Summary
➡ Brian, a long-time trader of gold and silver, discusses the complex relationship between the dollar, gold, silver, and the economy. He believes that the price of silver is not controlled by the dollar, but by manufacturing and industry, and by commercial banks manipulating the price. He also suggests that there may be a shortage of physical silver, as evidenced by the backlog at refineries. Brian concludes that the market for silver is unique and not easily influenced by other economic factors.
➡ The speaker believes that the silver market is controlled by a few banks and is not organic. He discusses three types of people who are selling silver: those who inherited it and have no interest, those who are financially struggling, and those who bought silver at a high price and are now selling due to fear of missing out on other investments. Despite seeing a lot of silver being sold, he hasn’t seen a significant amount of it coming back into the market, indicating that this is a subdued bull market for silver.
➡ The article discusses the decline in the availability of gold and silver in the market. It suggests that fewer Americans own these precious metals compared to the past, leading to a decrease in scrap metal. The author believes that the only significant source of silver now is from mines, but mining companies are struggling to keep up with demand. The article concludes with the prediction of a “pants down moment” where the demand for silver will exceed the supply, causing potential problems for industries that rely on it.
➡ The speaker discusses their end-of-year predictions for gold and silver prices, noting that they usually see a dip during the holiday season before rising in the new year. They also express appreciation for their colleagues in the industry and encourage viewers to check out Commercial Rare Coins. The speaker wraps up by reflecting on the past year and looking forward to the new one, mentioning a special silver statue offer for viewers.
Transcript
Well, hello there, my friends. Chris Marcus here with you on behalf of Arcadia Economics. And what is going to be our final show of 2024. Hard to imagine how I’m hitting 46. Brian, who is my guest today, and certainly I’ve noticed how quickly the years go and goes by and, and certainly this year, an exciting one in gold and silver. And joining me today is Brian Kuzmar of Commercial Rare Coins, who is a bullion dealer. And Brian, I would say one of the key things that we’ve seen this year and heard a lot about, read a lot about, has been a lot of selling, particularly in silver, somewhat in gold, and looking forward to digging into that, along with a whole bunch of other things with you.
And of course, most importantly, how are you today, my friend? Very well, sir. I’m a lucky, blessed man, or whatever you want to call it. Lucky, blessed. Very well, sir. Thank you very much for asking yourself. Well, I’m doing great and it’s, it’s a pleasure to see you again. And I’ll tell our audience that we got to go down and visit your store, which is in, technically, Fort Lauderdale is which town by the sea, more specific. We’re kind of like a little town that you could throw a rock from one side to the other and nestled between Pompano Beach Beach, Fort Lauderdale, kind of.
And wrapped around that little area. Well, a good note for anyone in the South Florida area that is ever in need of buying or selling silver. And Brian, first, before we get into what you’ve been seeing on the retail side, I’ll pull up our chart. Seems only fair to get a little recap of the year on the last day here. We’re actually recording on Monday, to be completely honest. So maybe this pricing will be different on Tuesday, but that’s when this will go up. And see, we’re at 2611 in the futures. Again, as I’ve mentioned many times this year, we came into the Year expecting six or seven rate cuts did not get that many.
So it was not a situation where we had an unexpected easing perhaps like in 2020 or 2008. Yet here we are with what I would call the third biggest year in terms of the metals. I preface that with if you go, if you look at how much silver was up on the year, like in 1980, silver was at 30 bucks to start the year. So sometimes the moves occur not exactly beginning and end of the year, but right when you look at the magnitude of it, I stack it as the third biggest one. And any thoughts you have from what we saw this year and certainly a good year for gold and silver.
Yeah, it’s been a good year for gold silver overall. But the trend is kind of the trend is your friend, I guess. But the trend with gold and silver is, has been consistently that, that line this, you know, I mean we live in a time span of like this right here. And, and this is what gold and silver does. I mean this. But the overall trend is upwards. Why? Because of, you know, the, the buying power of the dollars is consistently get. It gets less and less. But gold and silver very strong and I’m happy with it.
And you know, I don’t think anyone’s ever, unless you’re playing day trader, which you know, if you’re doing that in physical markets, you’re not very smart because of the premiums. You don’t play day trader with physical. I mean that’s just something you don’t do. But unless you’re, you’re playing day trader, I don’t think anyone’s going to go broke hanging on to gold and silver and getting through these cycles that we’re seeing in our lifetime. And, and with the holiday right now, I expected to see higher than prices than we’re seeing right now. But typically, you know, before the new year, you know, prices are kind of a little bit weak.
I think if you go and you look at charts, I’m not a real big chartist guy, but I have a good memory over 40 years of kind of trends that I’ve seen over the course of the years with gold and silver and weakness before the holidays is one of them. Generally speaking. I don’t know if that, that’s happens every year. But yeah, I’m sorry. But yeah, I, I think we’re going to continue to see higher prices. The dollar buys less and less, you know and I don’t ever see that trend getting better. If you look at the cpi, you know, CPI chart, it’s just A downwards, it just goes like this and it gets worse and worse.
And that’s the buying power of the US dollar. I mean that’s a direct reflection of why gold is where it’s at. And I don’t think anywhere in that chart we have ever seen that chart, the one that the Fed puts out, the CPI chart. I don’t think, yeah, I don’t think we’ve ever seen Consumer Price Index. I don’t think we’ve ever seen that get better. Well, here’s the long term. They have it back to, what is it, 1947 and seems to be going in one direction, I might add. There we are in February of 2020. You see the index level at 259.
Last time I did the math at that at 316 it was about 23%. And it’s interesting, Brian, because at the same time you have, you would think or not think there’s some corners of the world that are talking about the dollar’s strength in terms of what you can buy. You’re not seeing much strength in terms of, compared to other currencies that are running similar policies. Quite a move there, but go ahead. Well, you just said the exact thing I was thinking. Compared to what that’s compared to a basket of the currency, it’s like the last horse to the glue factory, isn’t it? You know, that’s what the dollar probably is, is the last horse of the glue factory.
Like that’s simple. They might still beat the British pound and the yen before it’s all said and done. So yeah, I mean, yeah, we’re kind of looking like we’ll be the last horses, but you know, that’s, that’s just, and that’s a trend that’s not going to cease. I mean, I don’t see anything changing. And that’s kind of what I’m seeing with. I think there’s a lot of exuberant people out there thinking that, you know, the new administration is going to make such a huge significant impact in the economy and that the dollar is going to start.
I mean, how many people really believe that we’re going to see that CPI chart go in the opposite direction in the next four years or the next eight years. Does anybody really believe that? I mean, maybe it won’t be as dramatic drops as we’ve seen, you know, in buying power, but I don’t think anybody believes that we’re on a reversal, you know, as long as you’ve got a fiat system like we have and when they can Just endlessly crank this stuff out. Your, your helicopter, Ben. BEN Bernanke helicopter throwing the money out. Yeah, it’s never going to get fixed.
No matter what policies they institute, no matter what they do. It’ll be a short term fix. But unless you fix the problem of the dollar. But again, not my specialty. My specialty is there you go handing out the money. That’s it. That’s the problem. The, you know, I mean the problem, you know, is also overspending and all those other things that hopefully they may fix. But the key biggest problem we have is our fiat system and the banking system that we have right now. And it’s not going to get any better. I don’t see anybody talking about fixing that.
And that means gold and silver are going to continue to do what they’ve done. This, you know, I’m sorry, but no. Well, I mean, I, I know what you mean. And interesting. Remember, I’m just a simple country coin dealer. You know, that’s, that’s me too. I have no technicalities like you, you know, like the real intelligent guys like you guys out there that, that know the intricacies of these markets. And I’m just a small town country kind of coin dealer. So if I told you that Ben Bernanke actually wrote a, he was writing a column for the Brookings Institute back in, I believe it was 2016 and his three planks saying what, what if the Fed runs out of tools where negative interest rates, capping longer term interest rates.
And then he even said that, you know, people giggled at him because of the helicopter money. Although in an extreme situation it shouldn’t be ruled out. So Brian is someone who’s actually the man on the street trading gold and silver that those sounded a little odd to you as well. I’m assuming so. Oh yeah, yeah, that’s. It just doesn’t work. I mean I’m a kind of, I’m a, I’m a mis guy and, and Ron Paul guy from way back and in the Fed, I mean that’s kind of so, you know, from way back. That’s kind of been my philosophy.
I’m not an expert on economics. I won’t pretend to be, but yeah, I’d 100% agree. I mean it’s, you know, it’s not coincidental the price of gold and that CPI line and where the dollar is going. So it’s not coincidental, you know. Yeah. And Brian, one last one before we get into the retail order flow, but I last couple questions have been building here and let me Move something out of the way here. You can see. Let’s go back to the dollar chart, which we’re looking at here on nine. 18, come on. We see the dollar low.
It was right at par. So now at 108 spot. Oh, 8. That’s 8%. So the Fed cuts interest rates by 100 basis points while additionally saying the economy’s strong and while inflation is accelerated, accelerating again. So despite that, the dollar is up, dollar index, excuse me, up 8%. We actually see a similar pattern here in the bond market, which is quite stunning. Here in the 18th, you see the low 369, so about 80, 90 basis points, which doesn’t seem like the best news for the Fed yet. Coming back to gold and silver, here we take a look.
Here’s silver on the 18th, and let’s call it somewhere around trading between 30 and a half, 31 and a half. So silver down a dollar or so, but gold is actually up over that period. Obviously, what I’m getting at here, you know that whether we think this is the way it should be or not, dollar index up, gold and silver off and down. What happens if Trump’s tariffs don’t work the way I think many people are expecting them to work, which I don’t think will work? I mean, if gold and silver hung in there while the dollar’s up, dollar index up 8%, what happens when that reverses? I mean, that 8%, what is that really, though? It’s kind of a sleight of hand.
What are they doing to create that? But I think first off, with silver, I think silver is completely, I don’t think it has really, the dollar has any relationship with the price of silver. I think the silver, silver is kind of its own market out there. I believe that, you know, again, I’ve talked about this before. I believe that the silver market is not controlled by the dollar per se. It’s controlled by a couple things. It’s controlled by manufacturing and industry who use up most of silver, not stackers. We are not, we don’t, you know, we don’t create large usage of silver overall and, you know, commercial banks that are out there manipulating the price of silver in the, what I call the crime and X comics markets.
You know, I talked about, you know, I’m a big fan of Ted Butler. I’ve talked about this many times before Mr. Butler was able. Again, when I say I’m a poor country coin dealer, there’s some truth to that. This is my specialty. This is what I’ve done since I was A kid I’m you know, 40 plus years of doing rare coins and precious metals. I stopped counting at 40 and you know, I was always, I have watched for the last 40 years these markets get monkey hammered down, particularly silver. I mean, you know, now after years and years and years we understand what happened to the Hunt Brothers.
Hunt Brothers got taken down by the Crimex family. Basically they hot brothers. Loans get called in. You have to liquidate your position when your loans get called in. And, and basically, you know, I don’t think silver is an organic market per se. The only thing organic about silver is the industrial usage which I think Ted Butler talked about at some point. There’s so much of this paper trading around that that you cannot make electronics. You can’t make a circuit board with a, with a contract with a piece of paper you can’t make. Again silver is used in so many products that we have.
And I think we’re coming to that day where silver is going to be very tough to locate and very tough to source. I mean and then the paper shenanigans will be over. You know I call it in the silver market where the, the tail wags the dog. And to me the tail is the paper markets, you know and the tail has been wagging the dog is for in my opinion for four decades right now. But I believe the dog being the physical market, the actual physical supply is going at some point be wagging the tail pretty violently as well.
Because how many more silver mines are opening up there? Who’s big producing large amounts of silver out there really? Who is producing what mines are producing large amounts, new mines. I mean I’m very in tight with metal ore. I’ve been selling them, you know, where we do a lot of refining with metal or particularly in silver. Gold’s not our thing but silver, you know, 55 gallon drums of coins and silverware and flatware that we buy from other dealers and stuff. We’re kind of a wholesaler on that. And, and here’s interesting and again I’m digressing here a little bit but it probably all fits into the big picture.
Metal or is at 16 weeks, 16 weeks for refining right now. Why is that? I mean we’re not taking in none of the scrap guys that I’m talking to. Guys that do what we do, buy you know, silver coins and 55 gallon drums and then you know, send them out to be refined. You know, our businesses haven’t picked up dramatically, you know in a scrap business, of course, the scrap business, scrap scrap metal as Far as silverware, jewelry and even scrap coin has slowed down dramatically over the years. At one point we used to get huge amounts of this stuff in over the decades, over the years, over the days.
It’s less and less and less. So why is metal or so busy? Well, I, I recently came into the understanding talking to my account rep there is that they’re bringing in huge amounts of silver from Mexico. So metal or is doing a refi a lot of refining out of Mexico. And that’s actually slowed down their. Their silver process. 16 weeks. You know, they’re silver refining. I also believe that a lot of you’re talking about what’s coming from the. The mine supply and being refined. I think it’s taking a front seat to maybe a lot of the dealers like myself that are sending in you know what.
Because it’s what’s causing metal ore to be 16 weeks backlogged on silver. We’re the largest refiners in our country. Metal or is all over the country. You know, they’re Switzerland, Japan. They just opened offices in Hong Kong. One of the largest refineries in the world. Basically multi international company. You know, when I got. When I, when they accepted me, they flew an attorney from Chicago to come down and visit me in my coin store to make sure I Swiss company. The paperwork was about this thick. I had to hire an attorney to actually even fill it out for me.
I didn’t even know international law. But they’re a hardcore company. They’re 16 weeks behind on silver refining. It ain’t coming from guys like me. You know, the poor old country ain’t coming from the scrappers out there. So it’s got to be coming from the refiners is the reason they’re so backed up in silver. Why? And also, well, why. Why would they be backed up? Why would they be pushing that stuff through so much and maybe even a cheaper profit margin? Perhaps there. Perhaps the reason is. Is because there is a shortage out there of silver as far as silver used in the manufacturing processes out there.
Maybe silver needed for the etf. Something else. I don’t want to go down that rabbit hole. But the, the ETFs shorts that they’ve been talking about recently. Ted Butler talked about a long time that maybe that’s just a real excuse for being short sober to put in there. Huh. I don’t know. I don’t know the technicalities of that. But certainly something to look at. But I’m, you know, I’m telling you is so there’s a problem with silver out there, physical silver. And again, when refiners are backed up that much, and it’s not coming from scrap silver, it’s coming from the mines.
I don’t know, I don’t know how to explain that. It’s kind of weird because you would think how slow things are, that they would not be backed up, you know what I mean? Or with the price of silver going down when that indicate. But none of those things line up. And again, I, I really believe that the entire silver market is controlled by a handful of banks out there. It’s not controlled by. It’s not any. There’s nothing organic about the silver market, in my opinion. Unless you think people trading paper in the silver market is organic, which I don’t mean.
To me, an organic market is silver. You have a product that, that millions and millions of people need. You know, that’s. The dog should be wagging the tail and always should have been wagging the tail. Brian, that makes a lot of sense what you’re saying and leads into my next question here. Where in terms of the selling on the retail side, this is really great to get your perspective on. I have a friend who is a wholesaler. He told me about a month ago that in terms of number of sells to number of buys, he said it was 15 to 1 selling for each buy.
Now that was in terms of individual orders. If you added by weight, he said it was about five to one of selling to buying. Second data point I’ll mention is that I saw a video from another coin shop actually in Florida where he was mentioning that for every thousand ounces they buy back, they’re selling about 50 or 100. Right. I’ve certainly heard other folks on Twitter, Bob Coleman talks about the. That there’s been a lot of selling. So would love to hear what you’re seeing in that. What you can share of what you’re seeing directly, which I know each business is different.
So if there’s anything you can extrapolate from what you’ve been hearing about other people and just to help everyone understand what is actually going on there, I’m gonna work specifically with silver. I’m going to talk specifically about silver, not gold so much. It’s a kind of different animal. Quick, quick question on that then. Am I correct that there has been a lot more, A lot more of the selling has been in silver than on the gold side? Yes. No, I mean, it’s tough for me because. Well, yeah, I would say, yeah, we’re seeing a little bit more.
Well, not really? Well, that’s a tough question. Obviously you can see I’m kind of torn on that because I do see people selling gold a little bit more here than silver. And I’ll tell you why. It’s because a lot of my customers, and let me say something, I think that each dealer you talk to has, as you said, is individual, has their own place. I live in la La land. I live, you know, our business is on the east side of the intercoastal. Here we have, you know, I probably see 7 to 10 Ferraris a day drive by, you know what I’m saying? And it’s, we’re just in a wealthy area and that may differ from a guy that’s in Montana or somewhere or in Florida, in another place in Florida.
So the dynamics are going to be different. The dynamics for me is that I’ve been doing this a long time. We’ve, you know, you know, you know, 5,000 ounce silver deals are not big deals really, you know, in my area. Okay. You know, they’re nice deals but they’re not big deals overall. And the only capitulation that I’ve seen, I’m going to speak for myself in silver has been the three, three types of capitulation. First is the inheritance. The people that have inherited silver and we see that in gold as well. All right, people come in and we’re always curious why are you selling? Why are you selling? Especially me, you know, and I’m going to get into how many people I’ve told not to sell and how many phone calls I’ve.
For decades, how many people I’ve told not to sell and how many people call me and thank me over and over for telling them not to sell gold and silver. But the people we’re seeing capitulating are going to be number one people that inherited, they have no interest in gold and silver. Family members, what? Kids? Children. They inherited 10 Kurd from dad or Uncle John or you know, a bunch of hundred ounce silver bars. They don’t have any interest in silver. You could sit there and talk to them and I’ve done this. Hey, why don’t you hang on to this? Give this a kid, split this up, don’t cash it in, you don’t keep it.
That’s a good, that’s your Uncle John was a smart dude. You know, most of them don’t though. They have no interest. That’s the one. Brian, a quick question. I’m not for the viewers at home. I’m not too far from him in south Florida. I would imagine that, especially just the way this part of the state is set up, that there are a lot of large estates. If you drive around here, you can see that, like you’ve mentioned, and that there, I’ve always imagined there would be a lot of gold and silver that would often get passed down.
And I know that’s something you’ve been active in, so. Well, as I mentioned too, we buy a lot from estates for silver and estate buyers. You know, the people that buy from estates and stuff sell to us for not for gold, but for silver. Remember I was telling, we buy flatware hollow and all that stuff in large quantities. That capitulation you see all the time. But as far as gold and silver and platinum deals, there’s a huge amount of estates in Florida, but not a lot of them really contain large amounts of gold and silver. I’d say, boy, no, I better not say anything because I’d just be guessing, but very small percentage of estates in Florida do contain physical gold and silver, you know, but they do.
And when they do, they come in here because that’s what we’re kind of known to buy. So those are the people we see capitulating in gold and silver’s people that inherited the second capitulation I see, print merely in silver is going to be weak hands. You know, the blue collar guys or the guys that bought silver and are a little tight on money right now, or their businessman, you know, that’s, you know, struggling to pay, you know, his employees or something. Because again, I asked my employees ask. We want to know why are you selling right now? We think that you should hang on to this.
This is what we tell people. And that’s the second capitulation we have. And how can you tell a guy that’s trying to pay his employees not to sell at that point, you know, or is paying his bill. What you do tell them is you say you’re a blessed person, that you have it, you know, I’m glad you had it, that you can pay your cut, your. You know what I’m saying? And then the third types of capitulation we see are the silver sellers that, that the FOMO people, the fear of missing out people, the people that jumped in silver at 29, 31, 33, 35 bucks back in 2020 that had been expecting their return or expected to double up or triple up.
You know, some of the expectations were their own fault, you know, and some of the expectations were created by people that hype precious metals. And, you know, there’s a lot of those guys out there. But that’s probably the third type of capitulation we see. And when we ask, well, why are you selling? And no matter what you say to them, well, listen, it’s going to go up. Look at the chart. That’s what we tell them. But no, no, no, you know, they’re going to buy another asset, Bitcoin. They’re going to go into something else that they feel is going to perform.
So that’s the kind of third people that, the third type of person that we see capitulating. But in silver, I have sold, I mean, lots and lots, lots of silver. I mean, you know, I’ve sold a lot and they’re not showing up. I know these guys, I know these customers. I’ve 40 years of dealing with people. I mean, like, I’ve been in Broward. I know these customers. I have not seen these deals come back in. I did not see them capitulate in 2011 either, where we were selling way more. This market has been subdued. This is the worst bull market I’ve ever seen.
Retail sales for gold and silver. Worst, horrible, you know, and the best indicator of that is go out and look for cash for gold shops. Right. Every time we’ve had a bull market since 1980s, and I’ve been through three bull markets in this business, we’ve had cash for gold shops pop up. I mean, there’s just a visual, you know, they’re not here now. Where are they? We. Every time we’ve had a major bull market in gold and silver, all the TV ads start popping up. Yeah, we still got some of them. A couple of those guys out there selling overpriced numismatics on tv, by the way.
Stay away from those folks. Stay away from the TV sellers. But they’re not out there like they were, you know what I’m saying? Where are the, where are the, the guys that buy scrap gold that every coin shop and every, every jewelry out there dealer would get? At least three people a day would come in, hey, I bought your scrap from you. I’m a scrap dealer with such and such. They’re not there all time. High gold. They’re not there. And I tell you why. It’s because most Americans don’t own gold and silver. Only a small, small, small.
We are a, such a small community that does. And you know, and it’s, it’s less and less. I mean, the 80s market was phenomenal. We had people lined up around the corner holding silver trays. I mean, literally silver trays, boxes that we had people pulling their dent, you know, their gold teeth out of their mouth, putting them on the counter. That’s not an exaggeration. I mean just to go to extremes. And the 80s market was just wild. It was crazy. But remember, Americans owned silverware. Americans own their grandparents, their parents owned silverware. Their parents, they owned flatware, they owned silver bars.
They owned. Because they were allowed to own silver and gold in the 70s. So it was a popular thing to buy. They own that stuff. 80s came around, those prices hit. I mean they were, they were the 2011, 2012 market, far more subdued. Even though we did see a lot of. You saw the cash for gold shops pop up, remember 2011 12, far more subdued than the 80s mark, but still a lot more competition. We saw more shops open up, you know, doing what we’re doing. We saw more scrap guys, you know, and again that market was what, what was a high at the time, I think, but no less 19 or something like that.
We’re breaking what, 26, 2700. No scrap. There’s no jewelry coming in, you know, because they don’t own it anymore. It’s their parents own, the grandparents on it. There’s no scrap silver coming in because who the hell entertains with silver anymore? All that traditional scrap that used to come in is not coming in. So when it comes to silver, where is the pickup? Well, it’s got to be the mines, you know, I’m saying the mines are the only people that can supply large amounts of silver because the public ain’t doing it anymore. Well, the only problem with that is that we couldn’t have a situation farther away from bringing new silver production online because it’s.
While we’re in the middle of this, you have. Most of the mining companies are still getting clobbered in the time lag it takes to get the silver out. So. Well, I think again I like to use my friend Ted Butler’s when I say friend. I subscribe to his newsletters for years and Butler research and I also conversed with them when I was confused about something like conversing with email. He was very open, very nice guy to answer and talk with. And I believe at some point we’re going to see what Ted Butler called a pants because I was talking about physical supply and I’m sorry, Ted Butler was.
I believe at some point we’re going to see what Ted Butler called the full pants down moment where, where there’s no physical available, you know, and there’s something going on with thousand ounce bars right now. That I’m told to the premiums, you know Bob Coleman was talking about thousand ounce bar premium, 50 cents over. Now why in the face of that there’s no retail silver selling and, or very little and then we’re not selling a lot and, and I’ll hit back on that real quick. Did you mean no very little retail buying? Retail buying, yes. Yeah, yeah.
For when I’m saying selling for us selling. Me selling. Yeah. It depends on what side of the counter you’re on. But very little retail buying out there just doesn’t make any sense. Chris, then I think that we may be near what Ted Butler called the pants down moment, you know what I’m saying? Where, where all of a sudden manufacturers and people that need silver for industry are going to need silver and it’s not there. And it doesn’t make sense. Again, why are 50, why, why are premiums up on a thousand ounce bars? Specifically thousand ounce bars.
Why is metal or backed up? Why is that big short position? And when I start to kind of look from the big picture, again, I’m not a technical guy. When I start to look at the big picture I think there’s some serious problems with physical supply out there. I really do. I don’t think it’s out there, you know and I think a lot of investment silver is also probably being melted down as well. You know, investment silver is being melted. That’s what I’ve heard. That was actually what I was going to ask you about next and maybe this final one, I’ll give you two parts.
Here is a. Anything that you have heard or thoughts you have on heard from wholesalers that they’re seeing product melted down which I assume is going into industrial usage. And then the second part, again feel free to pass in this, I don’t want to reveal anything confidential yet. You mentioned the level of buying this year. Do you know, do you, do you think you sold more silver this year or last year if you. Oh, we sold more silver last year for sure. Down a bit this year on the buy side silver sales are terrible. They’ve just dropped off a cliff completely retail silver sales.
But you know, again when I was touching on capitulation, we haven’t seen it in large scale. I mean me personally, I haven’t seen it on large scale. I’ve seen the three types of people that have capitulated but again I’m kind of miffed by this premium on thousand ounce bars. Again, thousand ounce bars are used primarily by who probably large investors of people like ETFs that would need thousand ounce bars. That’s who needs thousand ounce bars. Industry needs thousand ounce bars. So but meanwhile you could buy, you could buy 90 and all those other stuff probably for less than 50 cents.
Brian, Chris needs some thousand ounce bars too as you can see. What’s that? No, I’m sorry. Oh yeah Chris, Chris over here. I need some thousand ounce bars too. Look at my, look at my casa. Yeah, there you get most. Come over and build some forts later. You know we could could toss these around, play some games. Bars are nice but I got to tell you the problem with retail folks if you get if avoid them like the plague. They’re such a pain to ship. They’re expensive to ship, don’t have concerns. Yeah but capitulation haven’t seen it here and and again I believe we’re looking at what Ted Butler says a full pants down moment when it comes to they’re going to go to the coffers and say there’s no silver here.
You know and all those things are adding up again. Metal ore being backed up mostly from mines. No retail silver company. I mean you know it just kind of all points that picture. I think there’s issues. Well fortunately Brian I appreciate everything you shared and that if people do need silver or if they have come to the decision or are in a situation where they need to sell silver back. I know you’ve helped a lot of people with that which I think gets understated A lot is not often talked about as much when people buy precious metals.
It certainly is something that’s been important this year when we’ve seen more selling and I know some dealers paying under spot right now and anyway. Oh yeah or gold’s worse. Gold is worse right now as far as the discounts on gold across the board. You know stuff is trading at major dealers are paying less than what the refiners are paying. Major dealers are out there paying 98 and a half percent on a lot of gold bullion coins that before had a small premium. So retail sales have dropped off a cliff but the prices continue to climb.
It’s been interesting the opposite of what most of us expected. And Brian perhaps just in wrapping up can you let people know where they can find you on the web and also the phone number if anyone wants to reach out get more information or as trading or investing they need to do. I’m commercial rare coins and precious metals. I’ve been in Lauderdale by the sea I think since 1995. Started working with my father back in the 80s that’s kind of how I got in this business. Second generation, we buy and sell rare coins, precious metals, and we also have an estate jewelry business that does other things to estates and things.
But we don’t do any mail order sales, really. We don’t do any mail order. We don’t do any online sales per se. We’re kind of a brick and mortar straight to your face. But if, you know, people are looking for large deals and they can do wires, we can do shipping, that kind of deal. And you can find me on also we have a YouTube channel called Commercial Rare Coins and Precious Metals as well, where I talk about, you know, kind of things that we talk about right here. And I think that’s pretty much it. Mike, you can find me on Twitter and X as well as Brian Kuzmar.
Oh, wow. We got the, the end of the year forecast. I got to check this out. See what, what did you go with? Were you close? You know, I forget what I said in that video, but I, no, I believe I was kind of correct because what I was thinking is that I wasn’t expecting any big price movements upward, typically seasonal, right before the holidays. It’s always weak, it seems always weak. Now, I’d have to go back and look at the yearly charts, but typically it’s weak this time of year. So I think I probably just made the prediction that, you know, maybe we’ll see it up a little bit higher, but I kind of feel it’s going to be weak until the new year and then we’ll see higher prices in the new year.
So let’s see how that prediction does. I’m guessing you said about 26, 15 in gold and 29.40. Unless you if you said something different, that means we have a price change coming on Tuesday. But. Well, in either case, all this silliness aside, maybe not entirely, but not just the, the fact that this exists, but what he’s actually done and all that. I appreciate that there are some good people out there in the industry and it was really nice to come down to your store and meet you. I know you know our dear friend Rafi as well.
Oh, yeah. It’s just nice to, to meet you and see that there are good people out there. And I would feel comfortable recommending anyone that needs to do business in gold and silver to check out Commercial rare coins. And Brian Kuzmar, thanks for joining us. I’ll have to swing down there again soon and. Absolutely, please do. But I think this was helpful for people in what was one of the themes in my mind at least for 2024 and I have to pick this up again and do it soon in 2025. But happy new Year to you my friend and Happy New Year to everybody watching at home.
Sure appreciate you guys being here for everything we’ve done this year. And Brian, with that said, we’ll wrap up, but we’ll look forward to catching up with you again soon. Absolutely. Buy and hold. Well, thank you Brian and thank you at home for watching. Sure appreciate you being here and being here with us all year as we are now finally wrapping up 2024 and what has been an historic year for the metals. So a lot to look forward to and we will be back picking it up in the New year in just a few days. Although real quick in case you saw that silver chopper Ben backdrop in the video.
Well here’s your chance. Chance to get your very own helicopter Ben Bernanke 26 ounce 395 silver statue where he comes and throws $100 bills all over your desk. And if you’ve always dreamed of having a silver minted helicopter Ben Bernanke statue, well just click in the link in the description field below to find out how you can get your own. So Happy New Year and we will see you again in 2020.
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