2008 it was difficult to get silver for anything. I even remember a whole day, I tried to buy one 90% bag in vain. Considering that there exists approx. 600,000(!) $1000 F/V bags, I think it is a significant event if a full time dealer is not able to secure one, even though he says he is able to pay any price.
That would seem to be a very small sample size. One dealer, one day, five years ago.
No, I called quite many dealers, since that was my job..
I could have charged 20% premium on top of everything I was quoted, you just don't forget these things. No reason to downplay this. I think it was October 15. There were small scale "bank runs" (depositors queuing to withdraw for no apparent consumption demand), since the G20 meeting or whatever was scheduled for the weekend, and some in the know considered that the banks all over might not open on Monday.
I had already been confiscated of all of my inventory for bogus charges (which were dropped later), I had withdrawn my meager money from the bank (I have only twice in my life minimized my bank balances in anticipation of a bank run,
the latter started March 20, this year, and is still in effect), and made just-in-case contingency plans in case I would not be found. The PM of Finland revealed a year after, that "we were hours away from financial meltdown".
If you run for your life, you just don't forget it. This time it's different, everybody knows what I know. It's all here in this thread.
I have seen you use this anecdote as the basis for your thesis several times. But specifically, it only speaks to a possible strength in the price of silver, and not PM's as a whole, particularly gold. There is demonstrable strength in industrial demand for silver according to the Silver Institute. Whereas, demand for physical gold has been on a long term decline, it is only investment demand that has been keeping the price up, now that is on the decline. Much as the circumstance you describe for silver in the 1980 scenario. I would expect that silver will suffer to an extent due to the stickiness of the s/g ratio, but time will tell if its fate will remain coupled to gold.
They can play with physical gold, but as they do it, the dimwit margin traders in COMEX think, that silver
should also crash as it's also a pm. So they sell paper silver short, causing the very crash they anticipated. Paper silver is very thin as the physical longs generally don't bother, it's like Mt.Gox really, just a pathetic manipulation joke, I don't even have the account there, lol. The public runs to buy the cheapened physical, causing a run on coin shops, and now they've mostly been out of silver (or with very low inventory) for 3 months already. They need to pretend they don't have silver, since if they tell they do, but just won't sell it because manipulation, it causes an outcry and the feds raid their shops.
That was why they did not sell to me in 10/2008. I was offering to pay too high a premium, I was already on the feds blacklist (my standing inventory was already confiscated), and they did not want to risk their business since they knew I was in trouble because of my internet trolling. Funny that they
all knew it..
It was one day, yes, but you just don't forget it.
Today I couldn't care less. The leverage is in bitcoin now.