Armoured trucks leave NYC ‘loaded with gold’

The physical gold and silver market is dwarfed by their paper market equivalent.  Hence only a small fraction of paper gold and silver,(such as metal savings accounts, future contracts, etc...) is backed by the real metal.  Should a large proportion of bullion paper holders demand physical delivery (which in most cases they are not allowed to do anyhow) a default would likely occur.

This is particularly true about the silver Market whose physical stockpiles have largely disappeared as central banks have sold their silver holdings over the last 40 years and industry has consumed much of the silver.