patrick.net

stereotomy says

When gold hit $900 back in 1979,

Didn't hit $900. See below.

B.A.C.A.H. says

The peak price during my senior year of high school on January 21, 1980 was $850 per ounce.or 142 hours of median labor.

What I left off the earlier post was this calculation. Assuming the 1.3% decline in purchasing power of American wages since 1967, what costed 142 hours of median labor in January of 1980 would be expected to cost about 260 hours of median labor in January 2026. This would correspond to a gold price of about $7000 per ounce to match the January 1980 mania.

We'll find out

I wonder if Iwog "backed up the truck" when silver was less than $20 per ounce.

At a silver spot price of $100 per troy ounce, the melt value of one silver dollar is 0.7734 × $100 = $77.34

That dollar coin used to be one dollar.

Goddamn, gold broke $5K:

They're not reducing the amount of dollar reserves. Those are at an all-time high and are increasing.

What's happened is that the price of gold has more than doubled.

Brave AI:

Central banks worldwide are actively reducing U.S. dollar reserves and increasing gold holdings, marking a significant shift in global monetary policy. This trend, known as de-dollarization, has accelerated since 2022, particularly following Western sanctions on Russia that froze its foreign exchange reserves. In response, countries like China, Russia, India, Turkey, and several Middle Eastern nations have diversified their reserves by purchasing record amounts of gold—over 1,000 tonnes annually in recent years.

Gold's share in global foreign exchange reserves has risen from 13% in 2017 to nearly 20% by 2024, and it has now overtaken U.S. bonds as the largest foreign reserve asset, according to the World Gold Council. This shift reflects a strategic move to reduce exposure to U.S. financial sanctions and geopolitical risk. Gold is seen as a neutral, physically held asset that cannot be frozen or seized, unlike dollar-denominated assets held in Western institutions.

A result of Biden's mega fuck-up in freezing Russian assets.

Patrick says

that cannot be frozen or seized

Didn't quite work out that way for Stalin. The first harvest season after the commies took over in the Soviet Union was an epic bust. Stalin tried to purchase grain from the UK with Russian gold, but was told they wouldn't accept Soviet gold. Mass starvation occurred in the Soviet Union. Plenty of bad blood to this day. One of the reasons Putin says that if there is a nuclear war London is the first to go.

Patrick says

At a silver spot price of $100 per troy ounce, the melt value of one silver dollar is 0.7734 × $100 = $77.34

That dollar coin used to be one dollar.

To put that in perspective, there was a time then when 6,465 oz of silver denomination in dollars would buy the equivalent of the average $500,000 house today(and still would if physical silver)….. Pretty wild stuff, this inflation / currency devaluation is….

I think in some way Bitcoin and crypto competed with silver and gold, and explains partially why silver prices were depressed since 2012 to 2024.

Now a lot of wealth managers are recommending 3 to 5% of assets being in Bitcoin like Blackrock Bitcoin ETF.

I look at silver price manipulation being like a finger pressing down on a spring. The less manipulation means the less force of the finger against the spring.

The estimated compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for silver from its 1980 price peak to today's price is approximately 5.45% (from $49.45 per ounce on January 18, 1980, to approximately $111.71 per ounce on January 27, 2026).

The compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for inflation in the US from 1980 to early 2026 is approximately 3.02% to 3.03%.

Silver real or inflation-adjusted CAGR

Chinese Silver Fund Halts Trading as Frenzy Drives Up Premium

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-silver-fund-halts-trading-021541976.html