Many are talking about investor demand, but what they are referring to is coin shops for the most part. This is supplied mostly from mints and other pre-fabricators.
Demand at the refinery level is a different animal. You have very large investors, large funds, governments, large banks, and yes mints in line for the production at this level.
So you can have two kinds of shortages, either a) there simply isnt enough metal to meet demand, or b) there isnt enough fabrication capacity to meet demand
In the US, I think its a combination of both, as the mint must buy from domestic suppliers, and if they cannot supply due to fabrication bottlenecks of raw material ie blanks, but also I think there is some reticence to hitting the comex warehouses for delivery as that could break the comex.
Overseas (Europe) what has just begun at the refinery level is a bottleneck at fabrication but not yet in physical supply.
Long term, I think the trend overall globally is demand will overall continue to outstrip available supply for some years to come, for a large plethora of reasons.
