Silver’s Big Future

I’m not much of a gambler, but I do love casinos.

I’ll throw down a C-note at the craps table if I happen to be in Vegas because I like the energy of the game, and I once enjoyed a rousing night of baccarat, learning the game under the tutelage of an elderly Korean man who grew frustrated at my money-losing stupidity when I first tried my hand at the game.

If nothing else, I love the jangling sounds and gaudy décor of American casinos. It’s so… America, and I mean that in a great way.

But there was a period many a moon back—we’re talking 1990s—when I’d regularly head to a casino with a buddy of mine and we’d plunk a hundred-dollar bill into the slots… and never pull the handle.

We had no intention whatsoever of hoping three red fruits might pop up on the reels.

We were chasing a different color: Silver.

This was at a time when slots still accepted and paid in US$1 coins, euphemistically called “silver dollars,” though in truth there’s not been a lick o’ silver in a silver dollar since the 1970s.

We’d immediately hit the button to cash out and the slot machine would dutifully dump 100 silver dollars into the machine’s metal tray.

Funny thing about America’s pre- and post-silver dollar coins: they make different sounds when clanking against metal. As the coins tumbled into the tray, you’d instantly know if there was silver in them thar slots!

Our game plan was to collect all the coins that were either 90% silver (pre-1964) or 40% (from 1965 through 1970). We’d return all the other coins to the cashier to recoup our cash, then sell the silver-laden coins to local gold and silver dealers, since the value of the underlying silver content was worth more than $1 face value.

At the particular time I’m referencing, ounces of silver fetched about $5 in the commodities market. So a 90% silver dollar, which contains about 0.77 troy ounces of silver, was worth about $3.85. A silver dollar comprised of 40% silver contained about 0.316 ounces worth, roughly a buck-sixty.

The arbitrage doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re hitting hundreds of slots machines over the course of a week back in the ’90s, you’d be surprised at how fast the efforts added up to several hundred dollars.

Alas, the fun is no more.

Slots have gone all fancy pants with their techno this and that. They no longer accept silver dollars, and now all they spit out is a slip of paper announcing what the cashier owes you.

No more jangling plinks. No more discerning real silver coins from those fabricated clad metals. All good things come to end.

But silver itself?

Ah, therein lies a whole new barrel of fun…

I’ve been a silver junkie for a few decades now. I’ve long recommended physical silver to my readers and any friends. And silver has behaved as expected: It has continually, if languidly climbed higher over the years.

We are now approaching all-time highs last seen in 2011, when the metal approached $50 per ounce. As I write this, the market has silver right at $47.

Global Intelligence Letter subscribers are certainly sitting pretty. They’re up nearly 70% now on the silver I recommended they buy back in 2021. That’s nearly 14% per year—outpacing the S&P’s 11% per year gain over the same stretch.

That 70% jump, however, is just the amuse bouche of what’s to come. 

I have a prediction. A very, very big prediction for where silver goes.

I won’t announce that here today because it will be part of my presentation at my Future of Wealth event in Dublin, Ireland next week.

What I can say is this: Silver has had two monumental peaks in the last 40 or so years. Another monumental peak is coming our way, and it will surprise the world.

It will not, however, surprise Global Intel readers, Future of Wealth attendees, and Field Notes readers.

Silver has big tailwinds blowing—the green-energy revolution that a particular windmill-hating president has no hope of stopping, the AI explosion, medical tech advances, and the accelerating and ongoing destruction of the US dollar’s place in the financial world.

I mean, it’s not like finding silver in a slot machine, of course…

It’s way, way better than that.

And extremely more profitable.