Entering the Bizarro world...

[jtryka]

Woke up this morning and it was raining, which I suppose reminded the oil men that there was a hurricane in Texas and it was time to rape the populace 1,000 miles away, so gas went up from $3.899 to $4.199 over night...I hope someday us Americans get smart like the Europeans and start having general strikes where no one shows up to work on a specific day just to show how sick we've become of always being taken advantage of. My guess is that we will do nothing until we can no longer afford things like gas and food and housing and then the economy that is 70% consumer spending will plunge into a spiral that will make the 1930s looks like a boom...

 

Then I went to the local coin show, and since the "prices" on the Comex for gold and silver have pushed the gold-silver ratio to an unheard of 70-1, I figured it might be time to take a couple extra gold eagles and see if I could trade them for silver, maybe get 65 ounces per ounce of gold. Well, at the entire show with about 25 dealers, there was NO one with that much silver, in fact at the entire show, there might have been 100 ounces of silver rounds. The one big bullion dealer told me that he was in a show last week in Detroit, and before the show even opened, another bullion dealer bought all the 0.999 silver he had for a remarkable $2 over spot (this is dealer to dealer!) and for his silver eagles (65 rolls) he got $15 per coin from another dealer! He said he could take my money but it would probably be 6-8 weeks before he could get me silver, so I politely declined. At the last show, this guy had a whole case of bullion, including a few 50-ounce bars, a couple 10-ounce bars about 200 ounces in rounds. Now 2 rolls of silver eagles, one of which was a 1996 roll. For gold, he had almost as much as he had in silver, and was paying $25 over "spot" for AGEs and selling for $50 over spot. I've never seen anything like it. So I came home with a few coins and my few AGEs that I started with.

[EZ_E]

 

Thanks for the scoop, Jeff.

[Oldtrader3]

I have noticed that the supply of AU55-MS62 Coronet eagles has dried up in the past month, except for better some dates which command higher prices over bullion.

 

The Europeans have had unresponsive bureaucratic governments since the time of Napolean Bonaparte. I read that France has had essentially the same population and the same sized Federal bureaucracy (40% of GNP) since France started measuring GNP. The Europeans have much more experience then we Americans in trying to get unresponsive governments to pay attention to the needs of it's citizens.

[jesbroken]

A friend of mine fell for the gold buying companies on the net, and sent a few pieces of jewelry in to be purchased. I can't say about the necklace and two small rings, but the one ring I had been with him when he had it appraised 5 years ago for $750(still has the paperwork). He sent all these in and was hoping to get $7-800 for them and the way this particular one worked was they sent him a check for what they would buy the gold at melt for. The check was for $38.00. He thought they had made some decimal point error, but no that was their offer. So he returned the check uncashed and 45 days later he finally received the jewelry. I did not know this was this big of a scam. He was very irate and sold them to a local pawn shop for $250.

I know nothing about this, as I sold a ring about 5 months ago(had a heck of a time getting my money from a jeweler). I thought they were fairly accurate in gold melt pricing. I cannot say about his other jewelry but I was aware of the one piece. Oh well.

Jim

 

By the way, Jeff, our gas raised 42 cents overnite. Somebody's making money somewhere. It just isn't me.

 

[Revenant]

By the way, Jeff, our gas raised 42 cents overnite. Somebody's making money somewhere. It just isn't me.

 

The refineries responsible for making 25% of our domestic gas all had to be shut down for hurricane Ike. It's disrupting the supply chain, creating shortages, and hiking prices. if Exxon and Shell can get their refineries up soon the prices should go back down in a few weeks.

[jtryka]

Jim,

 

Your friend definitely would have been ripped off by that mail order scam, there was one guy at the show yesterday that was offering 70% of melt for scrap gold/jewelry, but anything pure/bullion was bidding well over melt.

[Houston Investor]

The shop near me pays 97% of melt on AGE's and modern gold commems as the refiner only gives them 98%. Or am I being fed a line by them?

[jtryka]

Those numbers may be very accurate, but my next question would be how much has he been buying at that price, I would guess not much.