Several major dealers of silver, gold, and other precious metals say they're encountering shortages of silver, in particular, after some Reddit users in the popular forum WallStreetBets called for users to create a run on the precious metal.
On Sunday, Bullion dealers wrote on their respective websites about shortages of physical coins.
A number of popular 1-ounce silver rounds were out of stock on the four aforementioned websites and others.
"In a normal market, we normally can find at least one supplier/source willing to sell some ounces over the weekend if we exceed our long position (the number of ounces we predict we will sell over the weekend). However, everyone we talk to is afraid of a gap up at Sunday night market open," Wall said.
"This is about ready to get really interesting, as there was very little inventory left from suppliers/mints going into Friday close. Our direct [silver] supplier informed us after the close on Friday that the 'US Mint will be on allocation for the remainder of Type 1' (Current Silver Eagle Design). Our sales for the month of January exceeded any one-month last year."
On WallStreetBets, one user wrote in a highly upvoted post that they wanted to push up the price for an ounce of silver from around $25 to $1,000 in what they described as the "biggest short squeeze in the world." The post was later deleted by moderators.