#silversqueeze

Welcome to the Precious Metals Bug Forums

Welcome to the PMBug forums - a watering hole for folks interested in gold, silver, precious metals, sound money, investing, market and economic news, central bank monetary policies, politics and more.

Why not register an account and join the discussions? When you register an account and log in, you may enjoy additional benefits including no Google ads, market data/charts, access to trade/barter with the community and much more. Registering an account is free - you have nothing to lose!

Goldhedge said:
I wonder why they need silver at such high purity. Wouldn't gold be a better alternative?
Click to expand...

Nope, remember SIlver has the Highest Conductivity. So whatever the application is they must need absolute best conductivity they can achieve. Impurities would also greatly affect the conductivity at very small levels. I imagine for something like a magnetic sensor (magnetism then induces the current) that the absolute best conductivity would result in the Best sensor / most sensitivity to sensing whatever they are trying to find.

Think of impurities as that Slow Ass driver in the Left lane. Just one stupid Copper ion could back up the whole road.
 

When did the good delivery bar specs change? I imagine they haven't changed in purity needed in well, like ever. Plus, if you are running a refinery what customer are you going to listen to and send to first? The one that pays the most and gives you the best margin right? No one will pay more than the military for extremely pure product.
 
Last edited:
I went and found the LBMA good delivery bar specs. Ya, this isnt't that hard. Most any bar I have of silver would/should qualify. Would be EASY for a refinery to melt and recast. So I don't buy this as a good reason for the refinery backup. Perhaps it would be a volume issue but melting 3 9's silver to remake bars could be done incredibly fast. Five 9's silver would be 999.99 per thousand silver.

Technical Specifications

www.lbma.org.uk

The permitted dimensional ranges for a silver Bar are as follows:

  • Length (Top): 300 mm +/- 50 mm Undercut: 5º to 15º.
  • Width (Top): 130mm +/- 20 mm Undercut: 5º to 15º.
  • Height: 80 mm +/- 20 mm.
Fineness: the minimum acceptable fineness is 999.0 parts per thousand silver.
 
I did not save the page where I read it, but there is little actual difference between three 9s and four 9s fineness. I don't think that level of purity of bars has anything to do with the refinery backlog. There is a big difference between 90% or 92% silver and 99% however.
 
Trust me.... there is a small difference. I mean, let's do the math for a 1,000 oz bar.

That is 31,103.4768 grams. A 3 nine bar could therefore have a maximum of 31.1 grams of impurities
A 5 nine bar would have a max of 0.311 grams of impurities

So the difference is a maxiumum of 30.788 grams of impurities.
I would not fault anyone for saying that is a relatively small difference. And that is true.

However, if you MUST have that superior fineness it takes a LOT of work to remove those additional 30.788 grams of impurities.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Menu
Log in
Register
Cookies are required to use this site. You must accept them to continue using the site. Learn more…