Lost interest?

[Recyclersteve]

Just don't have time.

Is the traffic way down on other forums as well? Say Bullion Stacker?

With all due respect, I can appreciate this and definitely don't know the details of your personal situation. However, for some (not necessarily you, but for some) I think saying "I don't have the time" is code for "I would have the time if the price action was acting more predictably and I could make some money."

[agmoose]

I sit here reading this as I am hand sorting my 1st box of cents in over a year - maybe 2. About a month ago, I started cleaning up a tub of stuff (cents, nickles, dimes) that had been sitting waiting to be sorted since we moved 18 months ago. Now that I'm done with that - I have the itch again, so I'll slowly climb back into the rhythm of it again. Just a box or 2 a week. My issue now is both of the banks that had coin machines (free) that I used to use have removed them. So - where do I dump? I guess I'll buy giftcards for Christmas at the Coinstar.

I did sell of about a dozen wide AM cents and bought some small gold with the proceeds. I still have about a roll of 98 and 00 wides left. I've still picked up a piece of numi here and there, but not at the rates of 5-7 yrs ago.

I am in the crowd that thinks we are closer to a wave up - but I've been wrong plenty before. I haven't been on RC much lately, but will be more moving forward. Good luck all.

ADDED: I have learned a bit about comic books in the past year via my son-in-law. We've made a few larger purchases of them at $1 or $2 each and flipped several of anywhere from $20 to $50. He knows what to look for and stays up to date on what movies are coming out with which characters. It is a flipping venue I had never given 2nd thought to, but he made a quick grand last winter on a $50 box at a yard sale. He gives me a list of what to look for at flea markets, otherwise I'd have zero clue. It brings me back to my old baseball card days. I do still buy some older baseball cards - mostly of Mantle, Mays, Nolan Ryan, Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, etc, from that 50s/60s/70s timeframe. Graded PSA 8 and up only. There are some good investments there.

[wagsthadog]

Hi all!

Echoing an article I saw on Kitco, I also think a huge amount of interest and funds normally going into Precious Metals have been diverted by Bitcoin and other cryptos. I'm not loving or hating on cryptocurrencies, but I honestly think that is a huge reason why Pm's have been in the doldrums. Any asset that goes from $2 to $4500 in a few years will definitely suck all investment income into it. There was a little excitement in PM's during the Brexit vote, but since then its literally stagnated. Premiums are in the toilet for most bullion. Remains to be seen if Bitcoin will be around in the long term, but I think as long as the mania continues, nothing significant is going to happen in PM's. If some critical flaw or government intervention occurs in cryptocurrencies, then maybe we'll have a PM jump but then, who can say what the NEXT mania will be by then. Just my .02

wags

[knibloe]

Just don't have time.

Is the traffic way down on other forums as well? Say Bullion Stacker?

With all due respect, I can appreciate this and definitely don't know the details of your personal situation. However, for some (not necessarily you, but for some) I think saying "I don't have the time" is code for "I would have the time if the price action was acting more predictably and I could make some money."

Not at all for me. I work a full time job, I have a small farm, I volunteer with church, rotary, and scouting... I check in on the site when I can and if things are busy enough that could be a week or more in between.

[OneBiteAtATime]

My irrational fear that a socialist president and his party were going to drag us into an apocalyptic collapse started to burn less bright in the last couple years of Obama's reign. While the current POTUS makes me feel no more comfortable, I more and more am starting to believe that it doesn't much matter who sits at that desk. Plus, as someone said above, I've reengaged into the real estate market. The 07 08 crash is what crushed my spirit and drove me to believe I was living in a world of scarcity. I now refuse to live in a world of scarcity. Dumping my pennies at the bank was a cathartic act. Yes, I still am planning to be prepared for emergencies, but the post-apocalyptic world I crafted in my mind is not going to happen. And if it does, I have my doubts that a stash of metal will protect me and my family from it. As many of you know, I was primarily a flipper in the metals world. I would make a big purchase, flip good deals to my friends at RC and pocket a few rounds in the spread. I'm still doing that, but I'm back to doing it on $50k houses rather than $2k piles of silver. Also! With the influx of alibaba fakes into the market, I've been hesitant to buy at pawn shops and from local sellers.

[Dave]

Haven't lost interest, retired from one job and busier than I have ever. Still hand sorting when I can. Still getting decent %of Cu. Buying more silver lately. Joined BS last week to see what I can buy. Love this site and the members. Was only burned once, that was my 1st deal I made in 09. Every other deal I made here was great. Grand kids will have a few ton of Cu to get rid of.Just hoping for higher prices to get more action goung here.

[SilverDragon72]

My interest has waned somewhat. Although I still check here on the forum on a regular basis, I don't do a lot of active sorting anymore. I still find myself looking at all of my pocket change for the occasional copper or two. I haven't seen much movement in the silver market for several months now, lingering in the 15-17 dollar range. It would be nice to have more disposable income for purchasing PM's, but unfortunately, life expenses just keep getting in the way....

On the bright side....I've been working like a dog at my job, putting in many extra hours of overtime in an effort to keep the wolves away from the door. By the end of the year....I hope to have some breathing room at last!

[everything]

In part, my stack is where I want it, now I'm angling the numismatic and gold, and eventually I will only seek numismatics. Technology is changing the dynamic as well. We've got several years of above ground silver supply in bar and coin sitting around doing nothing. Cryptocurrencies are poising to replace fiat as I see Dubai and Japan have announced national digital currencies. Negative real interest rates have made the equity bull market permanent, i.e. debt does not matter, the money isn't free, but it's about as close to free to borrow it as need be, then when the note is due just deploy the golden parachute, declare bankruptcy, and sell the shell. Real Estate is going up in value, metals are not. People follow what is providing a return, they lose interest in what is not providing a return. If no return, inflation eats away the value of your assets. Some of the au/ag investors our here are the flipper types, they lost interest when prices moderated, see .. for many, at the end of the day it's all about money, and I meet more and more au/ag players who say they are not collectors. I still sort pennies too, and I've got my little stack back up to around $500.

I'm just waiting for the next recession is all, with so much above ground silver sitting around doing apparently nothing, I'll be a buyer when everyone else is a seller, but it's going to take a while, and my guess is the "lost interest" folks are in that camp as well. Meanwhile prices are buoyed by ETF's and commodity investors.

[smalltimeopn]

I confess this is the first time I've logged in to RC in a while. I have not lost interest but I can say it is discouraging to see the PM prices manipulated so. It amazes me how TPTB can keep the illusion going. It's obvious to me things are moving rapidly to a digital state. People willingly allowing themselves to be chipped, cryptos, security hacks, and the like. The sheep will swallow this hook, line and sinker when that day arrives. With that said, I have not liquidated anything I own but I have not purchased anything either. I'm holding and watching.a

[InfleXion]

It's not that I've lost interested in stacking, but there are a number of factors at play for me.

I reached what I originally set out as a core position, and stacking is no longer a priority for my funds. Rather I am saving cash for the day when "cash is king" so I can acquire other things on the cheap, and for home rennovations. I put in the time and effort to get myself to a sustinable place, and now that I'm closer to being over the hill than I'd like it's time to start enjoying life in the now a little bit more having planned sufficiently for the future.

I don't do as much Internetting/foruming as I used to. Part of that is due to all the watchers, part of that is due to having a significant other, and part of that is due to the fact that there isn't as much activity on the whole.

Also, Gwent. The Beta is free to play on PS4. Highly addictive digital card game from the Witcher series.

Price doesn't matter to me. I still stack occaisonally, never sell, never will. Maybe I won't see the day come, but someday there will be a day when cash is over with, currency is fully digital, tracked, and used as a method of control. Having the metal to remain free from that was always my goal.

[natsb88]

Haven't lost interest in metals. Still buying and selling and pouring and stamping, though there have been extended slow periods over the last couple of years. I haven't added much of anything to my personal holdings since I bought a 100-year old house (that needs a ton of work) three years ago. Any available funds get thrown at that. The house has also eaten up a ton of my time over the last three years, and some medical issues have been throwing a wrench into the works for about nine months (just about done with those, hopefully).

I do think crypto is siphoning off a chunk of the retail demand for metals, and even some of the institutional hedging. Over $155,000,000,000 has entered the crypto market in the last four years, the bulk of that coming in just the last ten months or so.

cmc-total-market-cap-small.jpeg (29.77 KiB) Viewed 3082 times

[68Camaro]

I think you could say (to part of your point) that some of the demand for PM has been diverted to crypto, but market cap doesn't illustrate that. Maybe something else does - ratio of daily trade values (not futures - but physical)? Ratio of total value of the items that have exchanged hands in a given day, week, month, etc. Not sure.

Market cap of something (especially something relatively new) doesn't meant that that much money flowed into it - it's just a theoretical measure of the value of an small fractional portion of it based on recent trades of other fractionally small portions of the total quantity. For a newer commodity where most of the holdings were obtained at rates 1000x lower it's not a good estimate of how much money has entered into that part of the market. Hard to tell how much crypto has siphoned off the larger market. If this continues over time to where most of the quantity of crypto has churned between various hands at the higher price, then yes - you could eventually say that, but the chart above doesn't tell that story.

[JobIII]

I stopped doing the coppers a long time ago. Luckily the Ryedale and coin counter were sold before copper prices fell out. Didn't sell off all of the copper cents yet. Not sure if it's worth sending them to a bank or letting them sit at the house. Coin roll hunting is all but a memory for me. I don't have time to go to and from stores anymore. I've actually been actively closing accounts at banks that were just used for returns.

I also haven't been foruming or buying / selling silver or numi coins at all lately. I had a great brick n' mortar store to buy silver below spot. But it's a little out of the way and the owner is gearing up to quit the business. So that and other life things have prevented me from being able to be involved in this market.

Another thing, I felt that I was squeezed out of ebay where you could make a little profit on selling $1 face lots.

The interest in coins and buying silver lots is still there. I would like to be able to buy and flip and hold a couple nice examples, but it's just getting harder to find deals with my main connection calling it quits. I'm over looking through craigslist ads.

The funds I am saving are going to be going to a house, hopefully before bean town acquires Amazon's HQ2. Causing an even more ridiculous housing bubble in my area.

[natsb88]

Market cap of something (especially something relatively new) doesn't meant that that much money flowed into it - it's just a theoretical measure of the value of an small fractional portion of it based on recent trades of other fractionally small portions of the total quantity. For a newer commodity where most of the holdings were obtained at rates 1000x lower it's not a good estimate of how much money has entered into that part of the market.

What you say about market cap vs. trade volume vs. new money entering the market is true. There has to be new money entering the crypto market to drive the prices up like this, but I don't know how much.

The daily average trade volume for the top 100 cryptos for the last 30 days is $3.4 billion. The market cap is $173.9 billion. That's 1.96% of the market cap trading daily.

Other digital/intangibles, 50-day daily average volume, market cap, and % of cap traded daily:

Twitter: $258 million, $13.2 billion, 1.95%
Facebook: $2.38 billion, $508.2 billion, 0.47%
Google: $1.38 billion, $696.4 billion, 0.20%

More techs:

Apple $4.2 billion, $807.0 billion, 0.52%
Cisco: $665 million, $169.6 billion, 0.39%

Not quite apples to apples, but interesting that a higher percentage of crypto is changing hands at these high prices than every tech stock I looked at (very briefly). Not sure what the correlation is to new money entering the market, if any. The crypto market does have some whales. $100 put into BTC a year ago is worth nearly $1k today. Two years ago, $2.2k. Five years ago, $52k. Seven years ago, $5.7 million

Hard to tell how much crypto has siphoned off the larger market.

I don't think there's any reasonably accurate way to put a number on it. Anecdotally from watching the forums, Facebook, and listening to some dealers try to discredit Bitcoin while others have doubled or triple their money on it, I think a large percentage of stackers are at least looking at it, and a not insignificant number are dipping their toes in.

[Treetop]

My interest in metals hasnt waned for all the reasons Ive mentioned over the years here. Im just focusing on more projects on the homestead now. Once I finish a few more I will get back to stacking, and burying it like a pirate for what I still feel is an inevitable reset our our markets.

[highroller4321]

Market cap of something (especially something relatively new) doesn't meant that that much money flowed into it - it's just a theoretical measure of the value of an small fractional portion of it based on recent trades of other fractionally small portions of the total quantity. For a newer commodity where most of the holdings were obtained at rates 1000x lower it's not a good estimate of how much money has entered into that part of the market.

What you say about market cap vs. trade volume vs. new money entering the market is true. There has to be new money entering the crypto market to drive the prices up like this, but I don't know how much.

The daily average trade volume for the top 100 cryptos for the last 30 days is $3.4 billion. The market cap is $173.9 billion. That's 1.96% of the market cap trading daily.

Other digital/intangibles, 50-day daily average volume, market cap, and % of cap traded daily:

Twitter: $258 million, $13.2 billion, 1.95%
Facebook: $2.38 billion, $508.2 billion, 0.47%
Google: $1.38 billion, $696.4 billion, 0.20%

More techs:

Apple $4.2 billion, $807.0 billion, 0.52%
Cisco: $665 million, $169.6 billion, 0.39%

Not quite apples to apples, but interesting that a higher percentage of crypto is changing hands at these high prices than every tech stock I looked at (very briefly). Not sure what the correlation is to new money entering the market, if any. The crypto market does have some whales. $100 put into BTC a year ago is worth nearly $1k today. Two years ago, $2.2k. Five years ago, $52k. Seven years ago, $5.7 million

Hard to tell how much crypto has siphoned off the larger market.

I don't think there's any reasonably accurate way to put a number on it. Anecdotally from watching the forums, Facebook, and listening to some dealers try to discredit Bitcoin while others have doubled or triple their money on it, I think a large percentage of stackers are at least looking at it, and a not insignificant number are dipping their toes in.

Really the only way for cryptos to keep going up in value is for more people to be entering the market. If people didn't believe that they were going to keep going up like crazy I don't think the "value" would be there. If a crypto every reaching a plateau I think you will almost immediately start seeing it drop.

[InfleXion]

While I suspect cryptos will continue to gain in overall marketshare, I also suspect that as more and more cryptos are produced (out of nothing) that each individual crypto will wane on a % basis as newcomers continue to improve upon their predecessors. With central banks building their own distributed ledger system using the blockchain technology that could gain a good chunk of the total crypto market as well when they roll that out. The question in my mind is will the original "wild" cryptos be allowed to run once there are establishment cryptos. They can't stop the protocol from working short of shutting down the internet, but I don't see why they can't bully the exchanges into being the gatekeepers if you want to cash out. Although I suppose that will depend largely on national policy over international until we have a truly globalized monetary system. Either way only gold and silver can operate fully as money outside of the system.

[AFModell]

I am less active (read:not at all) because it's been about 8 years since I registered here, I have 3 kids now (from 0), the prices are stagnant with no exciting trends, and there are other more exciting economic interests out there (that I am not invested in but many others seem to be). The folks at work talk about chasing Tesla and crypto currency exchange. I still like to buy some silver though and will sort my pocket pennies after they build up to a small coffee can worth.

[coppernickel]

Lost interest? No. The last few weeks I've made more progress than the last six months.

[MetalMan]

So, to summarize there are two perspectives, both of which influence me, but the second more than the first. 1. Buying and collecting metals to speculate with the hopes of near to mid-term rising price, 2. Buying metals as insurance against the real possibility that the fiat, monopoly boardgame money (we are so used to being stable) will one day plummet in value, inversely to the price of tangible items, especial PMs. So, the fact is, the deteriorating economic and monetary fundamentals that warrant and drive someone with funds to buy PMs because of reason number 2, have only gotten worse since 2008-2009. Indeed, the PTB have truly dampened many speculator's "interest" with their illegal price suppression of the PMs. But, hey, thanks for the cheaper insurance.

[Copper_Baron]

On major assets (stocks, bonds, commodities, etc) the hardest strategy to implement into is to buy when out-of-favor and sell when in-favor. Everyone is buying stocks, alternative currencies, real estate right now. I have been heavy stocks from 09 but have started to sell off this past summer. I have been nibbling at silver and gold for the past two years and hoping it gets real negative because I am positioning for the future as you can not tell me that silver and gold will never be in a bull market again. I am a bottom feeder but as a side note, I am participating in the Bitcoin/Litecoin space (however to a smaller extent than my major assets) because of the reach and potential. I am also invested in lithium and lithium miners. You have to have some spec in your portfolio. But my shift in my bigger assets, stocks and precious metals, is starting to shift more towards the metals.

Stay the course folks, and if we get to some real blood in the streets, BUY IT.

[coppernickel]

Indeed, the PTB have truly dampened many speculator's "interest" with their illegal price suppression of the PMs. But, hey, thanks for the cheaper insurance.

Stay the course folks, and if we get to some real blood in the streets, BUY IT.

I'm afraid we have that blood sign already.

[daviscfad]

It isn't producing

[hobo finds]

It isn't producing

Melt value is still there! As it was from the beginning....

[realhumancopper]

The fiduciary value (U.S. cents) is one cent U.S, and the intrinsic value cannot be legally unlocked. The "melt value" is a speculative concept contingent on many factors we know , and couldn't possibly know. I think the last sentence is the main reason for "loss of interest"....................b