Currently Paper Gold is selling @ over 100 X amount mined for the year, and Silver is worse at north of 400 X the amount mined.
I'm not going to research gold in depth for this article, but Silver mining produces around 1B Troy Ounces a year currently so its about $30 B a year in new silver worldwide, a very small amount of Gross World Product of 100T, but with paper trading over 400 they turn it into a $12T churn.
Most silver is mined as a Byproduct of other mining, Gold ,Aluminum, Copper, and other . Several reports that China is buying up silver pre-refining and that isn't reported in the 1 B ounces. Will do research and confirm or deny with sauce.
Silver is the most conductive elemental metal and that is it's usefulness in Electronics, Batteries, Solar Panels. Without the conductivity of the silver where needed, all of the above would be unpractical in regards to power transfer efficiency. Over Demand for silver has been the case for a few years, but the amount of silver stockpiled up by industries, central banks, and bullion collectors, etc... Is massive.Silver is also antimicrobial and used in internal and external medicines
Another bright spot will be when silver is legal tender and in common use. A downside is lesser demand because Meh solar, and electric cars suck.
Gold @ 100 Paper per actual oz mined, which is crazy numbers high too. Gold is also used in electronics, but a lot more sparingly, its purpose is where staying shiny and untarnished matters like CPU and connector pins. They don't have to be solid because bost electricity travels along the surface of the wire. Gold is used in dentistry, but its not that big of market. Some estimates put gold at over 50% in Jewelry, but I think that is misleading. All the Central Banks are sucking it up and have been since their inception.
Gold is more steady in % of ups and downs, but silver is way more useful, Link shows ratio of mined/ price etc. of gold and silver From link:
Geologists estimate that there are approximately 19 ounces of silver for every ounce of gold in the earth’s crust, with a ratio of approximately 11.2 ounces of silver to each ounce of gold that has ever been mined. Interestingly, the silver-gold ratio in ancient Egypt was 1:1.
Current Gold silver ratio is about 85, so gold is way over valued compared to scarcity and silver's usefulness.
In your opinion, how many ounces is a good FRNReset T=0 target to have on hand?
I'd say whatever you can afford to put away. For a while there, we stopped contributing to the casino (stock market) and did PM instead. Our initial goal was 1k oz Ag, but we've gone way over that due to pucker factor and stacking longer than we initially planned... and I'm glad we did.
After we acquired so much Ag that we got sick of the volume and weight (lol) we decided to focus more on Au, simply because of the value to density ratio. Besides, we already acquired enough US face value coins to address the SHTF scenario (which BTW, contrary to popular belief is NOT the main reason to get PM... it's simply a serendipitous "feature") - Again same basic recipe of getting face value us minted coins, then maybe some gold snap offs, then just go for weight via bars with assay.
I didn't bother with platinum, palladium or anything like that. Most don't have a clue they're even a thing and while it might not be a bad idea to grab some just for s&g, I'm okay not having any. Of course the "other " semi precious metals, like brass and lead are definitely something to have in your doomsday SHTF scenario, whether to consume or barter/trade with. Choose your calibers carefully... That's one reason when selecting a piece you don't "dare to be different" with goofy calibers. And even though I don't partake, it's good to have some "real good drinkin liquor", smokes and other wartime necessities for consumption or trade. People would be surprised how much a can of tuna (51g of protein) is worth after a few weeks of no food...or "I'm never gonna poop again" MREs 😂😂😂
1000-2000 oz seems like basically a full years salary for an artisan, from what I can tell. Would agree that’s a pretty good milestone.