Physical gold and silverI called a gold and silver dealer I know today. He deals with large volumes and has all the statistics on buyers. He estimates that ONLY of one percent of Americans, or 1 in 200, were in the market for physical gold and silver (coins and bars) over the last 3 years, and that dealer can just barely meet the physical demand!! Additionally, there have been practically no sells to the dealers from individuals over the last 3 years. Can you imagine what will happen after a major currency crises say in the U.S. when large numbers of people want to buy precious metals? Real gold and silver will be instantly unavailable and the price of both will skyrocket overnight. One day gold and silver will be available, and the next day it won't - it could very well happen as quickly as that. Also, silver historically had been about 1/10 the gold price, although right now it's more like 1/70. Paper gold and silver markets are leveraged to the hilt which only makes it seem like there is all of this gold and silver laying around backing it, when in reality is may be nowhere to be found if more than just a fraction of owners demanded delivery.