Price of silver continues to climb to extraordinary levels

[Matt5791]

I think we need to brace ourselves for more price increases if the price of silver doesn't fall soon, it's hovering around the $30/ounce mark at present, which is more that triple what it was a few years ago.

http://www.kitco.com/scripts/hist_ch...rly_graphs.plx

The only plus is that what goes up always comes down, but the question is when - hopefully when more confidence returns to other forms of investment.

[Curt]

And gas will be $5.00 a gal., what's next?

[sandholm]

I think we need to brace ourselves for more price increases if the price of silver doesn't fall soon, it's hovering around the $30/ounce mark at present, which is more that triple what it was a few years ago.

Well, that means that the cost of film/paper will be higher but also that we get more money back from the silver recovery. So its important to not dump fixer which is both bad for your wallet and the environment, recover the silver and sell it. For example the silver magnet,
http://www.apug.org/forums/forum146/...ry-device.html

And gas will be $5.00 a gal., what's next?

Dont complain we pay $6.8 a gallon here in switzerland.... and its going up..

[Matt5791]

Good point about the fixer!

[RobertV]

Dont complain we pay $6.8 a gallon here in switzerland.... and its going up..

$ 8,35 in Holland so it can be worse .....


We have a big film - photo paper inventory now...

[perkeleellinen]

$8.76 here for petrol.

Hopefully silver will go down soon, petrol never seems to.

[Marco B]

The only plus is that what goes up always comes down, but the question is when - hopefully when more confidence returns to other forms of investment.

That may be true if you throw up a ball, but it is disputable in this case. Just like with oil running out, precious metals are slowly too. In addition, silver, just platinum and palladium, has other unfortunately growing uses, for example for solar mirrors and as a catalysts in industry, and protective layer on electronics after the abolishement of lead soldering on electronics circuit boards.

What I find more disturbing is that most shops don't adjust their margins to a lower level. OK, they need to account for increased prices too, but is it really necessary to make a 50% profit on a roll of film, if that film increased its price from 1 to maybe 7 dollars in a few years?

50% of 1 dollar was 50 cents, now they earn 2-4 dollars on each roll sold, which just sounds like a ridiculous change to me , and forces prices upwards even more.

Normally, with higher priced products, margins seem lower. Certainly cameras are no longer sold with 50% margins as they probably did 15 years ago, more in the range of 5-10%.

[Moopheus]

That may be true if you throw up a ball, but it is disputable in this case. Just like with oil running out, precious metals are slowly too.

That is true in the long run, or probably even in the medium run, but in the short run, there has been a lot of fear-based speculative buying in the commodities market. Recall what happened to oil a couple of years ago. Commodity markets are naturally highly volatile in the short term, and there's no reason to expect that to change. The problem for a market for any good where the price is rising very rapidly in the short term is that it requires a constant stream of new investors to enter the market at higher and higher prices; eventually you run out of buyers who can afford to play.

[keithwms]

Driving some of the wild commodity prices is the short-term prospect of a spike in inflation. The quantitative easing (QE) policy runs the very serious risk of overshooting the desired stimulative effect, which leads to rapid decline in the value of the USD and hence a big spike in the commodities traditionally valued in USD... oil etc. Now... since QE2 we've not seen much sign of inflation at all and oil is rising but in a gradual and predicted way. Yet certain commodities are being priced even further beyond reason. So this begs the question, who really believes these commodity prices will hold?

Buy land not precious metals, that would be my investment advice! At least you can put up a tent on it

[jeffreyg]

Silver prices may fluctuate but I don't recall film and paper prices dropping once they rise. Could be that the manufacturers are selling fewer rolls and sheets while the cost of production of which the silver is only a portion and advertising etc has increased. Film costs less in the US probably because the sales tax is lower. In 2005 a roll of Delta 400 120 was $2.99 (I have an old catalog) and now $4.12 a 4% increase. I'm not sure what that tells us other than stuff has become more expensive.

http://www.jeffreyglasser.com/