Smaulgld (@Smaulgld)

If you are pegging your hopes on a #silver shortage based on the online bullion dealers being sold out. Think again. There is a manufacturing bottleneck that takes silver and forges it into coins* rounds and bars. There is limited round and bar minting capacity as the business model of minting rounds and bars isn't very good and operates on thin margins and there are but a few such mints around the world. Indeed, the US Mint itself doesnt make its silver eagles, it gets their silver rounds or planchets/blanks from the Sunshine Minting company and two or three other private mints (they used to buy silver blanks from the Perth Mint too until America First people complained that the US Mint shouldn't be buying from foreign mints) The US Mint simply stamps the silver eagle design on the silver blanks it buys. The US Mint's peak silver eagle sales was only 50 million in 2015 (out of an ANNUAL mining supply of 900 m oz) and yet the US Mint had trouble keeping up with demand because the silver round manufacturing couldnt keep up. It wasnt because of a silver shortage but due to an inability to receive silver blanks in the quantities required in a timely fashion. No minting company is going to keep on hand large quantities of silver and hold the price risk, so they buy the amounts they need necessary to meet demand, but they can simply make 10 million rounds in a few days even if they HAD the silver. Think of it this way- a picnic organizer buys a few hundred pounds of ground beef and pre makes about 200 burgers, thinking if more are needed they can make more. The picnic has three times as many people than the organizers expected and two of the tent food workers call in sick. By lunch time there is a long wait for burgers and the tent cant keep up. Or lets say the picnic did not buy enough beef and has to send a worker to the supermarkets to buy more. The time delay to get burgers at the picnic just got longer There is a burger shortage not a beef shortage. Currently there is a shortage of coins, rounds and bars, not a #silver shortage