AFTERTHOUGHT
A day or so after i posted this, I realized I'd neglected to point out the main reason I kept the Hunt-related business card..
In the immediate wake of the events, the importance of what had occurred wasn't totally clear to anybody outside the business and and certainly wasn't clear it would over the years begin to take on some of the characteristics of
"Urban Legend"
No, my interest was solely in the card itself as a conversation piece which may come to have an interesting historical story behind it to boot...
And after all, a paper-based souvenir would probably have disintegrated after the intervening 35-odd years,
but this one stood out as totally unique and unforgettable
even to "civilians" with no connection to the commodities biz whatever.
.
Observe:
SILVER
Scotty is the son of the Conti-Commodity broker handling the Hunt Oil accounts who crafted the strategy which ultimately led to the attempted cornering of the Silver Market. A futures broker himself, as the scheme developed he ended up based in Dallas (hence the "214" area code on his card), while Dad handled the extremely delicate dealings at the Conti St Louis HQ.
Besides the card, I also have (somewhere) what Scott and Dad told me was an initial-run limited edition of the background research, conceptual proposal and preliminary action plans they used to convince the Hunt Bros. of the concept's ultimate viability.
I never quite managed to grasp what possessed them to believe the Exchange(s) wouldn't invoke draconian "Force Majeure" authority in the event of the scheme's unlikely "success". And that's exactly what appears to have happened
one weekend when a decision was agreed to open trading Monday to "Long Liquidation Only" orders. As I recall the written notice, (it's been over three decades and I'm no longer a spring chicken) reasoning was listed as "to protect the integrity of the Exchange" - as memory serves - those words are essentially verbatim!
An interesting aside that I don't believe many today either remember or ever knew, is that the Hunts surely lost potfulls of money meeting margin calls and ended up with but a fraction of the silver they once controlled - however, the silver was in physical form and fully paid.
.... so they seconded the hoard to Sunshine Mining Company to serve as the base for a convertible bond offering on Sunshine's behalf . Unusually for convertibles of the day, the convertibility codicil was exercisable not into preferred or common equity shares but into silver bullion at (REALLY stretching the memory here so no guarantees) around $9.00 per ounce. BUT the initial tranche of Bonds carried a coupon on the order of 12%-14%.
When Commodities collapsed under the combined influences of the Hunt's and the actions of Carter Administration's FOMC Chair appointee Paul Volcker I managed to wrangle my way into a SRS 7 trainee spot with Merrill's Las Vegas office - after five month's Branch Office training and a month at One Liberty Plaza splitting time between product presentations and NYSE Floor grunt work, I ended up trading Sunshine's Convert Bonds for a handful of quasi-speculators (no derision implied) and using the fully-paid instruments as an income-producing inflation hedge addition to substantial pension and qualified plan portfolios - for about another decade by which time Sunshine had invoked many of the call features built into the original indenture.
Need I actually verbalize that I carry a long-standing soft spot for the Hunt family?
Though never really what I' could honestly call a "friend" (my dealings were mostly through intermediaries), I'll miss Bunker Hunt's quirks which, through everything, never struck me as "malevolent" unlike so many who hold similar belief structures.