Interesting Bulkcoins. Makes me think about if and whenever silver may hit 75.00 an ounce...I wonder if the premium of silver coins (panda, lunar, kooks, etc...) gets wiped out, and it is lumped into the category of generic rounds, where dealers and coin shops will accept only spot? It really is fascinating to think about.
It didn't happen at $50' and it won't at $75 As of now as soon as monetary base goind down in US we can enjoy low prices but the time is ticking...
About oil / gasoline, look at this: and this: and this: and this: Notice it? The green trend line below. The size of their hedge. To me, it looks like they received lotsa dollars more in the past decade, dollars that can compensate for later lower prices.
I remember this very well! my uncle had a small foundry mainly for ali and Tin he had a pm licence and in those days you needed to call in for spot price, Even though everything was thrown in all together for melt he still used to take out all the best stuff before the furnace,
It did happen in the past and will happen again. If silver somehow gets to $75 an ounce, most of those fancy semi numis coins will go for $76 (unless really rare, which most modern semi numis coins are not, although they might be very popular among collectors). Even at a mere silver price of $30, many semi numis coins were cheaper than ASE's, for example I was buying rolls of BU Franklins for LESS than ASE's (per ounce of pure silver) when silver was between $25 and $30 per ounce. Now they (BU Franklins) sell at a huge premium over melt. Like another poster here said, back in 1980 many cool items were melted. One of my current dealers who had a shop in 1980 told me that "rare" Morgans were being melted because the silver price grew faster and higher than their numis price. Many great BU Morgans and such were melted then, even ones that were considered "rare". Jim
Another effect of cut priced commodities is that, in a depressed market it acts as a stimulus to the manufacturing industry. Low priced materials means lower baseline cost to produce stock for sale. This in turn means that retailers get relief in cost prices for goods and can stimulate sales through competitive discounting. As stated earlier in this thread, turnover is the name of the game. In order to service debt, selling larger volumes at lower prices gives liquidity and increases lender confidence. Think of the idea of mining lots of ore and selling it cheaply as a way for mining to stimulate industry so as to create future growth of demand. This process has successfully pulled economies out of slumps before.
