Why Are Silver & Gold Prices Crashing Right Now?

So Harry, the U.S. has officially said we are at war, but we're not seeing gold and silver shoot higher. Why is that? Introducing the first ever five ounce silver maple leaf coin from the Royal Canadian Mint. A historic release with an iconic design that is available in a stunning five ounce format for the first time ever. Don't miss your chance to own a piece of minting history. Got a little bit of gold in the case today, Adrian, but you know one thing I've been noticing, you guys don't seem to have a lot of full ounces. Gold's been playing under that, you know, 4,000 mark and today we're a little over 4,000, so all the people that were on the sidelines waiting to see a drop in metals have been coming in. The ounces are ones that sell the best because it's the lowest premium compared to, you know, the fractional stuff. Yeah, that makes sense. You've the pricing down here, and so if you buy a full ounce of gold, you're just going to get more gold for your money, right? Yeah, definitely, and I mean it's the smarter way to buy it. I understand why some people like the fractional because it's a little bit more divisible, but if you're looking for the most gold for your money, I know I'm a big proponent of that, you want to go with the full ounce of gold. So is that what you've seen, Harry? Most people who come in wanting to buy gold, they just want to buy a full ounce? Almost always. In fact, yesterday we were so low on gold I had three different people wanting calls as soon as even an ounce came in, and I was able to call one of the guys in the afternoon and say, come get it, come get an ounce. They didn't even care what it was. This happened to be a Krugerrand, but not particular, just want the most gold for the money, and full ounces answers that need right there. Gold has been hard to keep in the shop, and the full ounce is absolutely difficult. Unlike silver, you know, gold did not take a 50% plunge and less volatile, and looks like it's a more stable investment for some, and for those who can afford it, it seems right now preferable to silver. That is interesting. I mean, gold was at $5,500, so it's come down about $1,500, but silver was, you know, over $100 an ounce. Now it's under $60. Gold is a little less volatile. Yeah, it's a more stable investment, and I mean, there's just something cool about owning gold. That's not to say we're not selling a lot of silver because I'd like more silver in the showcase than we have now, but the more popular styles are moving out as fast as we buy them. That would be specifically silver eagles and buffaloes, followed closely by silver maples. Yeah, let's take a look at the case here. I see you have a few buffaloes. That's kind of a unique design down there, and then up here, you've got a few silver eagles, but really pretty thin on the silver. At one point yesterday, we had almost a full showcase of it, and during the day, it just drained down. I didn't buy as much as I would have liked. We'll be okay. One way or the other, we'll keep people happy because I can always order something for those who are patient, and by patient, I mean three to five days. Harry, this is one thing I wanted to ask you. Do you guys have pretty much an equilibrium now of buyers and sellers? Because I know back in the day, you used to order monster boxes and things like that from wholesalers, but you haven't done that in a while, right? It's actually been months because enough has come in to keep us supplied without having to pay a little more and go to the wholesalers because we can always do a little better over the counter than the wholesalers. The word wholesaler in this business is kind of a misnomer because there's nothing really wholesale about it. There's a little discount for quantity, but not much. They're just mainly a middleman. A middleman is somewhere to go when you need it. Do you think that's the case for a lot of shops? I mean, we're kind of at a point where there was a lot of silver that got sold during the run-up and there's a lot just sort of floating around. I think so. I think, you know, you and I were talking earlier about how the U.S. Mint is selling far fewer of the Silver Eagles to the 10 primary buyers this year. They're all well-stocked. If you look online, everyone's got Silver Eagles, so that would tell me that the public, like they are in the shop here, is selling to the wholesalers as well. They have enough supply that they don't have to pay extra to go to the U.S. Mint. And it is more for them to buy it from the Mint than from the general public. I'm certain of that. So if we look at the prices today, we've got gold at $4,000 and call it $60. Silver right around $58 an ounce. So silver is now officially less than half of the all-time high. It is, but gold isn't. So again, that just speaks to the stability of gold versus silver. On the other hand, the smart stackers are coming in here and buying silver at 50% of what they could have got it for in January. So the business has many facets to it and many different reasons for the supply and the demand for certain things. But ultimately, it's pretty healthy and business here is pretty good and hopefully for all the other shops out there as well. So Harry, the U.S. has officially said we are at war, but we're not seeing gold and silver shoot higher. Why is that? I'm baffled by it. I would think that a hot war would include the run-up of prices of commodities and certainly gold and silver. One theory I have is that maybe there's still some fatigue about the metals taking that run-up and then dropping way back. And so maybe people are just over it. Do you have any thoughts on that? My guess is that it's something that's already kind of been, it's something that's already been baked into the market. People seeing, you know, the bombings that were happening in Iran before an actual war was declared. I think we saw the reaction of the metals at that time when those strikes happened. So it could be something that's baked in, but it could also be something that's a little bit delayed and fatigued from the market from the previous run-up and drop. But if this does drag out for a long time, I think it's probably bullish for the metals. I mean, we'd like it all to be over, you know, as soon as possible. But long term, I mean, fear is one thing that does drive precious metals prices higher. Yeah, definitely. And I mean, I know there was these big institutions that came out and predicted their price of silver and gold and especially gold, and they're still seeing about $6,000 an ounce. You know what, you mentioned fear as maybe driving the price up if this drags on, but I don't think there's widespread fear in this country about Iran. I don't think it's viewed as an immediate threat to anybody here. It's something certainly newsworthy, but I don't feel like anyone feels threatened that this war is going to come to our shores. I agree with that. I just mean more like fear, what's going to happen to my portfolio? You know, are these tech stocks going to crash? What if we go into a recession? There's all these different thoughts. There's some legitimate fears. I mean, the price of oil is spiking again in the last three days. And so that's going to affect all of us at the pump and subsequently all the other things that oil is attached to, which is like everything. So it could be inflationary, it could be recessionary. And all the models in my experience over the years aren't working anymore. You know, predicting what the metals are going to do because there's a war or because there's inflation. It's just not behaving in a historical pattern. It's just doing its own thing. Do you think that's going to become the new normal where they just kind of do their own thing? Or is it eventually going to go back to the way it was? And we would be more easily able to predict what it's going to do. Not sure anything ever goes back. I think we just keep keep moving on. And this may be the new normal. And then there'll be another new normal after this. But if people are truly stackers, none of the news should matter. None of the inflation numbers should matter. You just keep keep working your plan and building your stack if that's if that's truly who you are. Well, one interesting thing that has become the new normal is inflation. And they've always had this 2% goal. But ever since COVID, inflation has been higher than that. And they've not been able to curb it. No, but on the other hand, I I'm old enough to remember inflation in the high teens. So while I don't like inflation, even at 1%, it's not nearly what it has been in years past where it was just out of control. Adrian, weren't you recently at a Bitcoin show? Yeah, we were just got back from the fun show in Orlando, Florida. We actually my brother was there with us. And he recorded a lot of our interactions a little bit behind the scenes, you'll be able to find it on our YouTube channel. Harry's coin shop and Beach City coins. Do you have any goodies that you brought back for us to see? Oh, wow, look at this presentation. This one right here is a big standout. Yes. So this one's a 1914 Guerrero from Mexico. It's a two peso coin. But these are very crudely struck and notice the condition of the coin, but it's an MS 61. And that's just the way that these coins were minted pretty crude, but that's just exactly how these coins were made. Wow, that's an interesting looking eagle. It's a revolutionary period of Mexico. Very, very cool piece and tough to find. What about this one here? This one here is one of my favorite Mexican coins. It's called the caballito. So it's a one peso. It was made for a few years. But mint state examples are extremely hard to find. And I mean, it's just such a beautiful coin that has gained a lot of popularity here in the past few years. Beautiful, beautiful example of the Mexican caballito. And it's called a caballito because it has a horse on it. And it's a depiction of liberty there, of libertad, you know, riding on the horse. It's interesting, the United States of Mexico, they've got their own lady liberty and their own eagle. They got the golden eagle. It's our brothers from the south, man, you know, it's very, very similar. And yeah, just very cool, very cool coinage that they made during that time period. Well, this is a particularly interesting denarius from Rome. It's under the emperor Tiberius, who was emperor during Jesus lifetime, at least the latter part of his life. It's kind of an interesting piece of biblical and regular history. But what I like about this denarius is it really emphasizes that the hand hammered nature of these coins, these were hand struck with an anvil underneath and a die on top and somebody with a hammer just pounding these out on metal that had been softened in the fire. They certainly weren't perfectly round in most cases. And what looks like an error is just normal production, you know, his hand slipped a little and they just kept pounding and went on to the next one. Some of them are a little more symmetrical like this Roman denarius from Hadrian. I like what a coin that tells a number of stories, this obviously the emperor during Jesus time, and that story is well known by most. And also the fact that they were hand struck and weren't perfect coins by any means, given the technology of the time, that's what you that's what you could expect. No one would have pulled this out of circulation in ancient Rome and said, Oh, look, an error would have just been, you know, a day's pay for a centurion, which a denarius was off center or not, it would have been just good spending money. So if you ever go back to where this would be pay for one day's labor, I mean, silver is extremely undervalued, you know, silver has got to go up 50 or 100 times for that to make sense. But think of it this way to one of these denarii is $260, one's 800. But if you just take the average of those and say it's $500, that becomes not a bad day's pay for somebody. So perhaps it's still a day's pay. Yeah, for the collector coin. Exactly. Well, Harry going back to the war and you know, gold not moving up, I certainly think it's possible that we could see a big move later in the year. And like Adrian said, I think it was Bank of America is still predicting $6,000 gold this year. So we could just be a little bit delayed for the big move up. Let's realize to this is July. And historically, at least in my experience in this business, the summer is a little bit of a slow time, both in movement of the price and just movement across the counter. And so it could be that maybe by fall things wake up and get shaken up a little like it did last fall. Well, when that time rolls around, we'll be making videos. Well, let's do a video then. We will. All right. Thank you so much. Silver Dragons. Thanks so much.