Price Manipulation: Look for Motive

The Silver Arbitrageurs

In the 1970's Alan Rosenberg, a coin dealer, sold dollar bills that were silver certificates to a firm called Metals Quality. At the time, the Federal Reserve converted dollar silver certificates to a set amount of silver. Before the Fed finally discontinued the conversion, the converted silver was worth more than a dollar. The difference became great enough that it paid to buy up the certificates for slightly more than a dollar, convert the certificates to silver, and sell the silver for a profit. This is one of the rare instances of a true arbitrage.

Not everyone wanted to go through the trouble of handling the conversion, so people like Rosenberg collected certificates and sold them for more than one dollar each, but for less than the price of the silver represented by the certificate. It was worth it to Rosenberg to have someone else do the work of squeezing out the last bit of value.

That's where Metals Quality came in. It bought certificates from coin dealers and currency exchanges and handled the conversion to silver and sold the silver for a profit. Metals Quality paid Rosenberg for his silver certificates based on the first Comex price of silver for the day (less something for the trouble of the conversion and some profit). It made no difference whether the first price of the day was based on one contract or 100 contracts. Each contract represents 10,000 ounces of silver.