Auction: 25 silver 100 oz. bars, JM or Engelhards(First time auction!)Silver Stock Reportby Jason Hommel, August 27th, 2008
Terms: Available to bidders in the USA only. Auction ends August 29th, Friday, Noon. Bid over spot. Email me how much you are willing to pay, over the
spot price. Minimum bid: $1.50 USD over spot, per ounce. The winning bid will be about +/-$13.50 plus something over $1.50 = $15.00 x 2500 = $37,500+ All or nothing, whole lot only. No partial lot bids. Winning bidder will be notified via email, wire transfer instructions. Only bank wires will be accepted. No checks, no CC, no cash. Free, insured, shipping, to anywhere in the USA ONLY, included in the price. Upon receipt of wire, I'll ship. After the auction, I will release the range of bids, but not the name of any bidder. I accept no responsibility if your email bid gets lost and does not arrive, or gets lost in the spam filter. Email via "returned receipt requested" to help ensure delivery of your bid. ======================= As you may know, most dealers are out of 100 oz. bars, cannot get any, cannot find any. I believe most major dealers regularly hedge in paper, as a standard business practice, and cannot now find bars from the public to buy, because the public is now buying more than selling. Dealers are getting hit by the disconnect, the premium on physical products, which is not covered by the futures contracts. Dealers who remain sold out, will remain out of business. Tulving is offering to buy 100 oz. bars at 60 cents over spot, but is
sold out. CNI is also sold out: Bulliondirect has only 1 bar on offer at $2180! Oh my! APMEX has "APMEX" bars at about $1.25 over spot, but only 14 of them,
and those are not JM. Bars are selling at ebay for $1700, over $3.00 over spot, but usually
only 1 bar at a time. I expect these 25 silver bars to auction for between $2-4 over spot. Johnson Matthey is 8-10 weeks behind on orders, and is no longer taking orders. Johnson Matthey is reported to have a manufacturing capacity of only 300-400 bars per week, which is barely 2 million oz. per year, in a market that is demanding about 60-100 million ounces per year. All the "old" bars, manufactured over the last 25-50 years, are being tightly held by investors. I believe the current shortage of silver in nearly all forms, is not a manufacturing issue, because all of the old dates of eagles, and old bars, are also sold out. One current rumor is that a large trader placed an order for 50,000 Krugerrands. This vastly increased the premiums for gold coins across the board. This is a $45 million order, which is small change in terms of world finance, but huge in the tiny world of physical gold and silver dealers. Some people may wonder if I'm selling out. I'm not. These are bars from some of my readers, that I now offer to you. I'll sell mine, and use the cash to buy these, to insure no default to you, and help insure the highest possible price to the real seller. I will earn a small spread, and I'll get to test the market to see a depth of bids. Current market conditions are highly unusual. Physical silver 100 ounce bars are hard to find in large quantity except on ebay.com, yet the price of silver has recently dropped, which seems to contradict all known forms of supply/demand price dynamics. I can only understand it, and explain it, if the futures market is unduly and unfairly impacting the price. Bar price 'premiums' over the paper might not last. They might increase. Bidders are expected to know what they are doing. Further information on current unusual market conditions: Once-upon-a-time, in 'never-never' land, there were two competing
silver prices Special Got Gold Report - Silver Investors Sucker Punched by Two U.S.
Banks Eagle Rationing: Where there's Smoke, there's Fire I'm surprised by the following editorial by Mark O'Byrne, who recognizes the shortage of physical silver and gold as something unique. I castigated this man severely a few months ago, for his "faith" in the promises of paper certificates. Gold Investments Market Update - U.S. and Russian Warships in Black Sea
as Tensions Escalate ================= Jason Hommel |