YouTube - Silver Shortage This Decade, Silver Will Be Worth More Than Gold (possibly)

This video explains the main reason why Silver is my favourite investment metal.

YouTube - Silver Shortage This Decade, Silver Will Be Worth More Than Gold

1 Kilo copper bars sold out!

I really didn't expect the copper bars to sell so quickly.
Yes! I was selling them at a loss because they weren't stamped and polished correctly and had to be re polished but they did sell very quickly all the same.
As soon as the holidays are over I'll get on the phone and place another order.  This time much bigger.
 
I'm expecting a small pull back in the price of copper for the first part of 2011. That's my hunch, but it could be wishful thinking.
On Christmas day (strategic) the Chinese raised interest rates because their inflation is getting out of hand.  I expect this to suppress the price of precious metals for a short while, especially if other countries do the same thing.  It will be a minor blip (buying opportunity) though.

If anyone would like to reserve bars and pay when they're ready then just send me an email and I'll put them to one side till pay day.

Have you heard of GALLIUM?

There is a rather strange metal called GALLIUM.
It is used in LEDs and TFT screens.   It has very strange properties.  It melts and turns to liquid at about 29*Celsius.  It gives off light if electricity is passed through it, and most importantly to us.  It is an extremely rare metal and it's use in electronic devices is increasing.
I read on one site is could be an extinct metal within a decade.  Although I don't believe this personally, rare metals are prone to spikes in price once in a while ( Palladium in the year 2000)
Are we looking at an overlooked investment metal?
Most supply is from China and they have reduced exports of rare earth metals by 80%.  I've certainly not had any luck with my enquiries into buying the metal.

It seems to have excellent potential for long term investment.  Its safe to handle and can be stored for a long time.  I don't think it'd be difficult to sell the metal when one needs to cash in your invesment, but I'll look into that a little more.

Copper 1 kilo bars ready for sale

I got the copper 1 kilo bars back from the polishers today and I can't believe how shiny they are.  

 It was quite hard taking a picture of them because they're so reflective.

I will be discounting this first batch of 22 bars because there are some marks on them that couldn't be polished out. The next  lot of bars will be polished before the stamping process. They are handmade so I guess they'll always have slight imperfections.
Bars will be vacuum sealed in plastic to keep the shine and for the many years they'll be in storage.

I'd like to hear what people want.  If people would like a half kilo (1pound) bars or maybe 2 kilo bars. Please email me any thoughts.

I noticed this article the other day which was interesting. Dated last year it's clear the price of copper/ tonne has shot up since then.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/5160120/A-Copper-Standard-for-the-worlds-currency-system.html

The saga of the copper bars.

I set up the website http://buycopper.co.uk/  to sell bullion copper bars but it's been such a nightmare getting them manufactured I diversified into selling silver coins too.
It took over a month for me to get hold of a 25 kilo bar to make the initial batch, which ended up a 24kilo bar.
Here is what the copper billet looks like straight from the copper foundry(after being cut).  It's not like something hand cast in somebody's back garden. It's pure and exact.

After getting the bar I got let down by somebody who said he could stamp them, then said he couldn't, I finally found a pressings factory which made the beautiful press pictured below..

 But, they didn't do a very good job of the polishing and the pressing didn't seem very deep, so I've taken the 22 bars to a proper polishing workshop in the heart of Birminghams Jewellery Quarter.
The copper face he shined up in front of me as a test was astounding. So I've left the bar in his very capable hands and I'm not sure where to go after that, because the polishing is going to remove a bit of the pressing. Re pressing the bars is going to be difficult because aligning up the press with the writing already on the bars may go completely wrong.
I'll be offering a hefty discount on these bars regardless and I'll make sure the following batch of bars are perfect.
Maybe I'm being overly careful about the presentation, because when you see say a 1 kilo bar of silver it often looks quite rough.
All copper bars will be vacuum sealed to keep the shine. Obviously if you take it out of the sealed bag the air will get at it and the shine will fade, but the important thing is the asset of owning a kilo slab of copper.

Global bond rout deepens on US fiscal worries - Telegraph

Global bond rout deepens on US fiscal worries - Telegraph

This is an interesting part of the above article

"At the same time we've seen a loss of confidence in Fed strategy. There is a feeling that the Fed doesn't care about inflation – in fact, wants more of it – and that is certainly not in the interest of bondholders," he said.

China is the largest foreign US treasury bond holder.

Only last week it was said that China has imported 5 times more gold this year than last year. China, the largest producer of gold (300tonnes/year) has stopped exporting it's gold, silver and a lot of it's rare earth metals. They have been actively encouraging the 1.3billion citizens to buy gold and silver. 
This is good news for anyone who holds precious metals.

This is good.

Something is wrong.

The Unravelling 

You could protest and riot when the economy disintegrates like some kind of Albanian state sponsored pyramid scheme. Or prepare and ride out the storm.
Our beloved 'great recession' started in late 2007.  The moment the Bank of England announced Quantitative Easing I walked into the local jewellers and bought a gold sovereign for £75 cash.  Today, 3 years later, that same coin costs £223 to buy.

Quantitative Easing(QE), we were informed was not money printing.  We all know that money printing leads to hyper inflation and people lose their life savings. So it wasn't money printing at all but it was for allowing money to the banks so they can lend to small business and keep the economy working. Small business' didn't get those loans but bankers had impressive bonuses.
Three years after the announcement of QE what has the man in the street got?  Savings that go down in value because the interest rate is lower than inflation.
£1.20 for a litre of petrol.
Private pensions not keeping up with inflation.
House prices are about to fall another 20%
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/ianmcowie/100008832/you-aint-seen-nothing-yet-why-house-prices-could-fall-by-another-20-per-cent/
Austerity measures where you get less but pay more.
500,000 expected lay offs in the public sector.
VAT to rise to 20% in Janary 2011

Britain is actually doing better than the European Union (EU). Ireland has been virtually forced to take an 85billion Euro loan, even though it is impossible for it to pay it's existing loans. After them it's Portugal.

This is why I set up buycopper.com selling pure copper bars and pure silver coins. This is real money strangely enough. I suppose right now you can't buy a few litres of fuel with a copper bar, but one day it may be the case. In 1990's post collapse Russia you could trade it for fuel.
The money we use every day is baseless.  It is just a picture on a piece of paper. A promise that you have to believe in to make it have value.

Here is a chart of the price of silver over the 2 years (Pounds Sterling). The spike in price is mainly because of the drop in value of all major currencies. It's not the price of silver going up, but the value of the Pound going down.
There's are a couple of other factors.
People know metal is a good hedge against inflation so buy it and push the price higher.
Silver stock is probably running short, because silver is often mined along side other metals, a by product if you will. If the industrial metal mine shuts down because of the great recession so does silver production, leading to future price spikes.
Copper
It took over a month to get the copper bar I used for the copper bullion bars I sell.  I suspect the supply graph below is the reason why.

The State

The article below shows that when deficits become too much for a country, they turn on the people.  Your pension. After all, that's where all the money is.  So, they force you to hand over control of your money to them.  

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-25/hungary-follows-argentina-in-pension-fund-ultimatum-nightmare-for-some.html

If you buy metals that you keep somewhere dry and safe, you keep control of your hard work. The government can't take it off you.  You can take the gold, silver, copper, tin, zinc or whatever to a jewellers or a scrap merchant and trade it for cash.  Inflation hasn't had any effect on it. Although prices do go up and down for metals I hasten to add. Metals are a long term investment, but worth it all the same.

Here's a final thought.  This Bank of Zimbabwe note has no value whatsoever, unless you sell it on Ebay as some kind of curio or joke. When this was printed, people couldn't use it to trade for a 1 kilo bar of copper.  It was just an empty promise.