Thinking of buying gold coins...

[dobeman]

Um, that's true with anything one might buy.

well... depends on who you talk to.. some folks say housing and real estate only goes up up up... and stock perma-bulls say the same. idk...I'm just a dumb putz bubba

 

[leadcounsel]

I always read when someone that says in the case of actual SHTF that gold wont matter. Then I look in the history of man to find a time when the S did HTF and it has many times and gold didnt matter. Nope , havent found it yet. Gold matters.

True to an extent, but times change, however. Historically they were a store of transportable wealth. Now we can move money very easily. Man has historically done a lot of things until those things became irrelevant.

And, nations were conquered with weapons. Not gold.

I'm not saying gold or other PMs will become irrelevant. It's simply my non-professional opinion they are a form of fiat wealth. Nobody can every explain WHY gold is worth XYZ, or why it goes up and down. It's almost entirely speculation. And in my mind, speculation isn't a good "store of wealth." YMMV.

To me, a pound of steel is FAR more useful and valuable than a pound of gold (outside of electronics). The price disparity is absurd. Steel is like a dollar a pound, and gold is $1600 per oz. That is insane.

 

[wired]

True to an extent, but times change, however. Historically they were a store of transportable wealth. Now we can move money very easily. Man has historically done a lot of things until those things became irrelevant.

And, nations were conquered with weapons. Not gold.

I'm not saying gold or other PMs will become irrelevant. It's simply my non-professional opinion they are a form of fiat wealth. Nobody can every explain WHY gold is worth XYZ, or why it goes up and down. It's almost entirely speculation. And in my mind, speculation isn't a good "store of wealth." YMMV.

Transporting anything and moving money around when the SHTF , if you consider that something real, some do, isnt going to be easy. Major disaster , invasions, economic collapse etc. Theyve all happened and gold has never lost its luster in the 5 or more millennia we know much about. Wars are fought over it and the real fiat money will collapse in a day. Gold has never collapsed. It goes up and down in value in relation to the real fiat currency.

EVERYTHING is speculative. Thats why we have the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. IMHO true value goes for gold only. Silver wouldnt be worth a plug nickle in a full tilt economic collapse. Just MHO. Gold will have value as long as people know that when the worst is over and things get better the ones who have accumulated the most gold will be on top again.

 

[leadcounsel]

In SHTF, I have no practical use for gold or silver other than to trade it off to some other sucker who might want it.

If most people agree with that belief, which I tend to believe would be the case, I can't see a heavy useless piece of soft metal "storing" wealth very well. I think most would purely want it to trade it to some sucker. It seems like a massive built-in ponzi scheme.

If the world is "burning down around you" and you can take 4 items off the table and try to survive, what do you pick? There's a jug of clean water, a backpack full of food, a bag full of toilet paper, a pistol and 2 mag, a big water filter, some rope, a bushcraft knife, a hatchet, a gallon of gas, a blanket, a fresh change of clothing, or a bar of gold. You get 4 items.

The gold would be the last thing (or one of the lower priority items) I'd take.

IMHO precious metals are a big con on mankind. Outside of electronics, gold crowns, (and art or jewelry) they are useless.

 

[Camelfilter]

In SHTF, I have no practical use for gold or silver other than to trade it off to some other sucker who might want it.

If most people agree with that belief, which I tend to believe would be the case, I can't see a heavy useless piece of soft metal "storing" wealth very well. I think most would purely want it to trade it to some sucker. It seems like a massive built-in ponzi scheme.

If the world is "burning down around you" and you can take 4 items off the table and try to survive, what do you pick? There's a jug of clean water, a backpack full of food, a bag full of toilet paper, a pistol and 2 mag, a big water filter, some rope, a bushcraft knife, a hatchet, a gallon of gas, a blanket, a fresh change of clothing, or a bar of gold. You get 4 items.

The gold would be the last thing (or one of the lower priority items) I'd take.

IMHO precious metals are a big con on mankind. Outside of electronics, gold crowns, (and art or jewelry) they are useless.

It's also a possible hedge to storing wealth for after a return to normalcy. How long, and how much wealth? Unknown, depends upon how bad the initial downturn was. Could be generational, or far shorter term. Ex folks fleeing war torn areas to start anew.

 

[leadcounsel]

It's also a possible hedge to storing wealth for after a return to normalcy. How long, and how much wealth? Unknown, depends upon how bad the initial downturn was. Could be generational, or far shorter term. Ex folks fleeing war torn areas to start anew.

But like I'm saying, it has no use for me now, and no use for me in a SHTF world.

Right now, there's better more useful and more practical stores for wealth or ways to transfer money or things to buy that I can use that will serve multiple rolls. Tools, knives, bullets, guns, land I can farm, a reliable vehicle, oil, fuel, etc. Stocks and mutual funds to make money. Etc.

In SHTF I have no use for precious medals. They're dead weight. I need something I can use immediately to survive. In a fiction, another survivor will trade me his dozen eggs for my gold. But why does he want gold, he cannot use it either? Except to trade to some other sucker. I just don't see the value in it. If I have no use for it, I assume nobody will have a use for it.

The exception is some feudal lord who has mountains of resources and is just hoarding gold from folks trading their useless gold for supplies...

 

[wired]

Your analysis of the value of gold holds no historical precedence. You might feel strongly that way but if and when the fiat money system collapses it will right back to being the way it was and the barter system never works well for long. Its just too cumbersome.

 

[leadcounsel]

Your analysis of the value of gold holds no historical precedence. You might feel strongly that way but if and when the fiat money system collapses it will right back to being the way it was and the barter system never works well for long. Its just too cumbersome.

So, tell me how much gold or silver I can trade to you for a dozen eggs, a day of labor, 1000 rounds of ammunition, etc. from you in barter town?

 

[wired]

So, tell me how much gold or silver I can trade to you for a dozen eggs, a day of labor, 1000 rounds of ammunition, etc. from you in barter town?

Barter towns don't last long. They usually get invaded and enslaved by hungry town.

 

[Bushman]

Been busy, haven't had a chance to follow up on the thread/read responses, but the place said that they'd test each coin with their machine (I forget the brand).

 

[Siglvr]

But like I'm saying, it has no use for me now, and no use for me in a SHTF world.

Right now, there's better more useful and more practical stores for wealth or ways to transfer money or things to buy that I can use that will serve multiple rolls. Tools, knives, bullets, guns, land I can farm, a reliable vehicle, oil, fuel, etc. Stocks and mutual funds to make money. Etc.

In SHTF I have no use for precious medals. They're dead weight. I need something I can use immediately to survive. In a fiction, another survivor will trade me his dozen eggs for my gold. But why does he want gold, he cannot use it either? Except to trade to some other sucker. I just don't see the value in it. If I have no use for it, I assume nobody will have a use for it....

The only part it seems to me that you really have correct is the "RIGHT NOW" and "FOR ME" parts. If you do a quick study of Germany in the 1920's then the realization is that although RIGHT NOW is true for Feb 2020, and may be true for March 2020 it may or may not be true for July 2020. The "for me" (ie, you) part is well thought out I'm sure. It isn't for everyone. As far as others go, once they have: tools, knives, bullets, guns, land they can farm, a reliable vehicle, oil, fuel, cases of whisky, a years worth of food, water storage for 3 people for a full month and rain collection systems in place, stocks and mutual funds etc covered to their satisfaction, looking back at various periods of history would indicate that having some Gold in the pocket or hidden in a safe in the corner of their home pending the SHTF moment is a fantastically intelligent idea. You may not ever need it in a SHTF scenario where you give up your gold for a dozen eggs (whey not trade the gold for chickens and a coop?), but when the Gold you paid $300 for is worth $1500+ and there was no SHTF moment during the time you held it you won't care. Your stocks did fine, your gold did fine. Time to open up the stored cases of booze, sit back and drink the whisky and reflect.

 

[Siglvr]

Sooo, went and re examined my assumptions. One example, in 1923, say on a Tuesday you had to pay 1/2 a Billion Deutschmarks for a German newspaper. Much more than a year earlier. However, 3 days later, the same paper was selling for 1 Billion Marks. The price in Marks doubled in 3 days. Inflation. Yet had you run out and invested all of your scratch in newspapers...(or eggs) you'd have been screwed. They don't carry well. Yesterdays news is no more sought after than yesterdays eggs. Chose carefully.

You are saying "well that's not occurring now". We are in agreement on that. However, that is not to say it isn't happening abiet less noticeable. In 1974, for instance, at the local McDonalds hamburger place you could buy this:

Hamburger -.15/cents
Fries - .12/cents
Coke - .10/cents

All day long. (OK, not all day, they opened at 11 am then) Now, not to be disingenuous, they also only had one size Coke at the time. If you ordered a Coke, thats the size you got. Later, they came out with the large Coke. A large Coke was 16 ounces. Huge. Today, a 16 ounce Coke is the small Coke and there is nothing smaller. Where did the small Coke go? Difficult to compare a 10ounce or 12 ounce as they no longer sell it. So...there is that. Regardless, a .15/cent hamburger is called a single Hamburger today. How much does it cost? More But had you invested all of your money into hamburgers, you'd be screwed. They would have rotted a long time ago. Gold doesn't rot.

A Chevy car was slightly over $2000 then. How much is a Chevy today? $30,000 or so? Come back after you look up the price of a pickup then vs now...or a house. A house I saw which sold for $12,000 then recently sold for $345,000. Same exact house, no additions although I will admit it must have not had the same heinous shag carpet. Regardless. Thats called inflation. Would you want to have cash stockpiled or gold? Let say that you had 12000 in cash back then, but you chose not to buy a house or gold. Now you have the $12,00 plus a bit more for interest. You won't be paying cash for a house. You won't even be paying cash for a Chevy. If you had gold then, trade it in now for cash and get a house and Chevy.

See Not that simple, and the choice of gold or cash isn't an honest pitch any more that your pitch was up thread. You can only choose what you believe will work for you. The choice isn't between the 2. It's between all the things you noted and then some. Choose well. Todays choice may not be tomorrows best choice.

Best of luck. Side note< that $300 gold closed at $1604 today. Not $1500.

 

[leadcounsel]

Been busy, haven't had a chance to follow up on the thread/read responses, but the place said that they'd test each coin with their machine (I forget the brand).

Serious question, down

The "for me" (ie, you) part is well thought out I'm sure. It isn't for everyone. As far as others go, once they have: tools, knives, bullets, guns, land they can farm, a reliable vehicle, oil, fuel, cases of whisky, a years worth of food, water storage for 3 people for a full month and rain collection systems in place, stocks and mutual funds etc covered to their satisfaction, looking back at various periods of history would indicate that having some Gold in the pocket or hidden in a safe in the corner of their home pending the SHTF moment is a fantastically intelligent idea.

Exactly. PMs come after everything else, way way way way way at the bottom. It's a fiat form of wealth, valuable because collectively folks for some mysterious reason believe it has value. Some mystical quality that makes it valuable - like the totally fabricated artificial scarcity of diamonds turn hard pretty stones into luxury items.

It truly is an enigma. PMs just offer no real value. But that's my wildly biased notions because I find value in useful pragmatic things like machines, tools, supplies, etc.

I suppose when a king has everything else he could possibly want, then buying up heavy pretty soft metals and creating artificial scarcity and assigning value to them is a great way to make a fiat wealth.

 

[leadcounsel]

Sooo, went and re examined my assumptions. One example, in 1923, say on a Tuesday you had to pay 1/2 a Billion Deutschmarks for a German newspaper. Much more than a year earlier. However, 3 days later, the same paper was selling for 1 Billion Marks. The price in Marks doubled in 3 days. Inflation. Yet had you run out and invested all of your scratch in newspapers...(or eggs) you'd have been screwed. They don't carry well. Yesterdays news is no more sought after than yesterdays eggs. Chose carefully.

You are saying "well that's not occurring now". We are in agreement on that. However, that is not to say it isn't happening abiet less noticeable. In 1974, for instance, at the local McDonalds hamburger place you could buy this:

Hamburger -.15/cents
Fries - .12/cents
Coke - .10/cents

All day long. (OK, not all day, they opened at 11 am then) Now, not to be disingenuous, they also only had one size Coke at the time. If you ordered a Coke, thats the size you got. Later, they came out with the large Coke. A large Coke was 16 ounces. Huge. Today, a 16 ounce Coke is the small Coke and there is nothing smaller. Where did the small Coke go? Difficult to compare a 10ounce or 12 ounce as they no longer sell it. So...there is that. Regardless, a .15/cent hamburger is called a single Hamburger today. How much does it cost? More But had you invested all of your money into hamburgers, you'd be screwed. They would have rotted a long time ago. Gold doesn't rot.

A Chevy car was slightly over $2000 then. How much is a Chevy today? $30,000 or so? Come back after you look up the price of a pickup then vs now...or a house. A house I saw which sold for $12,000 then recently sold for $345,000. Same exact house, no additions although I will admit it must have not had the same heinous shag carpet. Regardless. Thats called inflation. Would you want to have cash stockpiled or gold? Let say that you had 12000 in cash back then, but you chose not to buy a house or gold. Now you have the $12,00 plus a bit more for interest. You won't be paying cash for a house. You won't even be paying cash for a Chevy. If you had gold then, trade it in now for cash and get a house and Chevy.

See Not that simple, and the choice of gold or cash isn't an honest pitch any more that your pitch was up thread. You can only choose what you believe will work for you. The choice isn't between the 2. It's between all the things you noted and then some. Choose well. Todays choice may not be tomorrows best choice.

Best of luck. Side note< that $300 gold closed at $1604 today. Not $1500.

Yes, and that game can be played in both directions.

The computer I'm typing on retailed for about $500. Has relatively impressive computing features, but is average today. NASA could not buy these compact computing powers for the entire GDP of the United States in 1965.

That $30,000 modern car could not be purchased for any price in the 1970s. I doubt the global wealth wealth of 1970 could purchase a modern Ford sedan, transported back in time. It's barely the same object. Yes, it is a form of locomotion, but every feature of it is infinitely superior to a car 50 years ago. Steering, braking, handling, seatbelts, airbags, traction control, headrests, modern tires, better lighting, etc. make it hundreds of times safer. You can't put a price on living versus dying. Modern entertainment features gives you any song or movie ever made nearly instantly on the dashboard in seconds, and you can cordlessly remotely speak to someone anywhere a satellite can get reception while driving with both hands on the wheel at 60 mph; a feature of science fiction 50 years ago. The computer regulated everything, the fuel economy of injectors, the reliability, the climate control features... etc.

Yet these examples of computers and cars; they will become scraps of junk in the very near future after becoming obsolete and worn out. So their value is really only in this moment.

One would have been smart to buy up warehouses of items now collectables - from Star Wars to Rookie Baseball cards, to other nonsense people find to be valuable. Heck, I saw that a rare Matchbox toy car (probably sold for a dollar originally) recently sold for $100,000! Someone just paid millions of dollars for a banana taped to a wall in the name of artwork, and in another example millions of dollars for a "messy bedroom" piece of artwork.

The point is quite bluntly people are dumb with money. The trick is to buy or invest in things that have timeless explained value. Land. Ammunition. Food sources. Water sources. Etc.

Thinking more on it, if I were the OP I'd buy as much land with water rights and resources as possible in a rural area. Pay outright, best price, and own it. Set aside money for taxes. Far more value than PMs. Always have land....

 

[pigiron]

The best investments are the ones which generate revenue.

 

[wired]

I suppose when a king has everything else he could possibly want, then buying up heavy pretty soft metals and creating artificial scarcity and assigning value to them is a great way to make a fiat wealth.

Gold is not artificially scarce. Its just plain scarce. Take all the gold in the world ( that has been picked up or mined throughout history ) and melt it together and you could make a really heavy block about half the size of the Washington monument.

 

[Chaffee]

JM Bullion! I have bought from them for years, great company, gold or silver, super fast free shipping, I have also sold back to them.

 

[Darren R]

I would recommend that if you are buying precious metals stamped in to coins that you only buy the coins for the value of the actual precious metal therein, not the additional costs of stamping etc., which you won't get back when you sell them (unless you can find someone else who is willing to throw some money away by buying coins at their 'higher-than-billet' price). When you sell it, you will most likely be selling them for the value of the metal by weight alone, not any additional perceived value from them being stamped out in coin form. I strongly share the recommendation of the posters who recommend buying billet metals instead of stamped coins. If you are buying coins at anything other than the straight metal price, you're paying a premium (read: giving your money away) just for having them in coin form, and you're not likely to ever get that back.

 

[GFormby]

Buy ingots instead.
Melting down currency in the US is illegal, so the value of a coin is only whatever its monetary value is. Doesn't matter if its made of Gold or Tin.
I used to work with a guy who was deep into this and have already asked all these questions.
In fact, the other day, I found a walking liberty that I'd bought about 10 years ago and had forgotten about.
Its pure silver and I picked it up during that 5 seconds that Silver was worth about $50/oz.
It's worth? A dollar. It's a dollar coin.
Buy ingots. That way, its ONLY value is of the material its made from.

Buy Gold Bars | Gold Bullion Bars For Sale | US Gold Bureau

Buy gold bars in a variety of sizes. Invest in gold bars by gold weight. Purchase gold bars at the United States Gold Bureau.

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Dean

That's just not true. A new silver dollar is 1oz .999 silver. It will always be 1 oz silver ..... and everyone will accept it. If you want to sell it for a dollar....I'll buy all of them you can haul....for face value.
Question:Why do you think the US Mint started making coins out of zinc (pennys) or laminating the coins (quarters)?
Answer:The base metal was more valuable than the face value.

As far as melting, after you melt the coin how is anyone going to know that that silver ingot used to be 10 silver dollars? But why would you do that? Walking liberty Silver dollar = face value $1, spot metal value $16-$18 +/-, coin sell value in excess of $20.

Don't take any financial advice from "that guy" he's an idiot he doesn't know what he's talking about.

 

[wired]

US silver coins are not pure silver. Currently silver coins have a 13.2:1 melt value over face vale. A dime is worth $1.32 worth of silver and thats what you base its price on as a cull. A dollar is more than 10X what a dime weighs so it comes in at $14 and change.

The silver rounds the mint sells now are just another form of bullion. Spot plus a premium for minting. They are not business strikes.

BTW It is NOT illegal to melt US silver coins. There is just no point in doing so. The melt value of a silver coin is well understood and they trade the same as bullion. Industrial use of silver is generally maintained with scrap/new production so there is no call to melt coinage. You dont make money by doing it so it isnt done much.