RENO, Nev. (KOLO) – It’s quiet here at Northern Nevada Coin, surprisingly so.

There’s a line wrapped around the counters as patrons wait to most likely sell their silver and gold.

As the sign says outside, Northern Nevada Coin buys gold and silver. Gold is more than $5,000 an ounce. Silver is more than $114.00 an ounce.

Here in the Silver State that’s music to the ears of Northern Nevadans.

“It’s Nevada,” says Reno resident Bill Gardner. “It’s the Carson City Mint. It’s Virginia City. There’s a lot of silver around. Flat wear, plate wear, silver dollars. There’s a lot of it floating around.”

The owner for Northern Nevada Coin says these lines start earlier in the day and they die down around noon.

But the traffic has been unrelenting. Clerks weigh the coins, or jewelry or what other items contain gold or silver. That weight will indicate how much money is owed to the customer.

One man tells me he sold gold he had purchased years ago. The wait he says paid off.

Financial experts say uncertainty and slow economic growth here in the U.S. have people either buying or selling these precious metals.

Some hoping the price will continue to go up–others cashing in, not wanting to miss the maximum they could get for their goods.

“So many people have been waiting for it to get there it is now time to cash it in,” says Allen Rowe, President of Northern Nevada Coin.

But Rowe says there is downside to all of this.

Unprecedented means precious metal refiners cannot keep up with amount of silver that is coming to them. Instead of a 30-day turnaround to pay for the businesses who buy the silver, it could be three times that.

To add insult to injury banks may only be willing to lend so much to refiners.

“Think of a dry wash,” says Rowe. “You’ve got a place where water is allowed to flow. But usually doesn’t flow there. All of a sudden, we are in a torrential downpour here. Everybody is here at the same time. It is over flooding. And if you hit a choke point, a bridge or something– something has to give.”

Rowe says there are coin businesses who have stopped taking gold and silver because they can’t afford the wait to be paid for their initial layout to customers.

And he says there’s no way to tell if this is the beginning, middle, or end to the sky-high prices of gold and silver.

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