Your points are well made, but something is different this time as compared to 1981:

“Remember, people stood in line to buy coins at the top of the market in 1981. There weren’t enough to meat demand then, either.”

I would agree that a similar situation has presented itself today as you describe from 27 years ago. However, there are four fundamental differences that make it different this go around:

1. In 1981 there was no alternate price discovery mechanism outside the COMEX. Today there are multiple online auctions which serve to demonstrate to the world the true clearing price at which a holder of physical willing to part with his gold despite what the COMEX reports as the “price” via the MSM. This alternate system is gradually eroding the confidence in the COMEX and other manipulated paper exchanges to serve as a true price discovery venue / mechanism. This will further exacerbate the growing separation between physical and paper gold.

2. In 1981, the dollar was the uncontested reserve currency / central bank asset around the world. Today, in light of unprecedented deficits and a federal debt that can never be repaid (only repudiated via debasement of the currency), the propensity of those holding paper or electronic dollar credits to continue to do so is considerably lower than it was 27 years ago IMO.

3. I was only 11 at the time, but I don’t remember the US mint ever discontinuing production of gold coins in 1981. IMO, this is a huge indicator that something big is underfoot that we are not privileged to know (but may soon learn).

4. The availability of information via the internet (as never thought possible in 1981) makes the game far more complex and the players considerably more educated (including the lumpen who may elect to cash in their paper / financial assets for physical gold). It takes only a small fraction of the investing public to avail themselves of the almost limitless amount of information in order to educate themselves to the level of those here at this forum and then act on that newfound understanding to start a stampede out of paper investments, quickly draining the available supply of physical in the marketplace (as we are now witnessing). The internet has revolutionized the way the players play the game in such a way that the methods used by TPTB to influence markets 1981 are readily circumvented by the free flow of information today (e.g. GATA’s daily dispatch, this forum, etc.). Since the entire paper game is a financial / legal fiction built on confidence, its Achille’s heel is the information and ideas that “pull back the curtain for all to see the man operating the levers behind the scenes.”

“Those characteristics exist at all important tops and bottoms. There is no escaping that.”

This begs the $64,000 question. Was $1,033 a top, everything will operate as it has in the past, and are we on our way down from here OR are we witnessing the separation of physical from paper foretold on the gold trail by Another and FOA and those who mark their physical gold to the COMEX manipulated price will sell out before the final act in the play (COMEX contract going to zero and physical gold going to a five digit price point). Given the enormity of the fundamental change in the IMS if the latter is coming to pass, IMO it would be foolish to try and time the market at this juncture since this may truly be a once in a lifetime event.

Take care,
PA