Just in case you were wondering about my lack of recent activity, I’m on a vacation with Biljana, basically trying to not do what I do for the most part of the year, which is stare at the screen and get stressed out over shit that’s going on and I have no control over.
It’s raining now so I’m writing this. As for other things, I keep buying silver, as I had the impression recently that the last train is about to leave the station. As for the politics, I try to read as little of that as possible now, as it just pisses me off and I can’t do anything about it in any case.
A birdie told me there’s a 3 week waiting list for physical silver in non-trivial quantities.
Non-trivial quantities such as … anything more than 1 ton?! 🤔
I think it’s the order of magnitude of tens of kilos. Interesting, BullionVault seems to be contributing to the lack of physical metal on the market because they are actually slurping it up like crazy.
I just don’t get it where do you get that 3-weeks notice?! Not on BullionVault I hope?! 😳
No, a retailer. It took him that long to get the current supply.
BTW waiting lists of that kind are exactly the indicator I was waiting for, because spot price is nonsense, it drops when someone dumps fake papers onto the market and at the same time there are waiting lists for the actual metal. When the metal itself becomes really scarce, the paper market will burn.
BTW, which market you prefer for buying silver on BullionVault?
You mean, which vault? I don’t have a preference as long as it’s in Europe.
Yes, I meant if you prefer London over Zurich or vice versa? Would upcoming Brexit, which is likely to be hard one, represent some kind of problem for silver holders keeping their silver in London’s vault?
It’s difficult to say, but I would expect things to stay more-less unchanged in this regard. Theoretically speaking yes, I would prefer Zurich, but on a practical level, it doesn’t matter that much since I don’t have an allocated bar, so in case of anything happening I can just turn silver into euros and then buy silver in another vault, and if I time the transactions well, selling on highs and buying on lows, I can even make money on it. Liquidity is my main reason for choosing BV in any case, because otherwise I wouldn’t dare to keep almost all the money in form of metal; the losses on selling physical metal in the retail channels would be too much of a problem. With BV, I can sell it all instantly if I need the money elsewhere, and that’s a big thing.
However, I don’t keep all the metal in BV, that would be too risky as well, because things *can* imaginably go wrong in ways that would make it all go poof.
By “I don’t keep all the metal in BV” you mean that you don’t keep metal with any other BV-like online service as well?
No, I bought some 1kg bricks locally. That’s how I get to know the retail gossip. 🙂
Aha, OK that explains a lot. 😎 Theoretically I don’t midn paying VAT on the wholesale price for silver in Croatia, but let’s say I decide to sell it back moment later do I get that amount of wholesale price plus VAT minus spread back?! 🤔
Actually you don’t pay VAT if you buy 2nd hand silver. 😇
2nd hand silver bricks are as good as first hand ones and only difference is VAT?!
Sorry for stupid question … but once I buy it brand new minted silver bullion and sell it back it would always be considered to be 2nd hand?
Exactly. If you buy it from your retailer 1st hand, and sell it back to him later, that is now considered 2nd hand silver and there’s no VAT on the 2nd hand goods. In the EU, that’s the only way a sane silver stacker can buy his stuff. The spread is still much larger that way than on BullionVault or in the USA, but at least there’s no insane VAT overhead.