I ran across an interesting link that tracks the physical delivery of gold and silver from the commodities exchange (comex) for the month of December. While it looks like the comex inventories held up, both gold and silver stockpiles were nearly 50% gone this month. This is due to the large discrepancy in prices with comex contracts for gold and silver selling for substantially less than the physical gold and silver market. People are taking advantage of these low prices to take delivery of comex precious metals much more cheaply than they can be found elsewhere.  I previously wrote about this price discrepancy between physical gold prices and the comex (spot) price of gold.  While comex won't default on precious metal deliveries in December, the amount of gold and silver deliveries are increasing and signal a default could happen in the near future.  If the commodities exchange defaults on gold or silver deliveries, the physical price of these metals will take over and gold and silver prices will finally start to reflect reality.