After seeing how many dollars are being printed the last couple of months (and always, really) I started stacking silver rounds to store what I have (NOT to invest for a return as precious metals aren't an investment). I have a few sovereign mint coins from various countries so far, whatever I can find as close to the spot price per ounce as possible. I'm brand new to this and have already familiarized myself with several methods to verify my coins and junk silver like the ping test, ice cube test, and neodymium magnet test. It's like a treasure hunt!

Watch videos from Silver Dragons and others on YouTube. This one excellently sums up why you should buy (trade your dollars for) silver:

There are different levels of permits. The exploration permits are easy buy really low volume and just for testing. 60-120 days depending on state. You have to post a bond. A full mining permit can take 18 months-4 years. Full permits are broke down by disturbed acreage. You have to post a bond for everything. In certain counties you have to get a special use permit. This can be hard. Every large scale permit has public input at the state and county level. You have to go in front of the zoning committee and then county commissioners for approval. If commissioners vote you down you are stopped. You can appeal to district court. After you get a special use and state reclamation permit you have 30 days to post the bond. Your permit shows your mining plan. You have to reclaim constantly and replant grass or trees. Then you need a air emissions permit. It is a calculation and usually 12-18 months. Depending how close to the River you may need a army Corp of engineers permit. Water rights you need industrial or mining rights. You can buy or lease the water. Depending on the state you have to do engineering and get approval for your substitute water augmentation plan. 6-12 months. You may never get the permit and be stuck with fees. You can run all permits at the same time but have to have local approval prior to getting a state reclamation permit. I have been successful but have also had ones that politics required me to withdrawal or certain things that we could not comply with based on location to structures or neighbors. If you comply with the laws they use to not be able to deny you. That game has changed in recent years, as many are anti mining. This will cause the rise in construction materials to continue. Hope that helps.

Thanks for the detailed response. I suspected it was a complex and costly process that likely will only get worse.
You might have touched on this but what minerals or metals do you get other than gold. And if silver is a biproduct, what ratio is average of gold to silver. For example do you get 10 ounces of gold to 1 ounce of silver.

It depends on the location. Anything I do in Colorado we get aggregate. Alluvial granite rock is really hard. I crush it and sell it by rail or trucks. It is made in different sizes for strength known as road spec. It is put in concrete or asphalt and mixed with lower grade aggregate make road material. Round material won’t “bind” like mine does. I also get silica material used in the semiconductor industry. Silver is a by product. Anywhere between 10 to 30 percent of volume Troy ounce depends on location and source.

In Alaska there is no by products. Cost of operations is usually three to four times higher. You do run 24/7 there but shorter season. You bring in supply’s and material on a ice road in the winter.

It is true it all begins with a pan. I prospect constantly. I use a pan and a gold cube. Next I will “pot hole”, this is where I use a hoe and dig, pan and gold cube slowly all the way to first layer bedrock and I will usually go through bed rock to the next layer. That is the true test. That is usually were I find what the old timers missed. Gold bearing pay dirt is in layers. You have to know what layers to watch and mine. Big boulders are great! It is a natural gold pan. Glacier ancient dams are good also. Never trust outside reports or drill logs. Pot holing only way to really understand. There are many ancient rivers that don’t show above the surface.

When I was growing up back in the 70s my uncle would slip me a silver dollar every time I saw him. They were beat up circulated silver dollars that he had hoarded when he found out that they were no longer going to use silver in coins after 1964. By the time I was a senior in high school I had about 20 of them. I heard about the Hunt Brothers and the price of silver being up around $40 an ounce. I called around and went down to a place in Philadelphia that was buying silver for a pretty good price. I remember walking out of there with a huge roll of money. I didn't tell my parents, and I brought that roll of money with me to college the next year.

https://www.novoresources.com/
Interesting video on large aussie gold field .

This is the only reasonable answer frankly. I don’t know anyone who keeps them at their house. I had a friend keep a large amount in a ski locker he owned, not a terrible place either but many of the same risks as a bank safety deposit box.

I agree, bank safety deposit box is best and even better in the right country, Switzerland comes to mind. There are good reasons why banks and sovereigns hold and store vast amounts of PMs in vaults...safety, collateral, diversification, protection from (and allowing) fiat debasement etc. I don't buy the argument that there isn't enough gold to go back to the sanity of a gold standard...it's at what price! Back in 2010, $7,500 an oz. would have been needed to back paper fiat but now it seems that amount of increase is needed per month! Can't have that so, demonize it and print away but meanwhile, central banks hoard it and store it? Typical do as I say, not as I do.

In the Mad Max scenario (overhyped in IMO), unless you are dirt poor with nothing, thieves will be after anything anyways (incidentally, much like now), like booze, cigarettes, drugs, food, water, transportation, slaves etc. and PMs are just part of the list (like today). Gold and silver have always been desirable as part of a system, any system.

Personally, I like quality gold producing companies, their stocks and dividends. Let them worry about the risks of holding physical. It is one of (maybe the only) stock or other (fantasy) sector that is not nose bleed overvalued and pumped full of bs and hot air. Right now quality gold producers are making massive profits and increasing their dividends at a fairly good pace. My favourite KL (Kirkland Lake) even pays a US$ denominated dividend to its Canadian listed KL holders. Extra bonus!

In the 90s we had a client that was buying 1000oz silver bars. He would paint them completely white and put them in his back yard as bricks around a planter box.
Sounds crazy, but no one knew what they were or even looked at them twice.

I remember back on black Monday, October 19, 1987 when the stock market swanned. It was more than a market dive though, as headlines show on a Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper I saved from Tuesday, the next day. Record breaking and tense geopolitical events were taking place.

Gold and gold stocks initially got a solid lift. However, after a tense week, on the following Monday, gold and gold stocks opened higher and then took a beating. This is much in line with standard procedure today by the PPT (Plunge Protection Team or officially known as the President's Working Group on Financial Markets), that is, they physically and psychologically manipulate the broader and PM markets.

They let a kneejerk PM rise take place and then crushed sentiment immediately after. Incidentally, the PPT were formed a few months after the 1987 crash on March 18, 1988. I expect more of the 'same old' today but given time, it did not stop gold then or will not now, from its inevitable rise.

1987 Black Monday G & M (resized).JPG

An important point.

Gold is a vital high tech metal because of its unique properties as a superior electrical conductor that does not corrode or tarnish (unlike copper or silver). So for important, reliable and quick electrical connections that cannot fail gold is used in communication devices, computer networks, cell phones, ABS brakes, air bags, car keys, lab and medical equipment, smoke detectors, pacemakers, satellite dishes, TVs, jet engines, fuel cells, military devices and other applications.

Interesting that in that regard cryptos require gold, however gold does not require cryptos.

Quite ironic that the vast and growing amount of electrical use and connections required for the digital and crypto worlds requires an ever increasing amount of gold! I can embrace that fact and it essentially means that high tech and cryptos are dependent on gold.

Over a ten year average, 2008 - 2017, the technology sector used an average of 9% or 384 tonnes (~12.3 million troy ounces) of annual gold supply. (source: World Gold Council)

market-structure-and-flows-1-fs2 (resized).png

From the slide a few comments above that states that 1 billion cell phones are manufactured each year and only 10 % are recycled (2014 data), I will extrapolate and say this is roughly true for most PM's in related tech / consumer goods, so 90% of 384 tonnes = 345.6 tonnes not recycled annually. I would also guess that virtually all satellite / military applications are close to 0 % recycled for obvious reasons.

Another interesting point from my previous comment is that the 384 tonnes or 12.3 million troy ounces of gold used annually in the technology sector is greater than the top two gold producing companies annual gold production combined, Newmont (195.7 tonnes) and Barrick (170 tonnes). Essentially, technology applications of gold require the equivalent of the top two gold producers output every year. These companies and all the gold producers struggle to replace ounces mined every year. The trend is clear behind a backdrop of diminishing large gold discoveries, that is, the producing companies are increasingly replacing lost ounces by swallowing up other gold producers, for example: Newmont buying Goldcorp in 2019.

Here is another chart from the World Gold Council that shows world gold trading patterns from global exchange markets. It is truly a staggering amount of 'gold' that is traded on average every day, 2,692.2 tonnes or $US 112.2 BILLION. That, PER DAY, is almost equivalent to annual world gold mine production. This exposes the rampant paper gold ponzi trade, mainly taking place in London and New York, and why the price of gold is manipulated. Imagine TSHTF if even a small amount was (strategically) called in and actually removed for physical possession? This IMHO shows how extremely rare and important physical gold is and the utter fragility the fake paper gold market hopes to balance on.

market-structure-and-flows-2-fs2 (resized).png

During apartheid the importation of Krugerrands was illegal due to U.S. sanctions on South Africa.
It’s lifted now, so they are easier to get.

So basically all of the bullion coins like this are 1oz of gold. Doesn’t matter if it krugerrands, maple leafs, eagles etc.
I.E. the gold content is the same.
The refining methods are a little different depending on where they are minted.
A good example is the Canadian maple leaf, which prides itself on being the worlds most pure gold coin. The Canadian use electrolytic refining to get all the other trace metals out on a molecular level. The do this like 3 time to get the gold extremely pure.
It’s still one ounce of gold. It may weigh slightly less because all the other metals have been refined out of it, but it more pure at 99.999% and weighs 31.10gms.
A krugerrand is 91.67% pure and weighs 34gms. Same actual amount of gold in both, just one is refined purer than the other. Gold eagles are the same at 91.67% or 22k.

I know it probably won’t happen in my lifetime, but I like to envision future man mining the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. There’s a lot of raw material and metal just floating around out there.
Many iron/nickel asteroids contain a lot of other metals in their alloy. Some contain precious metal and other rare earth elements in the mix.
It’s interesting to think about.

I don't worry too much about the talking heads or other distractions, the trend is more than clear. For timing things I keep it simple and just keep an eye on the seasonal gold chart.

Gold vs. fiat (resized).jpg

Seasonal gold (resized).png

Who would you buy gold from online ?

I used to keep money in my safety deposit box but found out from a teller that it was against the law? She said she didn't hear me say that when I was talking to her.

By the way why is it that I see only small amounts when the shows mine in the united states? Makes you want to go to Canada or Australia?

Keeping cash in a safe deposit box is not illegal.
That’s a bank policy, not a law.

I’ve not been on Pinside much this last week and am just seeing this. Interesting thing is gold has kept going down a bit these last ten days and is now hovering around $1,700. People always say don’t try and catch a falling knife and what not, but I never thought gold would be back in the $1,600’s again.

Those premiums over spot are simply insane and no one has any inventory anyway right now. How can gold be dropping like it is and no one have any of the really desirable stuff in stock? I tried to order some gold for a client today and no one had the Valcambi CombiBars my client wanted...no retail distributor I would trust anyway. His second choice item was in stock but not BU...

Just to confirm my understanding, the Maples are usually 999.9 parts of our 1,000 but in some years they have been as high as five 9s. I guess it’s super expensive so they only do the five 9s runs occasionally?

You may be the best person I know to ask what is going on with these premiums over spot now? They have blasted off into the stratosphere. Has this been the case for some time? Premiums over spot for gold were under $70 per ounce a few years ago. The premiums on eagles and buffalos are approaching $300 an ounce now. Is Gary Stern in charge of the mint or something?

That I’m not sure.
My main thing is rare collector coins and I don’t don’t do a lot with bullion.
That said, I do have a pretty good general understanding of it because it relates to my business and I have a fascination with different minting and refining processes and how coins are made.
Here’s a pretty good video that explains how the Canadian mint does it. The fascinating part is the electrolytic process they use to separate trace elements on a molecular level. Really advanced stuff that didn’t exist with refining a century or so ago. In past times they simply could not get metal this pure.

Regarding premiums, it’s just a sign of the times. More demand and less supply means higher premiums.
A bunch of the normal supply chains are cut off or disrupted due to Covid etc.
A great example would be generic U.S. gold. A lot of double eagles and things like that come out of European banks.
There’s a ton of it over there for various reasons. Mainly because there was a time when the U.S. was paying its foreign debt in gold coins (and it’s still sitting over there in that form). but also because when the government recalled all the gold, many people that had it put in in banks overseas.
Anyhow, that entire supply line is disrupted due to the pandemic and premiums on generic gold has risen significantly.
Basic supply and demand.

Currently my favorite coin. Best security features available, lower premium over spot than the eagle, Buffalo, or maple leaf, great design, backed by England and IRA qualified.

I agree. Silver is nice but gold concentrates more value.

This of course seems obvious but what really brought the point home for me was, back a few years ago, a vendor showed me a 10 ounce bar of silver, about the size of a smart phone, then worth $250. He then pointed to a 1/4 ounce gold coin, slightly larger than a dime but worth over $400.

He went on to say, "A silver dollar might buy you a beer and a burger but a dime sized gold coin will buy you a bottle of Jack and groceries for a month."

This kind of reminds me of some prices in the old west boom towns of the 1880's and 90's. A 'dance' with a lady was 50 cents but a shot of whiskey was a dollar. Humm...today something doesn't seem quite right! By my figuring...well, a silver dollar won't get you jack but a small gold coin will get you 'way' laid!