➡ Ian Everard, a retail bullion dealer, discusses the current state of the silver and gold markets. He notes that despite the metals’ increasing value, there has been a lot of selling, particularly of silver. However, he believes this is due to people needing money for everyday expenses rather than a lack of faith in the value of silver. He also suggests that some of the sold silver may be going into industrial use due to a deficit in the market.
➡ The speaker discusses the fluctuating value of silver and its potential to rise above $30. They suggest that the value of silver is influenced by the amount of currency created and the debasement of currency. The speaker also mentions the possibility of a digital dollar and the implications it could have on financial privacy. They conclude by discussing the potential impact of government spending and economic changes on the value of silver.
➡ The speaker doubts that significant cuts will be made to government spending, despite promises. They believe that any cuts will likely affect those least able to defend themselves, such as Social Security and Medicare recipients. They also express skepticism about the feasibility and economic sense of deporting millions of undocumented workers. The speaker concludes by predicting volatility and potential benefits for precious metals due to economic and social turmoil.

In terms of actual sellers to buyers, he was seeing 10 to 15 to 1. In terms of actual weight sold and bought, seeing 6 to 1. Well, hello there my friends. Chris, Marcus here with you for Arcadia Economics. And today we are going to get a look inside the retail side of the silver and gold markets. I’m joined by Ian Everard of Ark Silver and Ian is a retail bullion dealer. And Ian, great to have you back on the show. It’s been a little while, but nice to see you again. And how are you today? I’m really good and all the better for seeing you, Chris.

Well, it’s a pleasure to have you on in here especially because one of the things that I think a lot of people have heard by now, although I hear on Twitter and other places that some people feel not enough people have heard about it by now, although has been a lot of selling of silver from what I’ve heard. Silver more so than gold and I would say I would call it the past year and a half, but you’re seeing it on the front line. So anything you could dig into there because I think it’s different than what most people expected when the metals are finally moving higher and I think perhaps logically a lot of people assume we’d see some interest take place there.

And anything you can put into perspectives from a firsthand point of view. Sure. I mean, yeah. So from the first time point of view, we’ve had very few of our clients selling back and now have all of our clients we sold to in the last four or five years. Would they approach? I think they would. I get to know most of them pretty well and that’s part of discussion when they purchase. If you have a need to choose to sell, please call us first and we will bend over backwards to get you the best price and the best service.

So we’ve had very, very little, I’m trying to think silver. The only meaningful amounts of silver was somebody who was finishing off building a house and the house has cost a bit more. So temporarily they’re using some of their silver and once they finish the house they want to get straight back in. So very, very little silver. We’ve had a few walk ins, a few local people who didn’t buy from us, but they wasn’t because they thought holding silver is a bad idea. They just needed the money. One was for medical expense, another one was to fix farm machinery.

Just everyday, everyday life where people and some of these people had inherited this silver or had held it for a long time. So I’ve seen very little people forced out of holding because it was a speculative position. So maybe that’s partly the client base we attract. They’re more long term, more long term thinking they’ve worked out where we are in the financial world and where we’re likely to end. And the safest way to get through that and have your purchasing power at the end is to hold on, hold on to your precious metals. Well Ian, I know that you, you’re more of talking to people whether in your shop in person, which is up in Jackson Hole in case anyone’s in the neighborhood and looking for a good silver deal or over the phone.

You’re not setting up a model like AP Max where you have a lot less of a personal direct connection. So I’m going to pull up something that Matt Riley of EF Bullion who is a wholesaler, he mentioned this. This came in about two weeks ago. He sent me a message saying I haven’t spoken to customers in the last two weeks but the last time I knew the selling was about 5 or 6 to 1 by weight, the sellers were smaller amounts and the buyers were large amounts. But in terms of actual sellers to buyers he was seeing 10 to 15 to 1 in terms of actual weight sold and bought seeing 6 to 1.

So again factoring in that what he’s seeing or what we might be seeing on a industry wide level, slightly different subset than the way your model is set up. But would you say that matches what you’ve been hearing throughout the industry and any comments on that? Personally, our business know the opposite and I think probably a lot of our clients are buying up a lot of this product that’s being sold into the wholesale business. We’ve been doing huge quantities of Discount Secondary Market 1 oz rounds, Silver Eagles, you name it, Gold crew Grands. When a client calls me up, I offer them the choice do you want brand new or do you want to have a look at the secondary market which the savings can be fairly substantial.

But talking to the whole, my main wholesaler, they have been doing a lot of buybacks but they also own a mint. So some of this buybacks has actually been minted into new new products. But my suspicion is, and I haven’t done much research is that some of this retail silver is actually going into industrial use because it’s got to be coming from somewhere because the deficit we’re over according to the Silver Institute I think it’s over 200 million ounces for the rolling year into our fourth year of deficit and that’s At a time when retail worldwide is down by about 40% on the 2020 and it doesn’t look like the industrial demand is easing up, it just seems to be increasing.

Yeah, you mentioned something. That was another thing Matt told us about where he had been talking to wholesalers who were melting down coins and bars. Some of it feeding industrial usage. I’m sure some of it went into coin mintage, so. And also in terms of the deficit, as I’ve looked at the numbers, it’s almost as if it was the COMEX coming down in 2021 into 2022, then you saw the LBMA and then that slowed down. And it seems like a lot of this retail selling, if the deficit numbers are accurate, as reported, that that could be filling a little bit of that.

So we have an idea of where some of that metal may have been coming from. But going back strictly to the buy side, and you mentioned how that update from Silver Institute said their estimate was purchases about 40% lower on a retail level. Yeah, that match about what you’re seeing. And would you say that in terms of the conversations you have that that is an accurate gauge compared to previous years? I think definitely from the industry, yes. Talking to our wholesalers. Yeah. Their sales are down dramatically. And 2020 was a good, was a good year. I think the figure was 500 million ounces went.

Went to retail purchases. Will we see that again? I think absolutely we will. We will see that again. People, it’s all of a sudden people wake up to something. I mean, we. And this is maybe sidetracking a bit, but I think it shows human action. I mean, with the murder of that CEO of UnitedHealth, a lot of people are woken up to. Do you know what? We don’t think it’s acceptable, the model, what’s happening for the health supply industry in the US Extracting so much money, denying claims. But what I’m saying is there seems to be a sudden awakening in awareness now whether that will dwindle or die out, I don’ Know.

But when people realize the actual effective rate of currency decay of the dollars they hold is 10 or 15 or 20% and rising, there will be an exodus into real things. And when you’ve, when your cupboards are full of toilet paper and ammunition and whatever, dog food or what, whatever consumables you can purchase, what is there left that is the most convenient and that is silver, that’s the most convenient store of value? Well, I think it makes a lot of sense too. Obviously I’m a little biased, although Ian, I’m going to pull up our prices today.

We’re recording on Tuesday afternoon and you started talking about this before we hit the record button, but here we are back over 2700 in the futures for gold and silver. Down a penny on the day but still back over 32 60, remember and I’m sure you probably fielded some phone calls from people panicking after the election and oh no, is Trump going to kill the gold and silver markets? I would suggest might be a different perception once some of those changes are conceivably being implemented in five or six months and people are wondering this might not be the dollar strengthener that markets are pricing it in right now.

But where, where do you see, do you see a break point still? What do you see the future of gold and silver at this point given the experience so far this year? Yeah, I mean I do what obviously I’m watching the price on, on a business basis just of replacing stock as we sell. I’m always continually replacing so I’m always keeping an eye on spot and I’m always keeping an eye on any dips if, if, if I want to fill some more inventory gaps. We’ve got and I mean silver it took, I think it’s seven attempts to get through 29 and seven attempts to get through 37 to get through 31 and now it seems to be an absolute war.

32 seems to be almost irrational. So I, I do think there is something about and it might be the balance of how short the big five banks are. They maybe there’s, there’s something a little bit going on, a bit suspicious I think about how scared the system seems to be at $32 because if your inflation adjust it, it’s not really kept up with sort of five, six years ago with the, and definitely not with amount of units of currency created. So yeah, I, I don’t spend too much time trying to interpret the charts. Well, I hear you and I understand that and certainly not an easy thing to do with the way some of these metals trade.

Although Ian, what do you think it takes before we see perhaps what many expected when myself included to some degree silver getting above 30 of imagining people jumping in. I feel like the average person out there. If my mom didn’t know me, I don’t think she’d be close to saying like hey, I need to go get some gold and silver. So I think we’re still a couple steps away and I thought about before where you know, in 2008 that was when I started thinking, hey, well there’s something going on here. Think other people in 2020, you know, certainly we had a surge in 23 when some more banks failed.

So what do you think changes that? Are we getting any closer to that or when is the point where you think the people who are not even thinking about it now, how far away is that? Whoa. How far. Has Bernanke stopped into your shop in Jackson Hole yet? So, yeah, when I first started the business and when I first started stacking 2017, the mathematics, the history, everything about currencies and currency collapses was pointing out this is imminent. So I thought it was going to be a lot quicker than 2017. And I think in one of my early interviews I did with Rob Keynes, I predicted silver would be $40 by the end of the year.

And I absolutely thought this was a mathematical certainty. So there’s always a risk in giving a projection. So what, what causes it? I guess it takes very little to cause it, because if you take one ounce of silver and you cut it into eight pieces and you give one eighth of an ounce of silver to every person on the planet, that’s the whole annual mine production. So it appears as plenty of silver. And it appears, you know, and the experts, I mean, like the CPM group, Jeffrey Christian, he’s, he’s saying it’s not even a critical metal.

He’s actually saying it’s a good investment. Did hear he’s called, he called for record silver price in 2025. So he’s calling it will reach 50, but it won’t be able to sustain it. And I thought, well, how can you make a statement like that? You have no idea how many dollars there’ll be in existence at that point. I mean, if or when it re. When it reaches 50, say we’ve created another $10 trillion or $15 trillion, and another 10 or 15 are being created outside of the U.S. we’ve debased the currency history, mathematics, gravity always tells us that the precious metals always give an account for the currency debasement.

Now, whether that is right at the end of that currency, it could well be this time that the final death of the dollar as we know it, then the dollar has no value. Then the precious metals will. We will soon work out what they are worth when that’s the only form of practical money. If that happens, but it doesn’t need an extreme event because the supply is so tiny. We’re looking at a billion ounces mined and recycled a year. 70% now go into industry. And approximately half of all the silver produced over all of human history is now unavailable.

It’s been thrown away in such tiny amounts, it’s been just practically destroyed. And that rate doesn’t seem to be easing up on the consumption. So we do have a fundamental where the supply is inelastic and shrinking, the available silver and the demand is rising without any meaningful rise in retail demand. So it will come. It would be nice for us, all of us who’ve got a reasonable stockpile, that would happen. And then maybe we could, you know, take some time off, walk the dog a bit more. But what, what it. There could be a thousand things that cause it and that will be, you know, I mean, if we get compulsory forced into a digital dollar, I think there’ll be a panic.

That will be the last signal. If you want to buy precious metals privately, you’ll need to get it done before we go fully digital. Because once we’re fully digital, the only means of using dollars that you’ve earned or inherited or however you get them, they’re all coded. So every transaction will be recorded. And not, not only you know what and when and how much you spent, but what you spent it on. Now, the whole point of precious metals for me personally is having financial privacy that I can choose to have a boating accent, I can choose to bury it and forget what I’ve buried it.

I can choose to give it away and forgot who I’ve given it to. It’s a whole point having that financial privacy. And the less privacy you have financially going forward, the more the repressive acts will come upon you. And it doesn’t matter what government we have. The average person is facing more and more financial repression. You know, whether it’s increasing sales tax or wealth tax, unrealized gains taxation, these are pernicious. And as a currency dies, the system becomes more and more oppressive to try and squeeze a little bit more life out of the system. So it doesn’t really matter what the cause is to make it move.

Silver will take account of the currency debasement. And you could do various, many calculations. I mean, Peter Kraut has done some excellent calculations. One simple calculation I do is it would appear we have 55 times more units of currency worldwide now than we had in 1980. So let’s do, let’s be generous and presume the world is five times richer than it was in 1980. So now that 55 times more units of currency in effect is 11 times, you divide the 55 by five, so that means there’s still 11 times more units of currency than there was in 1980.

And let’s say the average price of silver was 30 bucks in 1980. Well, that sets to silver. To give an account of that currency debasement, put silver at $330 or $350. That’s just given in the current for the currency debasement. But the currency debasement is carrying on. And I do not believe that if the Federal Reserve has done any quantitative easing, I think that’s all smoke and mirrors. They found a door to keep slipping more units. You mean they haven’t done any tightening? They haven’t done any tightening? No, no, sorry. No, no. And M’s nailed it.

He said in an inflationary currency system, you inflate until it catastrophically collapses or you stop inflating and it collapses. There’s two ends to this system. There’s no soft landing. There’s no easy way out. And if you pause too long, that’s, you know, if you pause too long, the system collapses because the interest has to be created to pay on the debt that was created out of that was created. And so the system has to expand and there’s no, there’s no painless way to get out of this, not, not as a nation or even as a Western world.

Well, on that note, and right ahead of the holiday season, I’m curious what you think of as we get closer to the Doge board coming in, which on one hand, if you’re not wasting a lot of taxpayer money, obviously is great. On the other hand, when you’ve got an economy structured like ours is, with government spending accounting for so much of it, and I guess you would imagine unemployment would go up if a lot of these people are going to be let go. So puts things in a perilous situation. Then you have Trump also telling countries that they attempt to dollarize, he’s going to cut them off.

Another thing you mentioned before, we hit the record button. China last week decided to stop supplying critical resources to the West. We have wars going on all over the place, governments collapsing. So it’s a very delicate time. And, you know, you got Fed meeting next week, but it’s almost like, does it matter whether they cut a quarter or not if Elon Musk is going to come in and do some real cutting? So just as we head towards the end of the year, I’m wondering how you’re viewing that. Obviously, it’s not an ideal set of circumstances that we’re facing, but any thoughts on that one? Wow.

Doge Department of Government Efficiency. Well, yeah, well, I guess it’s only going to be recommendations. Mr. Musk has said he can cut 2 trillion out of a 6 trillion. So what will actually get cut? It’ll be the low hanging fruit. It will, what will be cut will be the people who have the least ability to defend themselves. So it will be Social Security, it’ll be Medicare. I mean if they cut the government workers, I think the figures are of total government expenditure. Wages are 8,8%. In, in ordinary government positions it’s only 8%. So if you sacked everybody, you’re not going to get anywhere near the 2 trillion and then you lose the taxation on that.

So I think that was a lie. I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere near. I think probably the opposite will happen. I think the government expenditure actually increase and then politicians, time after time they make all these promises and either they never even intend to follow through or they find out in reality they can’t follow through. So I don’t think we’re going to see $2 trillion cuts if they go ahead with deporting 100. Sorry, what’s the last figure Mr. Trump mentioned? 21 million undocumented and their children now are included so they don’t split the families up.

Well that will cost about, I don’t know, three quarters of a trillion dollars to do that. So that will have to be typed into existence. The whole thing is, is a clown show. I think that and sorry to delude anybody who’s got faith in any president. Santa’s not coming this year. I’m, I’m really, I don’t want to shatter your illusions. They’re not coming to, to sort the mess out. They’re coming to enrich themselves, look after their families. And it’s, and, and I find it sad that they call it patriotic. Patriotic. So no, I have zero faith they’re going to actually do any meaningful efficiency cuts and as to drain the swamp.

They’re just going to build another swamp. So there we go. I’ve upset everybody. Okay. Yeah. I mean look at, look at the poor excuse of government we’ve got at the moment, you know, you know it’s. Oh my. Yeah. What, what is the answer? I think we need to go back to these United States. There was a point in time we weren’t the United States. You know, and then California can go crazy if they want to go to go crazy. And oh my, this is a minefield you’ve opened up here, Chris. Well, I mean I hear you and I guess what do you do? I find at least on a good day, to somehow mentally balancing it where, you know, is government doing horrific things on one hand.

Yes. But you’re sitting there right now, it looks like a nice, lovely, yet cold afternoon over there in Jackson Hole. And we’re in one piece. So I think, yeah, they think about stuff like that a lot as someone who sits here and talks about it day after day. But I think also there’s some degree where getting what you need to take away and being prepared and planning. And also it’s. I mean, we’re not on the sharp end of it directly, are we? I mean, I mean, you look at the point of view of a farmer where half of his farm workers are undocumented or a construction company under pressure to get a contract finished to get the payment, half a third of their Sheetrock guys are undocumented, you know, to.

To strip out, I don’t know, 10, 15 million workers out of a country or it is that it doesn’t make economic sense for sure. So that I think there’s something underlying. Something rather sinister underlying the motivation beyond. Because there’s no economic sense to it and is a little bit. Well, it’s more than concerning. We’ve got three prominent South Africans now trying to run the United States. You’ve got Elon Musk, who was. His brother, says they were illegal immigrants. And then you got Peter Thiel, another South African, is another dodgy South African. Well, why don’t they go back to South Africa and sort out South Africa? Leave us alone, you know.

Well, it’s. It’s a different environment for sure. And what are we now just over two months away from when Trump comes in? And I have a feeling it’s going to be a volatile time, some of the things they do. And I’d imagine that’s going, I want to say positive, but a positive for the metals. Some of the policies that are. I mean, yes. I mean, yes, any turmoil, financial, economic, social, is going to be a driver for the precious metals. I mean, I would rather have peace and tranquility, everybody getting along, whichever, and not even have to bother with trying to preserve your purchasing power.

But we are in a situation where we are. This is a world where we’ve got people of. Not of the best character of intent trying to tell us how to live our lives. And we got, you know, obviously the banking cartel system. And it seems to be that the main objective is to extract as much wealth out of the working person as possible without killing us off. So. But yes, it’s going to be volatile and I think that will be another tailwind behind silver for sure. Well, we’re getting, we’re going to be there soon enough. And Ian, appreciate you swinging by here to make some time to dig into this and perhaps just before we wrap up, you could let people know where they can find you.

And I might add, I’ll say this for you, I know it genuinely is your commitment to get people silver at a lower price and I would encourage people, if they think I’m just saying that, go and find out for sure. But I know that something that you’re very passionate about and certainly a good thing on the consumer end. So anything you let us know about the store or any hot deals that you have there this week? Yeah, I mean, we’ve got American Eagles 3.99. We got Britannia’s 2.50. We’ve got some other sovereign coins as low as a dollar 45 for a coin not around a sovereign coin.

We’ve always got specials. They do change sometimes hour to hour. I usually get a call from one of my wholesalers as soon as they’ve got a deal comes in. So, yeah, the best way is give me a call on 307264, 9441 and let me know what you’re looking for and I’ll give you a quote and I might be able to find you a product, you know, that’s a step up in quality for a lower price. Well, appreciate that, Ian, and good to have some good places out there especially. I know there’s a lot of gold and silver investors in your area and anyway, I’m going to hit the stop share button so we can just see again here.

And either case should be inventful couple of months and look forward to checking in and doing this again soon. Thank you, Chris.
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