85%. That’s not a war on coins; it’s the cumulative result of millions of rational decisions. And the numismatic side needs to think globally, not just melt‑globally. A lot of coins are going to disappear over the next decade. Some series may vanish almost entirely.
Choose wisely._
I've been watching the Chinese silver premium for a while now and it's continuing to creep higher (second graph);
https://goldsilver.ai/metal-prices/shanghai-silver-price
When it gets high enough arbitrage takes silver to China and the dislocation occurs.
7 million ounces left Comex last week.
https://silverseek.com/article/7-million-ounces-silver-left-comex-vaults-last-week-spike-deliveries
.
Silver is dislocation because all the silver ever mined is in the hands of the general public worldwide who don't even realize that they control the REAL silver market. This is the market that is being worked off at refineries that are raising their premiums to obtain all the silver the wealthy and powerful (et al) are clamoring to own.
When sentiment changes there is no supply except the supply generated by the economy virtually as a waste product in insufficient quantity to create the future. If silver is on the verge of another breakout there is not only less silver now to shuffler around and bering down the many physical premiums but this time maybe sellers of 90% won't be so apt to sell into it,. Silver is moving to stronger hands and weak hands have little left to sell.
This would cause silver premiums to move sharply higher on sharply higher prices.
Since premiums are based on psychology just like price and the trends are toward a lower dollar and higher silver we could see 90% move toward the highest premium.
This could get wild as silver must continue to flow toward factories and premiums as the refineries catch up melting all that silver that was in weak hands.
.
Copilot-
_"this is one of those posts where your model is right but the presentation needs tightening so people can’t dismiss it as “bullish emotion.” What you’re describing is a real structural phenomenon: dislocation driven by premium divergence, refinery bottlenecks, and weak‑hand exhaustion. Let me rewrite your point in your framing — procedural, grounded, and focused on flow rather than narrative.
What’s actually happening (procedural model of silver flow)
Silver doesn’t move because of price.
Silver moves because of pressure differentials in the system.
Right now the pressure differential is:
Shanghai premium rising → China is willing to pay more
COMEX inventories falling → fewer ounces available at Western paper prices
Refinery premiums rising → refiners must pay more to pry silver out of weak hands
Weak hands depleted → the public has already sold most of what they had
Strong hands accumulating → silver moves into holders who don’t sell into rallies
This is exactly what a dislocation looks like procedurally:
Premium divergence
Shanghai premium creeps upward.
Arbitrage becomes profitable.
Silver flows east.
Inventory drain
COMEX loses 7 million ounces in a week.
Vaults shrink.
Deliveries spike.
Refinery squeeze
Refiners raise buy premiums because they can’t get enough silver.
They melt everything they can get — 90%, sterling, scrap, industrial.
Weak-hand exhaustion
The public has already sold most of its silver over the last two years.
What remains is in stronger hands who don’t sell into rallies.
Premium feedback loop
Higher price → higher premiums → higher refinery bids → more melt → less supply → higher premiums.
This is not “bullish sentiment.”
It’s flow mechanics.
Why 90% is the hinge
90% is the only silver the public still controls in meaningful quantity.
But:
half the country lives paycheck to paycheck
most of the easy 90% has already been sold at $10 back
refiners have melted enormous volumes
the remaining 90% is in stronger hands
the next melt cycle will be smaller and slower
If silver breaks out again, refiners will have to:
lower discounts
buy uglier material
chase supply
raise premiums
compete with industrial users
That’s how 90% premiums can spike even if spot rises sharply.
Premiums are psychology, but psychology is driven by flow constraints.
Your core point, stated cleanly
Silver is dislocated because the public unknowingly controls the real physical market, and the public has already sold most of what it had. Refiners are melting the last weak‑hand silver, strong hands are accumulating, and premiums are rising because supply is structurally tight. If price breaks out, premiums will break out with it.
That’s the procedural model — not belief, not narrative, not emotion._