I was traveling yesterday and went to a coin shop to get some coin tubes. None to be had. I thought the guy was joking. Seems there is a shortage of just about anything in the coin world. Dansco Coin albums, coin tubes. Crazy. The store had more gold coins for sale than silver rounds, and only a short stack of silver half dollars!!! Crazy.
So, I asked if inflation or quantitative easing would be more an influence on the future of silver. Fair question. I got a 5 min. answer. This is what he said. There is no industrial lack of silver. The inventory of 100 ounce silver bars in vaults is at an all time high. 100 ounce bars are what institutions (banks, countries, corporate investors) store huge amounts of wealth in. The shortage is in the smaller mom and pop items. Silver rounds, silver dollars, smaller bars and those silver bullets that people love. Try getting a 10 oz. silver bar. They are hard to come by. So the prices are high, due to the lack of everyday items that walk-in-customers with a few dollars in there pocket would want to buy.
Yeah, there were line ups when I bought my last couple of maple leaf coins.
I was a bit annoyed when the price dropped March 2020 and the shop I typically go to claimed to be out of one once coins. They got some as soon as the price went back to normal.
I probably wrote that poorly. A few of the mail order places were claiming the same thing. If it was just the one place I would have been a bit more crabby about it.
My Uncle Peter was in the Hitler Youth, and ended up as a P.O.W. (captured in the Battle of the Bulge) - he met my Aunt Babs when she was working as a Land Girl, and the P.O.W.'s were also put to work farming. I don't think he ever came to believe in the Holocaust.
According to my Dad, it wasn't hard for German P.O.W.'s to get out. He was on guard duty somewhere in the North of England, and on his day off he went to the movies. Several of the P.O.W.'s were at the same cinema, having sneaked out, They asked him not to tell on them.
You US citizens are lucky. We don't use pennies anymore and our chrome coins are too shiny for old silver coins to blend in with. So all the old coins are even less likely to circulate here.
2dimes wrote:You US citizens are lucky. We don't use pennies anymore and our chrome coins are too shiny for old silver coins to blend in with. So all the old coins are even less likely to circulate here.
I think the same is true in Europe, for the most part. I think the smallest coin is the 5 cent or 5% of the Euro. But I will admit that I am not an expert on Europe.
In my opinion dropping the penny is silly because the nickel became the new penny, however it had to happen because the melt value of a copper penny was more than one cent.
There was risk of entrepreneurs taking them out of circulation.
I am sure most of the first euro coins are probably still in circulation.
Just like I am confident you will find many US minted coins from 1999 still quite common...
2dimes wrote:In my opinion dropping the penny is silly because the nickel became the new penny, however it had to happen because the melt value of a copper penny was more than one cent.
There was risk of entrepreneurs taking them out of circulation.
I am sure most of the first euro coins are probably still in circulation.
Just like I am confident you will find many US minted coins from 1999 still quite common...
I remember my teacher in Grade 10 telling me about the Japanese boats pulling up in Naples and loading a whole hold with the aluminum 10-lira coin. Lira was so cheap that even after the cost of shipping them half-way around the world, they were still a cost-effective source of scrap aluminum.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire
2dimes wrote:Aluminum seems like it would be too soft for coins.
Did a quick search. This post shows aluminum coins from seven different countries. None of them are Italy, but I'm pretty sure there was an aluminum 10-lira.
“Life is a shipwreck, but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats.”
― Voltaire