Silver Experiencing ‘GameStop Effect’

The aftershocks from the recent sale of a 1787 Brasher doubloon for $9.36 million will be felt for some time. This is a good thing for coin collecting.

CoinsWeekly.com publisher Dr. Ursula Kampmann said of the transaction, “With that money, you could buy a four bathroom mansion in Beverly Hills, or one or two Maldives Islands.”

This is the kind of publicity that draws more people into coin collecting. Not everyone who buys coins gets involved as a hobby enthusiast. The speculators are there as well as are investors and collectors.

An unexpected, and what I would term speculative, increase in the spot price of silver took place just as this column was being written. The same folks using the internet forum Reddit to recently collude purchases of GameStop and other declining value stocks simply to run up prices are now targeting silver. Retail sites are reporting having been overwhelmed by demand for both ingots and coins.

Since the price of silver will whiplash, many dealers hesitate to buy for stock at the likely momentary higher rates. It may be appropriate to borrow a phrase about the Alamo as a reaction: “Remember the Hunt brothers.”

The question yet to be answered is if this collusion in commodity purchases is now spilling into physical assets. The other half of that question is if this will simply be a pump-and-dump, or if these same buyers will hold their silver purchases. And, of course, the question from all of us involved in coins is if the fallout from this could be a swath of new collectors.