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The Scheme to Hook Up a King With the Wasp Woman and Other Wild Plans

Khalid Elhassan August 31, 2020 34 min

Susan Cabot - Hussein of Jordan — Susan Cabot and King Hussein. Veja

25. Rocketing Silver Prices

Silver prices and the 1979 spike caused by the Hunts’ silver speculation. Wikimedia

In the 1970s, Nelson Hunt and his brothers went on a gargantuan silver buying spree. When they ran out of money, they borrowed heavily to buy yet more silver. By 1979, they had accumulated about 100 million troy ounces – almost 7 million pounds – of the stuff. That was almost half the world’s transportable supply of silver.

That Hunt brothers’ speculation scheme caused silver prices to rocket over 800%, from $6 an ounce in early 1979, to over $50 by early 1980. That made them about $4 billion in paper profits, and if they could have, they would have been wise to take the money and run. The hiccup was that they had created a huge asset bubble, that was bound to burst sooner or later. Selling off their silver stocks would have burst the bubble sooner rather than later.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.