To give you an idea of how FRAUDULENT their excuse is that they have "run out of blanks" I checked into what was going on in the blank silver world and found that THERE IS NO SHORTAGE OF BLANK PROCESSING CAPACITY!

For example, one of the many US Mint silver blank suppliers, The Sunshine Mint, has the capacity to strike 200,000 1oz silver blanks per week or 10.4M blanks per year (http://www.sunshinemint.com/Blanks.h... If the US Mint were to outbid any other customer to secure this single blank processor's entire production line for .999 silver eagle blanks, the 10.4M ozs would cover their entire average annual production over the past 10 years. What if they did the same with 20 different blank production facilities in the US and around the world? That would give them the ability to produce 200M 1oz silver eagles per year. ..SO WHY AREN'T THEY DOING IT WHEN THEY KNOW THEY ARE LEGALLY OBLIGATED TO SPEND ANY AMOUNT OF MONEY TO MEET US SILVER EAGLE DEMAND?

The sad answer, I fear, is that they are part of the global silver manipulation scam.