As I predicted Monday, gold and silver both surged this week, with the spot price of silver exceeding $51 an ounce on both Thursday and Friday. It closed Friday at $49.89, as you can see in the Kitco chart above. The asking price is $50.01. Gold closed the week at $4,016, which was down from Wednesday’s close of $4,040.10.
These new highs seem to kick off some mania in the precious metals market. The thirst for physical gold and silver, not just trading futures, is driving the price up and creating shortages of physical gold and silver bars, especially silver.
At the same time, consumers holding silver are rushing to cash it in, which has flooded pawn shops and local coin stores with junk silver, generic silver rounds, silver bars, and sovereign silver. As you will see in the video below, some of the largest refineries have ceased accepting new silver. This means the coin dealers cannot sell off their excess silver, meaning many will stop accepting silver that is not .999 or .9999 fine. The result is that you may not be able to sell your junk silver. When the backlog of silver waiting to be refined lessens, I expect the market will open back up. And if the price of silver continues to climb, you may be able to sell your junk silver on the private market.
Worth Watching
This video, produced Friday afternoon, has further details on the silver market.
