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Posts Tagged ‘sell silver’

Palladium, like many other precious metals, has been enjoying excellent growth in value since the financial crisis as savvy professional investors moved out of stocks and bonds, which were taking a swan dive, and into assets such as gold, silver, platinum and of course, palladium. These metals are used as a hedge against inflation and a weak dollar, especailly in difficult economic times.

At the onset of the recession the value of palladium leapt with double-digit growth, but the summer months of 2009 demonstrated a wavering in the price of many metals - including palladium.

Platinum is bouncing underneath the $1,200 per ounce mark, gold is volatile, silver is hanging and palladium is stuck around $290 per ounce.

More disconcerting for metal speculators is that trading volumes are thin – the market is still and doesn’t seem to know which way to move.

Mixed economic signals create uncertainty, though some pundits feel the economy was saved by Obama's 0 billion stimulus plan. After the hype came the realization the crisis was a lot worse than thought, and maybe, $700 billion was not going to be anywhere near enough –especially when overseas governments were pumping similarly large sums of taxpayer cash into the banking system and still it seemed the financial system still looked to be on the verge of collapse.

The housing sector saw an improvement in August 2009 and September was on target as reported by banks and retailers. Positive signs demonstrating some recovery or at least stabilization, but at the same time the dollar has continued to weaken against foreign currencies signifying a relatively poor performance against overseas markets and especially by those holding America’s debt (China especially).

The fundamental question is whether stock and bond market performance is going to convince investors to return – if they do, those holding precious metals are going to liquidate to get back into those markets in anticipation of enjoying the returns recovery will bring. The metal price will drop like a rock (just look at platinum prices falling from $2,200 to the $1,200 mark in the last quarter of 2008) and those holding palladium, gold, silver or platinum are going to feel very bad indeed that they didn’t take the opportunity to sell when the price was this high.

For those with small holdings of palladium, especially the private individual who may have the metal tied up in family jewelry, now is the time to sell. The risk of a price crash in precious metals, including palladium, outweighs the prospect of a future return. The return of financial stock market performance heralds recovery and that means the end of the precious metals bull market which is why the metals market has stalled now.

With so many outlets for convenient selling of old gold, silver, platinum and palladium it makes a great deal of rational economic sense as well as simple commonsense to take the profit that has been created by the recession and turn useless jewelry gathering dust into cold hard cash to pay off debts or to get ready to invest in the stock markets.

Gold may be the number one precious metal from centuries past but the fact is that the vast majority of gold you available on he market is not pure gold – pure gold is highly priced and on its own, it’s not very strong. Wedding bands are made with a combination of other metals for durability purposes. Just as gold has held the eye of men and women for thousands of years, so has silver.

Silver is a soft, white, shining metal and it has the highest electrical conductivity of any element; silver also conducts heat far more efficiently than any other metal which makes silver the gold standard for your cooking pan bottoms! Besides the fact, many of use could not afford the price, so it’s beneficial that copper allows for a less expensive alternative.

Silver occurs in natural form as an alloy or as a pure metal; it is commonly found in close proximity with gold and as electrum, a common alloy made of gold and silver along with several other common metals. Gold is rare however, and most silver is produced as a by-product from the extraction of other metals such as zinc, lead and copper.

Silver shares a common set of attraction factors with gold – it is appealing to the eye, it does not rust or discolor because it doesn’t react well with other elements and especially air and water. More than this, because it is soft and malleable, it has always found a place in jewelry making and its relative rarity has served to increase the value of the base metal and the silver decorative pieces made. Silver was also used to create the first coins in exactly the same way that gold was used – the value of the coin being equal to the value of the silver (or gold) which the coin contained, and from this the practice of hallmarking gold and silver jewelry and ingots.

Silver is widely used in industry and in many of the products we use in our daily lives. Silver is particularly useful in making electrical contacts because of its high conductivity. Many of the high-technology devices in your home, especially computers and modern televisions, have silver coated electrical contacts and rely on the excellent conductivity qualities of silver for their performance. Modern photography would not have been possible were it not for silver; silver compounds and solutions are used to “fix” the photographic image on paper. Silver nitrate is used as a disinfectant in medical situations for anti-microbial cleaning. That is probably why it was used to make silverware (eating utensils).  In industrial processes and the chemical industry, silver compounds play a crucial role as catalysts which render commercially viable manufacture of a very large range of chemical based products.

Like gold, silver has many uses far beyond simple adornment; man has treasured silver almost as much as gold through the ages, but the real value silver has rendered to our lives is much greater than many would otherwise believe.