Major Changes Currently Shaking Up the Physical Silver Market
Updated 1-15-2026, see bottom of page
- A 5 to 6 month backlog of scrap silver waiting to be refined has built up at silver refineries around the country and the refineries have stopped allowing any further incoming shipments for the foreseeable future. This is causing almost all of America's largest wholesale dealers to HALT purchases of many categories of silver items. This suspension of purchasing affects categories like sterling silver flatware & tableware, scrap silver jewelry, US Wartime Nickels, 40% Silver Clad Halves, Foreign silver coins, industrial silver scrap and in some cases, pre-1965 US 90% Silver coins. This suspension of buying scrap silver by the major dealers, along with increasing processing & payment times, has trickled down to severely affect small and medium size silver dealers. We are doing our best to continue normal buying operations, but we are definitely being affected by this as well as the wider price spread in the Silver Spot price, (see next section).
- Silver Price Backwardation. Normally, Silver Futures contracts trade at a premium to the live delivery, Spot Market. As I type this, December Futures contracts on Silver are trading at a couple dollar discount to the current Spot Market price. This is quite unusual, rarely happens, and is causing a much larger than usual spread between the BID Spot and the ASK Spot. This large, ($1 to $3), spread in the Spot price is causing confusion and unhappiness in people who are trying to sell their physical silver and getting buy quotes that are several dollars below what they thought the current Spot price was. (For more information on the Spot price mechanism, see: https://nashvillecoin.blogspot.com/2025/10/where-do-you-get-your-spots.html
- Exceptionally high lease rates on Silver bars in London, along with potential tariff questions on silver, have caused a shortage in physical silver bars in London. This is being exasperated by heaving buying of ETF's that are (hopefully) putting physical silver in vaults to back their paper silver.
So basically, both sides of the silver equation are being squeezed.
For further reading, see this notice posted by one of the US Mint's primary distributors to all its wholesale customers today. Their bottom line: "we cannot buy what we cannot sell".
1-15-26 Update on Our Operations:
We are continuing normal buying operations for Gold & Platinum items of all types. In Silver, we continue to actively buy collectible coins, bullion .999 fine silver coins, rounds and bars of all types and sizes. All of the major dealers we trade with, except for two, have halted purchases any Silver below .999 purity. We are still able to buy pre-1965 US90% Silver coins from the public as long as these trading partners continue to buy US90% from us, but US90% is being heavily discounted at the moment.
We are forced to pause the buying of Sterling Silver flatware/tableware items.
We continue to purchase 1965-70 40% Silver Clad Halves, although these are being heavily discounted in the marketplace.
At this time, we are not actively seeking to buy lower grade silver like industrial scrap, 35% war nickels or Canadian 50% coins because we have limited outlet for them currently. We hope to resume the normal purchasing of low grade scrap silver as soon as the refinery backlog eases.
