The problem items are coins, not 100 oz bars or even kilo bars. Kilo bars are available for about $27560 from bulliondirect I see, which translates to $857/oz or about $16 over spot. The cheapest 1 oz bar is $880/oz or $39 over spot. If you want any coin, its $899 cheapest, or $48 over spot. These same coins were $5 over spot a few months ago for as many as you wanted. John Hathaway said the other day that he was offered over spot for Toqueville's 100,000 oz in the Comex warehouse from someone that wanted it to send to a mint to make coins out of because the mint was having problems finding bars. If that's true, I expect a higher number of trades will end in delivery than normal.
He is talking about bullion coins, not Comex stocks, although even Comex deliverable bars are trading at record premiums above spot. It is no joke, really amazing. 2 years ago I was regularly paying $4-5 over spot for Krugerrands, now $50 over is a deal. No one is selling. Yes, one could just take delivery on Comex, but not many individual investors want to take $80K in gold in one clip.