(http://www.seekbullion.com)
Silver Stock Report
by Jason Hommel, October 15th, 2008
In most auctions, people tend to wait until the last few hours to bid, and there are 4 hours left. The lowest bids are already about $14.50-15/oz., ($4-$4.60 over spot) at this point, a premium of 38% to 43%. So I’m concerned people may begin to overbid. But it’s not my place to say what these are worth, that’s for the market to decide.
But I feel it’s important to remind people that I plan to auction 200 of the same kind of bars by next Wednesday at noon, in a similar format, at the same site, seekbullion.com. That would be a rate of about 1 million oz. per year, or about 1% of the overall investment silver market of about 100 million oz. per year. Is that enough to help reduce premiums? Not likely.
But other dealers will soon be able to offer silver for auction at seekbullion.com. But they will need silver to sell, and they will need to trust the auction format. We’ll see.
Also, who knows what underlying spot silver prices will be next week.
In addition, premiums over spot have only been increasing. For example, in my first auction, for only 25 bars, back on August 29th, which was a month and a half ago, only one person bid $4.01 over spot, when spot was $13.76, that was a 29% premium, which I discounted to $3.76 over spot, or a 27% premium.
Auction Closed: 25 silver 100 oz. bars, JM or Engelhards August 29, 2008
Many people have asked me if I will auction any rounds or 10 oz. bars. Well, my mother has begun auctioning smaller lots of silver on ebay.com, and her first few items are 1 oz rounds (Buffalos) sold as singles, a pound (12), or 20 at a time, and 10 oz. Amark bars, and her first few items close in about 2 days. She’s hesitant to list more, unless these get any bids. Please bookmark her store:
http://shop.ebay.com/merchant/jkesilver
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The auction for 125 Engelhard 100 oz. Silver Bars is running, live, at:
http://www.seekbullion.com
Auction ends TODAY, Noon, Pacific time, October 15th. That’s the middle of the day of the middle of the week.
Actually, a series of auctions is scheduled, running over the course of 26 minutes, ending Noon, TODAY, because there are 26 separate auctions.
The lowest current bid is $14.00/oz., or $1400 per 100 oz. silver bar, for a single lot of 20, full lot only, for a total of $28000.
Here’s a picture of my bars for this auction:
http://silverstockreport.com/images/130-Silver-Engelhard.jpg
I can ship immediately upon receiving the wire transfers from the customers, after the auction. Wires must be sent within 24 hours after the auction’s close!
After the auction, I plan to use the proceeds to buy more silver, such as 1000 oz. COMEX bars, to make a profit.
I own over 200,000 oz. of silver. I’m not selling out. I’m only selling 12,500 ounces, and I plan to buy more silver, cheaper, but in a different form, such as 1000 oz. bars.
Since this auction is going so well, I plan to auction more silver next Wednesday.
The price manipulation at the COMEX is so severe, that it has now created the profit incentive to create a free market in silver, through this auction, in order to arbitrage between the two markets, by buying in one, and selling to the other.
Al Korelin interviewed me this morning and I spoke briefly about the profit opportunity in silver because of the premiums:
http://www.kereport.com/DailyRadio/Daily101408.mp3
It is impossible for me to “price gouge”, because I’m not setting the price. The free market is setting the price.
There are some questions about how the bidding works.
The bidding system at seekbullion.com uses PROXY BIDDING!
WHAT IS PROXY BIDDING?
http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-proxy-bidding.htm
How to bid:
First, register at http://www.seekbullion.com!
Proxy bidding at seekbullion.com works similar to ebay.com, however, the “bid increments” at seekbullion are much smaller.
The high bid wins, but is never what is paid. The second highest bid mostly determines the price!
The highest bid is always hidden from view. The bid you see is nearly always the second highest bid, plus a small increment over that, due to the automatic proxy bidding of the highest bidder.
For example, if by the auction’s close, one person has bid $1800 for a bar, and the next highest bid is $1600 for a bar, then the auction software lists the highest bid as $1601, and the person who bid $1800 is the highest bidder, but will only pay $1601. The person who bid $1600 will not win, and their bid is only used as a base for the automatic proxy increment bid of $1 over that price.
It’s like each bar is bid at least twice at very near the price you see.
This really prevents price gouging, because the bids have depth–at least two buyers are willing to pay very similar prices.
The second to last auction, for 20 bars, has a bid history of 174 bids, partly because the automatic proxy bid increase for the highest bidder is so small.
If you want a free market in silver, then please tell people about my auction at:
http://www.seekbullion.com
Sincerely,
Jason Hommel