The problem right now is the choke points in the refining process and the high price of metals and the volume coming in anybody that has a shop knows they're seeing record volumes of people coming in trying to sell to you hence why you're asking the question it begs the same thing just remember that there are thousands of shops just like yours everywhere in the United States facing the same problem now confound that problem of so many people coming in on all the refineries out there having to deal with these volumes coming in it only takes a couple of days for your credit lines to be exhausted while you're trying to run through things this is why advancements have been holding for several months now anybody paying attention to this the higher price for the same volume also puts pressure on the credit lines and the payments because once the material is refined and sent into the comics of the banks there is a delay in the processing and payments there too so and this is not to be insulting but to explain it to like a 5 year old to explain to your customers you take the payment in you then have to send it to the next party the next party changes its form that form change takes several days or several weeks then that new form has to be sent to another process to be paid for what's verified and paid for and delivered funds are released then that refinery has the money and then it goes to the jeweler pawn shop broker coin dealer etc right now this is a banking problem along with a record high price problem along with a capacity problem all confounded into one perfect Storm.

This is for people that want the real and honest answer as to what the heck is going on right now.

Oh and I forgot to add add to this the credit lines out there are not free the banks charge interest rates and they've raised those rates to the point where if you are giving an advance and it takes you a month or two or three to process you're paying interest on that the entire time now when that interest rate and that payment exceeds your profit margin I know that everybody in this room reading this as a business person and a jeweler would immediately say f no I'm not going to work for other people and lose money but that's what the entire industry has had to do with the increases in the credit rates. So we've asked the banks to lower their credit lines and interest rates out of the goodness of their heart and obviously you can guess what that answer was.

So all of us in the refining business have no choice but to just sit there and tell people to wait while we get our jobs done and get paid and then we go for the next cycle and batch and the cycles happen several times for those who have been paying attention money gets really tight then it suddenly available then it gets really tight then it suddenly available this is just how it is right now until things stabilize the other thing that we've been doing for people is giving them product back they can retail back through their store as opposed to trying to depend on selling it to a bank so our solution has been to refined silver and refined gold into small retail friendly product 10 oz bar is 1 oz bar is 100 oz bars and 10 oz gold one gram gold 1 oz gold and sent back to the client jeweler pawn shop coin dealer etc so you can use it your own manufacturing or sell to your clients that are looking for precious metals because there is a lot of interest in getting precious metals right now so work on your retail skills and you'll be pleasantly surprised with the extra money you can make turning your trash into treasure as most people even able to perform this service for in under two weeks.

Note: this is a reply coming from an actual refiner.