[JoeCoal]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'B')tw, what had happened on Thursday with PM?

[drew]

You guys crack me up...

Brainwashing, yeah....

It is a matter of liquidity friends, as it takes me about a zillionth of a second to trade. The fund I'm in is a two bit player and it trades a 100k worth of shares every day. Of course the rest of the market is trading millions per hour..

I gotta ask- how long do you spend pissing around at the bank and coin shop when you are buying or selling?

The 'fund' is a stock, btw, it does no real business, has almost no debt to speak of, and holds its gold and silver assets in a canadian bank. The bullion is fully insured, is unencumbered (not lent out), and the fund's covenant guarantees a minimum of 3 bucks a share in the event the fund dissolves.

Oh did I say; 90 % of the assets are silver and gold bullion in a 50/50 split?

You guys should join the other folks here in the 21st century who love the 'barbarous relic', electronically!

I sold some of my 'worthless' bytes of this fund at Christmas for a cool gain of 3k...

Oh, yeah, sorry..

I forgot, those gains, and my other energy based ones don't really exist..

Virtual gold-super liquid, no markup, no home invasion

Real gold-liquid? Sort of... isn't it, Potential for beatings...heavy to carry around too...


Hmmm.

Alright yours works during mad max times, I'll give you that.

Drew

[Concerned]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('drew', '
')
You guys should join the other folks here in the 21st century who love the 'barbarous relic', electronically!

[Aimrehtopyh]

I'm in physical posession mainly because I have so little to invest. I'd say that a good portfolio balance would be to never let your real silver and gold holdings be worth more than what you have tied up in blued steel and supersonic lead.

I guess being robbed or burglarized before things get weird is a worry, but during a crash having anything of value will make you a target. I'll be converting my silver to survival/trade goods as soon as its price per ounce nears oils price per barrel. The coin shop is within walking distance and there are two banks within sight of it, so I could get cash for my sliver in thirty minutes or less.

Since my hoard is in the hundreds of dollars range, portability and liquidity are high. Having tens of thousands in silver would definitely make me more worried about my ability to cash out my physical holdings.

Having precious metals on hand right now is merely a financial risk. You'd be risking your life by holding onto it until after a crash. If you think you'll be able to use it as a "survival currency" after TSHTF you might be right, but you will definitely have missed the opportunity to sell it during its spike of peak value.

On panic day I should be able to trade one of my Silver Eagles for a tank of gas or half a case of ammo or my weight in peanut butter, what does Mad Max think of that?

[BigTex]

The best precious metals coin would be one that is also legal tender and the face value of which is closest to the value of the underlying precious metal.

Thus, U.S. gold coins are not great to use as legal tender, since the face value is so much lower than the precious metals value. Same for silver coins.

The BEST precious metals coin may not actually be a precious metal at all, but an industrial metal, namely copper.

Since people are fond of saying you can't eat gold, an industrial metal with practical utility might be better for barter than a precious metal, since you actually CAN use the industrial metal for something other than just trade it for other goods or services.

At $3.61 per pound, the copper content of U.S. pennies minted between 1909 and 1982 is worth 2.39 cents.

It is illegal to melt pennies and nickels for scrap right now. But I doubt if that is going to be a big problem in a post-peak oil world. I suspect that the prohibition will be lifted at some point.

Check it out:

Penny Hoarders

What a Penny's Worth

[roccman]

My personal favorite is the Morgan... $8,250 on Ebay

[kpeavey]

When I was a kid i hoarded wheaties. I go to one bank with a couple of bucks, get some rolls of pennies, go through them, then around to the walk up window, get the pennies back into a couple of bucks, on to the next bank. By the time I was in my teens and 20s, I'd pick up a 5000 bag. I got into the rarer dates, had nearly a complete set with BU from 1934 on. Bought BU rolls. Had some prizes, 1955/55, 1972/72. Sold most of the silver to pay bills. Still have a pile of the pennies. Been dragging them from place to place. Thousands of the things. Just sitting there waiting to be confiscated by the govt.

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('roccman', 'M')y personal favorite is the Morgan... $8,250 on Ebay

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 'T')he best precious metals coin would be one that is also legal tender and the face value of which is closest to the value of the underlying precious metal.Thus, U.S. gold coins are not great to use as legal tender, since the face value is so much lower than the precious metals value. Same for silver coins. --snip--

[BigTex]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pretorian', 'I') can tell you that the clay you walk upon also has its intrinsic value and even easier to get than pennies. Why don't you hoard clay instead?

[bodigami]

my personal local favorite is this one:


I've 3 glass containers with them. The face value is ₡20 (₡499 = $1). Guessing just by current aluminum coins the metal may be worth ₡1300... but it's legal (..I guess, I've not read or heard of a "law" that says otherwise) to melt them; so I may find out someday.

my personal foreign favorite that I've had is actually does little copper dollar$. And of the ones I've not seeing I guess the Australian gold one with the kangaroo (altough I don't remember it well).

[kpeavey]

you can always burn these to keep warm thats my

[alecifel]

I'm with BigTex. Copper is going to appreciate nicely. Not suddenly, but nice n' slow. So instead of hauling all that old pipe and wire trimming down to the recycler, start stacking it up. It will pay you back with interest.

Think about all the proposals on the table to supplant fossil fuels. Most of them are electricity based and almost all of them require new machinery. New machines need copper. A hybrid car contains 3-4 times as much copper as a standard car.

And, it's a nicer color than gold.

Think about this:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '"')In December, a mining executive presented a conference audience with a bleak appraisal of the current copper inventory squeeze. "Globally, economic copper resources are being depleted with the equivalent production of three world-class copper mines being consumed annually; meanwhile, copper demand is increasing by more than 575,000 tons annually and accelerating." Furthermore, "only 56 new copper discoveries have been made during the past three decades," and "21 of the 28 largest copper mines in the world are not amenable to expansion, while many large copper mines will be exhausted between 2010 and 2015."

[Pretorian]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', '
')
Pretorian, are you in the coin business? Assuming that the penny idea is a non-starter right now, at what copper price do you think the idea might become interesting (assuming no melting restriction)? Just curious about your thoughts on that one.

[alecifel]

Aye.. I say forget the pennies and just pile up the metal. Gold is gold whether it's stamped into a coin or not and the same holds true for copper. I am a manager at a construction company; you wouldn't believe how many pounds of 6-inch long solid copper wire cuttings are left on the floor in the construction of a 1200-student school. I saw a guy carry in two buckets of them at the yard the other day, a real grunt to lift 'em, and walk out with $800. If he were to hold them for five or ten years, when copper is say $8 a pound? $12? Daaaamn.

[Serial_Worrier]

*bump*

What does physical currency matter when 99% of our transactions are electronic(credit and debit cards)?

[mattduke]

RTFM

http://mises.org/rothbard/rothmoney.pdf

[mattduke]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('jimmydean', 'I') don't like the idea of actually having to worry about storage

[Micki]

It meets the criteria of being money. Portable, divisable etc.
It has 5000+ years of history of being such.

It cannot easily be inflated (i.e. paper and electronic money just needs a few zeros added and voila you created more money)
Gold needs to be dug up to increase in quantity.
According to law of supply/demand, something in a limited supply stands better chance to retain value than something that can be increased in quantity (especialy to infinity, like fiat money)

It appreciates with inflation, but so do many other things. It however doesn't get ruined by time, moisture, vermin etc. So comparing with let's say wheat, it stores better and takes less space for equal value (unless wheat prices REALLY shoot up.)

More importantly it is a safehaven in times of economic turmoil. i.e. when you don't know how to protect your wealth, physical gold is the safe haven. (Just keep the robbers away.) If you hold the physical metal yourself, you are protected from banks and other counter parties going bust.

And yes, you CAN eat gold (and Silver). Indians put it on a lot of their deserts (is that why they buy so much of the yellow stuff?)

[cube]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mattduke', '.')..
Will somebody please refer me to the source of this concept that storing coins is difficult and or dangerous and or expensive? Every gold noob parrots back the same statements. It's as if their homogeneous opinions have been spoon fed to them via some sort of mass opinion-distributing device.