barsenault said:
Great insight. Thanks for sharing. And I agree. One of the main reasons I went from silver to gold is my silver stack is getting a bit too heavy. If I had to bug out with my family for whatever reason (hurricane, collapse, etc...) i have quite a bit of weight in silver. It would be nice to take several ounces of gold, and know I have the equivalent in silver. Another reason is gold will be my spending money in retirement. I'm only buying bullion, so I'm not so attached to the stuff like I am my semi-numismatic (kooks, pandas, gilded, colored, and britannias) and numi coins. So, with all that being said, it's not easy for me to pass up 60 kooks for the price of 1 dang ounce of gold, but a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do!!

. Really appreciate everyone sharing their thoughts. I think if silver were to get to a 100 an ounce, industry will def do everything in their power to come up with a replacement wherever possible, leaving more supply, driving down prices. I'm just not a believer in this 'silver is almost gone.'
Replying to you and ML both:
ML my clients have been mixed re silver and gold. The early buyers were mostly silver, but then I was buying mostly silver too. The early buyers included millionaires. Around March, 2011 when silver got to $35, I decided gold would be the better way to go for future buying. And for myself and friends/clients, most of the purchases since that date have been gold. But the clients who were not interested in buying pms in the early years are now buying and they are buying almost exclusively gold. How much of that choice is due to my preference for gold, I don't know. But the clients who are worth 8 figures are only buying gold.
It would not be easy to substitute other metals for silver in industrial applications. The amount of silver used per product is not significant, so those products are not that sensitive to the price of silver. Even if they could substitute other metals, there are more patent applications for silver than any other metal. And the medical uses for silver are growing daily. Consider that film used to be at least half of the usage of silver and now it is a small portiion. Yet, even with the decline in film usage, the amount of ounces used in industrial applications has grown. Silver has too many current and future industrial and medical uses to be allowed to be money again.
At least in the US, the young people are more interested in digital money via debit cards, phones, etc. They don't have much interest in paper money and none in precious metals.
Not related to this thread, but I need to get to work and don't want to search for the appropriate thread. I read last night that the surge in bitcoin pricing is due to the fact that the Chinese are now 62% of the bitcoin market. Should the Chinese government get involved, bitcoin could be due for a severe price correction. Then again, maybe the Chinese government is behind the surge in Chinese buying as a way to avoid the USD.