Afternoon everyone…..
Global warming is real…… Most people misinterpret what global warming actually is. Global warming is defined as erratic weather events, not fitting a pattern.
We are globally seeing this on what seems to be a fairly constant thing lately.
Why am I bringing this up today? I’ve mentioned on a few occasions recently about crazy storms that have affected my area and state.
Well another weather event/storm happened today that I’d like to share. There was a massive storm which hit two areas of New Jersey nearly one hundred miles apart.
The first that I’ll speak on is what they are calling a touch down ball hurricane. It hit ocean county New Jersey this morning. It caused a massive storm surge along the coastline devastating the area. The storm ripped the roof of several buildings including a BJ’s Wholesale club.
Roughly a hundred miles northwest of that in a town named Paramus was another event with what has not been confirmed by anything I’ve been able to find. But I have a friend that lives in the town and has told me that a pair of funnel clouds ripped through for just under a minute before lifting up causing a disaster.
While I’m not in either of those areas. My area has been getting crushed with ridiculous amounts of rain. My town as of nine this morning reported that we’ve had nearly four inches of rain over the past 48 hours.
The roads here are flooded pretty bad. Drainage is overwhelmed by the volume which is causing most of the flooding on the streets and highways.
There are still over 5,000 residents in my girlfriend’s town without power from the storm on Thursday night. With the continuous rain I’m sure that it is making the people trying to fix this situation life’s miserable.
It is still raining pretty good here and we are supposed to get more thunderstorms later tonight. Fortunately we still have power and will continue to have power.
Now most of you as stackers have probably seen these rounds before. They are quite popular and at one time they were very plentiful.
If you’ve never heard of the Hunt brothers, and what they tried to do to the silver market. You might want to give that a read, it’s quite interesting.
While this round has US Assay Office imprinted on it. These rounds were not produced by the US Assay Office. They don’t have the equipment or means to produce anything. The silver used in the production of these rounds was acquired from the US Assay Office of San Francisco.
While what I going to share today is a silver round. They also produced two different one ounce bars, a ten ounce bar and also a hundred ounce bar from this silver.
Here is a brief lesson on what happened….
In 1979, Silver traded at about $6 per troy ounce, a few years before this time the infamous Hunt Brothers decided to buy as much Silver as they possibly could. There initial decision to do this was to hedge their money against inflation. They chose Silver because Gold was still illegal for private ownership following the 1933 ban on private ownership of Gold by the U.S. Government. That’s right and as they say, if the Government doesn’t want you to have it, stock up on it!
From the time the 3 brothers, Nelson, Lamar, and William Hunt made their purchase in January of 1979, Silver would see an increase of 713% just a year later. Talk about buying at the perfect time! This, however, caused absolute panic in the commodity market and big annual buyers felt the pinch. This, as you could imagine, spread to many industries due to Silvers' wide range of uses. Tiffany & Co even took out a front-page advertisement in the New York Times condemning the actions of the Hunt Family.
A few days of this madness and COMEX, the Commodity Exchange Corporation, placed regulation dubbed ‘Silver Rule 7’ that restricted activities such as buying on a margin as the Hunt Brothers did. In a few short days, the artificially inflated price of Silver began to free fall, faster than the Hunt Brothers could sell-off. The flaw in the Hunt Brothers plan was that they borrowed heavily to finance the purchase of the Silver and with the market dropping over 50% in a few days, caused them to default and become unable to meet their loan obligations. I don’t think anyone hardly feels bad for the Hunt Brothers, but all told, they lost nearly $1.7 Billion’ worth of their family's wealth and were forced to pay a 137 million dollar fine to a Peruvian Mining Company. This was because not all of the Silver they had purchased was physical, some were in the form of securities and futures.
Note the date on the bullion that reads, “MINTED FROM U.S. STRATEGIC STOCKPILE SILVER FORMERLY STORED AT U.S. ASSAY OFFICE SAN FRANCISCO CC.” That’s right, 1981. Now, although the market had dropped to over 50% of its peak, it still had a ways to go before it leveled out. The U.S. Government, under the Carter administration, with this Silver Fiasco in mind and the end of Silver in circulatory coinage, meant the diminished need for the United States Assay Commission. Therefore, it was abolished in March of 1980 and all of its Silver Stockpile was auctioned off. This conveniently served the purpose of driving the Silver prices back down to their appropriate, ‘inflation following’ prices.
A company by the name of “Continental Coin & Jewelry Company” based in Van Nuys, California (mintmark CC) bought a large amount of that Silver and produced the bullion in question. Commonly mistaken for U.S. Mint or otherwise officially authorized by the U.S. Treasury or Government bullion, this private company produced both Silver Rounds and Silver Bars from the Silver they purchased. All of the Silver is .999 in purity, and the back reads “SILVER TRADE UNIT” with weight in ounces and/or grams as well as metal type and purity.
Before the purchase of the Silver by the Continental Coin Company, the Silver was originally acquired from the turn-in of Silver Certificates during the run on the Banks in 1933. There is a rumor some of the Silver was loaned to a fake ‘shell’ corporation set up by the U.S., Skunkworks type, Government Agency. The Silver was then used in Los Alamos during the time of the controversial Manhattan Project for research and weapons development, later being returned. Though, these are rumors and largely unfounded.
Now for the round….
