Just a couple of anecdotes concerning the real world situation in silver as in products that have silver in them.

In the past few months two major japanese silver oxide battery companies, Maxell and Seizeken (Seiko) have increased the prices on most of their silver oxide watch batteries by anywhere as much as 80% to as much as 3 fold! Yes the wholesale price of some of their batteries have increased by over three times!

I asked the largest distributor/supplier of these batteries in North America, why MAXELL raised their prices and they told me because of the price of silver!

But apparently, according to some people ( Jeffrey Christian etc) there's supposed to be lots and lots of cheap physical silver around...hmmm

So if there's so much scrap silver around, why are Watch battery companies raising their prices so darn much and risking losing significant market share?

I realize there may be other factors to take into consideration but it makes you think..

Also, speaking of scrap silver, one Jeweller I spoke to (who is a big buyer of scrap silver from Antique stores etc.) says that there are not that many sellers of silver at this price .

I asked his opinion on the question of scrap silver (having an effect on the physical price of silver now and in the future) and his answer was:no...scrap silver is not a major factor, he doesn't believe that there are too many people willing to sell their family silver in the future. One reason he gave was that many large pieces of silver are in the form of artwork that are not for sale by people..These beautiful family heirlooms will not be melted down for the silver content that readily...

On a side note, he uses smelters in Italy to sell his silver to because North American smelters keep some of the metal as a too large of a commission for themselves.. I guess he's calling them crooks...lol

On the subject of gold...I spoke to the owner of an american company,who make acid solutions to test gold,so that jewellers can verify how much gold is in the scrap jewellery that they are buying off the public (10kt, 14kt, etc) and he said to me that he believes the sales of this solution,which has been booming until recently,will diminish considerably within less than a year.

He told me that many jewellers in New York city are of the belief that most of the scrap gold that the public can or will pawn off has been depleted....