Posted on 12/13/2023 6:28:24 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
Silver has been used for thousands of years as ornaments and utensils, for trade, and as the basis for many monetary systems. Of all the metals, pure silver has the whitest color, the highest optical reflectivity, and the highest thermal and electrical conductivity.
Backstory.
Whenever you read some precious metals expert discussing the industrial uses of silver, here is the typical spiel that goes: "Silver is essential in jewelry, electronics, medical, solar, electric vehicles, and Green Energy storage systems (i.e., batteries)."
Very good, Captain Obvious, but it's my fervent belief that military and aerospace usages of silver gobbles as much as a third of all silver used by industry. Five Government Agencies Suppressed Silver Usage Data… Why?
In fact, the U.S. government, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, the Department of Interior, and the U.S. Geological Survey collectively gaslit us villagers and stopped reporting on silver inventories starting around the 1995-1996 timeframe.
For most of the 20th century, the United States Bureau of Mines (USBM) was the primary United States government agency conducting scientific research and disseminating information on the extraction, processing, use, and conservation of mineral resources.
The Bureau was abolished in 1996. (Coincidentally, at the same time, the Department of Defense started pretending silver was not important to them.)
Let's further examine and start documenting massive uses of Silver that are not on the historical record (we will let you draw your own inferences).
Silver is probably the world's most critical and strategic mineral. (Yet it’s somehow not considered critical by the U.S., even as the Department of Energy has classified other metals as critical.
Massive and unrecorded uses of silver in:
Bombs Nukes and nuclear-positioned Submarines Shells Satellites Tanks Missiles Bullets Torpedoes Conventional Submarines (not of the nuclear variety) Rockets and dozens of other military applications
In 2021, the U.S. imported 6,500 metric tons of silver.
The United States is 79% import-reliant for its silver needs. From 2017 to 2020, Mexico provided 47% of these imports, followed by 23% from Canada, 4% from Chile, 4% from Poland (and the remaining 22%, we can assume Russia was the heavy importer among this opaque other 22%).
The 2023 Final Critical Materials List, published by DOE, has determined the following are Critical materials for energy:
Aluminum, cobalt, copper, dysprosium, electrical steel, fluorine, gallium, iridium, lithium, magnesium, natural graphite, neodymium, nickel, platinum, praseodymium, silicon, silicon carbide, and terbium.
The Secretary of the Interior, acting through the Director of the US Geological Survey (USGS), published a 2022 final list of critical minerals that includes the following 50 critical minerals:
Aluminum, antimony, arsenic, barite, beryllium, bismuth, cerium, cesium, chromium, cobalt, dysprosium, erbium, europium, fluorspar, gadolinium, gallium, germanium, graphite, hafnium, holmium, indium, iridium, lanthanum, lithium, lutetium, magnesium, manganese, neodymium, nickel, niobium, palladium, platinum, praseodymium, rhodium, rubidium, ruthenium, samarium, scandium, tantalum, tellurium, terbium, thulium, tin, titanium, tungsten, vanadium, ytterbium, yttrium, zinc, and zirconium.
I had to read this dozens of times, and Thank God it was alphabetized! (Silver would fall in between scandium and tantalum)
Gold isn't on the list either. Humm, I see a pattern here.
What is one of the first things a silver investor learns about silver…. how necessary silver is used in industrial sectors, including energy systems. Silver Is Critical to Nuclear Power Generation Too
On August 29, 1942, Secretary of War Henry Stimson formally requested silver from Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. The silver was then processed into silver wire and transformed into large coils, which played a crucial role in the uranium enrichment process.
These coil strips were transported from New Jersey to Wisconsin by rail, typically in shipments consisting of six sealed railcars, with each shipment containing around 300 coils. To ensure their security, the coils were continuously guarded, with three armed guards accompanying them in a dedicated caboose on each journey.
At the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company in Milwaukee, the coils were unwound and interconnected using silver solder to create larger reels. These larger reels were then fed into a specialized machine, which wound them around the steel bobbins of the magnet casings. Between February 1943 and August 1944, 940 magnets were wound, each containing approximately 14 tons of silver. In sum, this amounted to well over 400 million ounces of silver.
Following this, during the global nuclear arms race, nations conducted a total of 2,088 atomic detonations, each utilizing a conservative estimate of 1,000 ounces of silver per blast. This amounted to 2 million ounces of silver vaporized during nuclear tests alone.
But that does not account for the current stockpiles of nuclear warheads in the world's various military arsenals, including those stored in silos, submarines, buried in mountains, or incorporated into missiles (each Tomahawk has 500 silver ounces, for example), bombs, shells, satellites, submarines, torpedoes, tanks, fighter aircraft, night vision goggles, and other military equipment.
...and sometimes MIL-SPECS for acquiring equipment over-specify, and requiure performance that is over-the-top for normal commercial applications. (Resistance in coils, for example. Silver — the BEST conductor there is — WILL reduce the “ohmic” resistance in a coil, and permit higher current with lower heating loss, and improve a coil’s Quality in resonence applications such as radio frequency coils, aluminum or copper will often serve just as well in practical use.)
So spekking silver in some cases may be overly conservative and strict.
..and sometimes, it’s the ONLY material that will do the job.
But wasn't physical inspection of Ft. Knox recently (2018) blocked?
Summary and Implications: The article purports that vast military uses of silver are unreported. This means the current silver price is artificially low. At some point silver’s price will have a massive breakout.
Clearly getting ready for the werewolf invasion. Ahwoooo!!!!
In the now-immortal words of Bill Clinton, “Because we could.”
“”””Silver bullets. Getting ready to fight vampires.”””””
That saves the wooden stakes for the Werewolves.
In still looking for a 1965 totally silver quarter
Silver quarters are 90% silver. Many of them are quite rare however and sell for much higher than its silver content if they are in good condition.
Note to self: All articles written by so-called experts on an alleged shortage of silver are complete BULL**IT.
All, every one. There is NO silver shortage, there never has been. Although widely used, the amounts of silver used in electronics are miniscule. No, silver is not used for mirrors, the reflective backing is aluminum.
YES, there might have been a shortage of silver when Calutrons at Oak Ridge were constructed in 1942 and silver was used for the giant coils instead of scarce copper. All but a few hundred ounces were returned to the US Tsy.
ALL miners MUST sell silver forward, eg; sell covered calls on their production if you like a stock market analogy. They MUST sell silver forward to cover their current expenses. In the futures markets, this creates the impression that there is a massive short interest, because the forward production the miners sell (and who is the biggest operator in the silver market? By far? By far far far?) shows up as short interest. It has never not been that way in the nearly 20 years I have scanned the OI and commitment of traders on the COMEX div NYMEX. So the market always, always appears crazy short. It’s an illusion.
I think we are on the cusp of a great price increase in precious metals, similar to what happened with gold after 1971 when we went off the gold standard and gold went up from $35 an ounce. The government has been suppressing the price of both but soon I expect both to break through and head up. Silver especially seems way underpriced. Plus silver will be much easier to sell once the price goes up. Some of the young people today look to bitcoin as a sort of electronic gold and like it’s volatility because they think it will increase proportionately more than the precious metals, but I don’t trust it and consider bitcoin too much of a gamble for various reasons. Investing in precious metals now is as close to a sure thing as you can get in my opinion. That $34 trillion deficit ain’t going away without hugely inflating the dollar.
Why???? Because all criminals have to get rich! ...imho
I do not know if Silver is manipulated, I do know that it seems to be a bad investment compared to gold.
in around 2008 I bought a bunch of silver and platinum, and if I sold it today I would lose a lot of money.
If I had bought gold, tech stocks or bitcoin I would be much better off.
Yeah if investing in precious metals you have to be prepared to sit on it for awhile. Like you I also bought a bunch of silver almost 15 years ago. The spot price hasn’t risen much but the premiums have. I think the spot when I bought it was around $16 but the premium I paid then was only $2 over spot. It’s not really considered an investment it’s more like insurance in a SHTF scenario. But I think that is about to change soon because of our incredibly reckless deficit spending. There’s almost no talk of austerity rather Congress is going full barrel running up the debt. It’s impossible for this to continue much longer without the dollar being devalued. I’m expecting gold to be around $3k within a year and silver to be in the 30’s in the same time period. And I expect it to continue up on that trajectory. In any event the chance of it going down in the future is almost nil so I consider it a pretty safe investment regardless.
It depends on the reason you are buying silver (or gold or bitcoin for that matter).
If you are seeking trading gains that is one approach.
If you are seeking apocalypse protection that is another approach.
I have neither and seek neither.
;-)
Oh and as a warning to anyone considering investing in silver Eagles (which is what I bought) there’s a slew of fake silver Eagles going around that came out of China so you have to be careful. There’s also lots of fake Morgan silver dollars out there. I know because I bought some fake Morgans and and also some fake gold Eagles myself from China as more of a novelty. I paid like $2 a piece for them. For $3 you can buy them incased in plastic to make them look like they came from a rating agency. So be aware.
Ha, ha! I actually had one of those but did not know that they existed nor knew their value. I found it by accident, because it looked different and kept it for a few years because it looked different. About ten years ago, I just spent it because I “knew” a 1965 quarter could not be 90% silver quarter. About three years ago, I found out how much they were worth.
I am not saying that the author is wrong, but I have studied silver as an investment and its industrial uses. Here is the fingernail sketch:
1. In the 1970s, the Hunt brothers tried to get a monopoly on silver. Through purchases and contracts for future production, they caused an incredible surge in prices- almost to $50 an ounce. But something happened that the Hunt brothers did not factor in- how much silver is already in circulation. When silver got to a certain price point, it literally started coming out of people’s closets. That broken bracelet, grandmas silver set, that vase sitting on the mantel all went to the silver reprocessers. It got so bad that the reclaimers couldn’t find places to keep it while awaiting smelting.
2. Many silver mines are actually mines for other metals, e.g. copper. So when mining certain veins of metals there is silver mixed in, which is separated in processing and sold as a secondary income stream. Mine more copper, get more silver.
3. If you are going to save silver for a rainy day, save coins and bent silverware. Why, because there are few fakes compared to pure silver “rounds” (pure silver commemorative coins sold for its silver content). I read an article by a guy that set out to buy fake silver rounds on Ebay. He bought silver rounds on ebay that didn’t seem “right” and tested them. He found that a lot of the fake rounds looked pretty good but tested a lot lower content. But no one fakes circulated coins or bent forks.
4. Circulated coins are best for when society collapses, because you don’t need to test or weigh coins. The coins have a known weight and silver content. Worried about how much a worn coin has lost its weight? Weigh it, knowing that it is 90% silver (40% silver for half dollars made between 1965-1969).
5. If you want a hobby finding scrap silver, go to non-profit thrift shops. The people processing donations are making minimum wage and do not pay a lot of attention. I have a large box filled with broken necklaces and dented bowls that I paid almost nothing for. My best find was a very heavy bowl that had “WH” “90” and a Chinese symbol pressed into it. I paid about $5 for it and it weighs about 10 ounces. What the store did not know was that it was part of the Chinese export silver made in the late 1800s-early 1900s. The WH stood for Wang Hing, a well known silver smith in Hong Kong. Silver marked WH sells at a premium. The 90 meant 90% silver, basically silver coins melted down to make decorative items.
highest optical reflectivity
******
I used to own a telescope which had an objective mirror coated with pure silver.
99% of the light that entered the telescope was reflected to the eyepiece.
The only problem with it was that it tarnished and had to be disassembled and professionally re-coated periodically.
Colloidal silver:
If you can see it it’s no good imo. The best stuff is clear cuz it’s too small to catch light. Colloidal silver is like shooting at birds with buck shot vs bird shot. Nano silver is the stuff to use. It is clear but shine a laser into it and it illuminates the laser light.
Silver blocks the oxygen uptake of microorganisms whereupon they die. Very effective against bacteria, germs, etc. but not so much with viruses.
But even colloidal silver works on most bacteria, like cuts, infections, tooth infections etc. It’s great on athlete’s foot. Seems to work vs. all bacteria and some viruses. I use it on my dogs too.
I keep both in my medical bin. Silver has tons of medical uses. The ‘blue man’ phenomena was with large, non medicinal silver solution. A deliberate smear campaign by Big Pharma I’ve been told. I’ve been using nano and colloidal for years. Saved me a tooth or two and a ton of Dr. visits and meds.
I also use nano silver in gardening. Mixed with water in a sprayer it’s great for fungus, mold and small insects on my orange tree.
Bottom line it works and saves me time and money.
I bought a 2 nano silver generators years ago and crank them up whenever I run low on it.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.