LBJ, Ted Butler, and silver coin.
cladking
Posts: 28,748 ✭✭✭✭✭
This is Mr Butler's latest. It's a little surprising that he wasn't
familiar with this since I remember it all like it was yesterday.
Of course he wasn't a coin collector.
There's a lot on this transition in Rapsus' book, "The United
States Clad Coinage" -'92.
Commentary
familiar with this since I remember it all like it was yesterday.
Of course he wasn't a coin collector.
There's a lot on this transition in Rapsus' book, "The United
States Clad Coinage" -'92.
Commentary
tempus fugit extra philosophiam.
0
Comments
Production, Consumption, Uses of Silver
According to this, while about half of all silver is consumed for (non-photography) industrial processes, the other half is used for photography, jewelry, silverware, and coins. And the use for photography has crashed by more than half in the last ten years. What it looks like to me is that there really isn't big silver shortage out there, and until there is, it seems unlikely the price is going to do much.
Thoughts?
Gold is mostly used in commercial such as microphones, radios, chip boards, etc.
mirrors and other coatings
solar energy (panels)
water purification
medicines (as a biocide) silver inhibits germ growth. socks that have microbial silver won't stink!!! Soldiers uniforms with microbial silver won't cause infections when shot
batteries (think hybrid cars)
<< <i>Gold is the best conductor followed by silver and then copper. Copper is more commonly used due to cost and being able to do the job in residential and industrial settings. Aluminum is common is industrial too.
Gold is mostly used in commercial such as microphones, radios, chip boards, etc. >>
Silver is the best conductor of electricity, followed by copper, aluminum, and nickel, gold and iron are next. The only reason gold is used in electronics is for its inert (non coroding) properties. Contacts are plated with gold.
<< <i>Interesting article. What do you make of it, CK? I'm not even sure what the biggest industrial uses of silver are. Copper is a better conductor than silver, so it's not being swallowed by electronics. Film photography is way down. I guess I'm just wondering out loud if silver is really all that important, and perhaps that's why it's low and will stay low? And to partially answer my own questions:
Production, Consumption, Uses of Silver
According to this, while about half of all silver is consumed for (non-photography) industrial processes, the other half is used for photography, jewelry, silverware, and coins. And the use for photography has crashed by more than half in the last ten years. What it looks like to me is that there really isn't big silver shortage out there, and until there is, it seems unlikely the price is going to do much.
Thoughts? >>
I'm mostly just surprised that someone like Mr Butler wasn't aware
of this. He's very knowledgeable on the subject of silver and I wouldn't
expect something so important to have eluded him.
He had a pretty misleading sentence in the commentary which would
seem to an outsider to imply that the 5 billion ounces of silver in the
US in 1965 is all used up or consumed. This is hardly the case. While
most of the bullion and oddball fabricated products that the mint had
are mostly gone now the vast bulk of all those coins survive. These
coins are mostly available for refinement should the price get high e-
nough.
Coin stocks have been whittled down by loss and by melting and much
of what survives is collectible so unavailable on this basis, but there's
still a substantial quanty of silver coin in this country and several others.
Consumption of silver for photograhy in this country is decreasing still
but is increasing very rapidly in the developing world. The impact of this
is really overblown since most of the silver that is used in photography
is recycled anyway. Actual consumption is nominal.
One of the big places you'll see the shortage show up first is in silver
coin. The premiums will start increasing on these as the refiners vie to
fill orders.