Gold Coins

Sunset said:
I'm not a gold bug, as we have very little gold.

The only reason I can see to have gold is if SHTF, and just looking at world events right now, I can see gold would be at best awkward.

How do you buy 2 loaves of bread and some cheese with a gold coin ?

For SHTF, we have other things, like a large pantry, and some guns.
I can trade a box of rounds for food every day in desperate times.

I prefer my investments to earn income (stocks mostly).
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It may be that the bread and cheese might cost two gold coins. I doubt anyone will be giving change. But seriously, a friend of mine is a gold bug. I’m not sure how true his stories are but he said that in a place like Venezuela they were shaving bits of gold from coins to purchase things. I can’t imagine that, but I guess I have no idea what it would be like if our currency collapsed.

I will say that when I saw the Russians lining up at the atm to get money out, it did make me wonder how stable things really are. I don’t have much gold, but I do have a few coins and I also have some cash stashed. I’m hopeful it would give me time to think in an emergency. Beyond that, who knows . . .
 
It is for the SHTF scenario which is why I'll be buying the 1/10oz gold and 1oz silver coins ($240ish and $30ish respectively). I hope it never comes to that but you never know.
 
When I saw all the people lined up at ATM's , I thought maybe I should have a few thousand in cash at home.
In case credit cards no longer worked during a giant event, or massive power failure.
 
Sunset said:
I'm not a gold bug, as we have very little gold.

The only reason I can see to have gold is if SHTF, and just looking at world events right now, I can see gold would be at best awkward.

How do you buy 2 loaves of bread and some cheese with a gold coin ?

For SHTF, we have other things, like a large pantry, and some guns.
I can trade a box of rounds for food every day in desperate times.

I prefer my investments to earn income (stocks mostly).
Click to expand...

You realize that these are not mutually exclusive, correct? That is, you can have a food supply, a lead supply, and a precious metals supply.

In terms of "buy 2 loaves of bread and cheese"...yes a 1 oz gold coin is like having a $1000 euro (or more) bill. However, two things to consider:
1) Hypothetically, if you were going to have all of your assets in physical cash - would you have it all in large denomination notes, all in $1 bills, or some combination? Thus, you could have some gold in 1 oz or higher denomiations, and some more in 1 gram increments, such as the MapleGrams or CombiBar. f
2) If you were starving, you might just be willing to trade that 1 oz gold coin. In a SHTF situation, no one is saying that you would be filthy rich because you have gold. But the value of the gold just might be worth a lot more than fiat currency and at the same time be worth less than what it can buy today. Why? Because the currency is worth zero and in general food and other things are relatively more expensive because of the lack of supply.

I can say that for myself (and I've been doing this for a long time), having a good food supply, having alternative energy sources for heat (winter, wood), having adequate pm's, having ... is all part of the same plan...a plan that I hope never needs to be implemented.
 
@copyright1997reloaded

+1. I have a portable backup generator, a small qty of extra food/water in the pantry, one car tank usually always full, a small amount of cash at home etc all to be prepared for the unexpected. So this is also inline with that.


I'll be honest when I first watched Robert Kiyosaki's youtube video about the stock market vs. gold/silver I thought the man was losing it. I shunned the idea of owning bullion; it was for the crazies and the pawn stores I thought lol but then looking around I figured a few clicks on the keyboard are worth having a small stash in addition to the small cash. Hoping it never comes to that situation though.
 
Sunset said:
When I saw all the people lined up at ATM's , I thought maybe I should have a few thousand in cash at home.
In case credit cards no longer worked during a giant event, or massive power failure.
Click to expand...

I thought the same thing. I always have some cash on hand, but I did add a bit recently. I don’t think it will make a lot of difference if the SHTF, but it might buy some time. Also, there are power outages that happen naturally and there’s certainly potential for a cyber attack to cause some disruption.
 
Junk silver, which I've never owned, seemed like a good idea for SHTF situations because of the smaller value per unit, you could get a gallon or two of fuel or some food. But it would seem to me that the fiat currency of the realm would not go to zero overnight. So there would probably be a way to exchange an ounce of gold for some amount of the fiat currency, then spend that currency right away on various stuff that was available.

I could be way off-base, but I see some individual that has goods for sale would love to give out change. Most people would have only the currency of the realm to offer. So the establishment could accept it, and wait for the guy with the gold coin to show-up. If the price was $50 for a loaf of bread, and the going rate for gold coins was $1,000, if guy had been raking in currency all day for his bread, he'd probably be delighted to unload $950 of his currency by way of change.

The problem with this is that there aren't many individuals in society that have access to goods for sale...it's all corporations with their hired minions. Unless the minions steal the corporate-owned stuff and become entrepreneurs, there's nobody that can make any kind of person-to-person "reasonable" deals.
 
sengsational said:
Junk silver, which I've never owned, seemed like a good idea for SHTF situations because of the smaller value per unit, you could get a gallon or two of fuel or some food.
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+1. I've explained to my child that "this roll of dimes aren't dimes so don't take them to the bank to cash in".
 
copyright1997reloaded said:
+1. I've explained to my child that "this roll of dimes aren't dimes so don't take them to the bank to cash in".
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When I was a kid I had almost a complete book of mercury dimes culled from my paper boy friend's collection bag. My steps brother took them all and bought $3.00 worth of chocolate bars. My stepfather made him pay back the $3.00 :)
 

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If society as we know it gets to the point where people will be looking to trade gold coins for loaves of bread, etc, there won't be any loves as there won't be any bakeries putting out the bread, or anything, for that matter.

When we get to that point, people will be stealing each other blind and there will be a good use for firearms and no repercussions about it.

When society fails and fiat currency is use to start fires to keep warm with, it will be each man for himself.
 
aja8888 said:
If society as we know it gets to the point where people will be looking to trade gold coins for loaves of bread, etc, there won't be any loves as there won't be any bakeries putting out the bread, or anything, for that matter.

When we get to that point, people will be stealing each other blind and there will be a good use for firearms and no repercussions about it.

When society fails and fiat currency is use to start fires to keep warm with, it will be each man for himself.
Click to expand...

This is untrue, you should check what happened in Venezuela. People with gold and silver were able to buy goods when the accelerated inflation hit that the average person could not possibly afford. In 2017 the average Venezuelan lost 22 pounds due to inability to afford food. While not ideal society goes on.
https://share.america.gov/venezuela-population-suffering-dangerous-weight-loss/#:~:text=According%20to%20Time%20magazine%2C%20the,Nacional%20de%20Condiciones%20de%20Vida.
They were using flakes of gold as recently as October to pay for food, it is best to have some

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-20/venezuelans-break-off-flakes-of-gold-to-pay-for-meals-haircuts

A good allocation I think would be 60 oz of gold to use for 60 months at a rate of 1 oz per month and 1800 ounces of silver to use at a rate of one per day. With this you would get through a 5 year crisis. At $165,000 this is the cheapest insurance in the world.
 
Jerry1 said:
I thought the same thing. I always have some cash on hand, but I did add a bit recently. I don’t think it will make a lot of difference if the SHTF, but it might buy some time. Also, there are power outages that happen naturally and there’s certainly potential for a cyber attack to cause some disruption.
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I was caught in the Northeast blackout of 2003 with 1/2 a tank of gas, so I had to stay put as I couldn't drive out of the blackout areas.

gas stations couldn't pump gas as the pumps didn't work.

Some small stores stayed open, and took cash while doing manual addition or portable calculators.
Large grocery stores closed as all their terminals were non-working, and selling anything would screw over their inventory count.

Nobody took credit cards as there was no way to process them.

Had it lasted a week or longer it would have turned into a nightmare.
 
Running_Man said:
This is untrue, you should check what happened in Venezuela. People with gold and silver were able to buy goods when the accelerated inflation hit that the average person could not possibly afford. In 2017 the average Venezuelan lost 22 pounds due to inability to afford food. While not ideal society goes on.
https://share.america.gov/venezuela-population-suffering-dangerous-weight-loss/#:~:text=According%20to%20Time%20magazine%2C%20the,Nacional%20de%20Condiciones%20de%20Vida.
They were using flakes of gold as recently as October to pay for food, it is best to have some

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-20/venezuelans-break-off-flakes-of-gold-to-pay-for-meals-haircuts

A good allocation I think would be 60 oz of gold to use for 60 months at a rate of 1 oz per month and 1800 ounces of silver to use at a rate of one per day. With this you would get through a 5 year crisis. At $165,000 this is the cheapest insurance in the world.
Click to expand...

I dunno, people are stealing things like catalytic converters left and right and they are not even starving. You would be surprised the things people will do when they are starving. I am not sure gold is going to help that much.

Lead won't really help either, only in the movies. Real life you have to sleep, move, go outside where a sniper could pick you off easy as pie. That DC sniper was kiling people with ease and that was with police everywhere. Imagine a scenario where there are no police.....you gonna stay in the house for the rest of your life?
 
I decided I wanted to hold some gold or silver in early 2017
I was a bit of a coin collector in my youth, & decided on silver.

Right around this time that year, I started accumulating 1964 JFK half dollars. Stopped at 1500........ average cost $6.81

They're now selling for around $11
Hope I never have to use them in a SHTF situation :)
 
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Sunset said:
I was caught in the Northeast blackout of 2003 with 1/2 a tank of gas, so I had to stay put as I couldn't drive out of the blackout areas.

gas stations couldn't pump gas as the pumps didn't work.

Some small stores stayed open, and took cash while doing manual addition or portable calculators.
Large grocery stores closed as all their terminals were non-working, and selling anything would screw over their inventory count.

Nobody took credit cards as there was no way to process them.

Had it lasted a week or longer it would have turned into a nightmare.
Click to expand...

I was also caught in that blackout - in my office in Manhattan. The trains weren't running, you couldn't buy anything with a credit card, nor did the ATMs work. Some enterprising drivers were offering rides out of the City, but I had no cash and no way to get any, so I had to wait for the trains to start back up the next day before I could go home to Connecticut. (BTW - spending a midsummer night in a modern midtown Manhattan office building with no A/C and no ability to open the windows is no picnic.)

As a consequence of that experience, I always have several thousand dollars in cash in my safe at home and always have a couple hundred in my pocket.
 
aja8888 said:
If society as we know it gets to the point where people will be looking to trade gold coins for loaves of bread, etc, there won't be any loves as there won't be any bakeries putting out the bread, or anything, for that matter.

When we get to that point, people will be stealing each other blind and there will be a good use for firearms and no repercussions about it.

When society fails and fiat currency is use to start fires to keep warm with, it will be each man for himself.
Click to expand...

Total society failure (so far, it's never happened) is one possible outcome. There are hundreds of other scenarios - many of which have happened in our life times, someplace in the world. Most "break downs" in society are not total. Usually, society does not become totally dog-eat-dog (heh, heh, maybe man eats dog - or horse.)

It's amazing how quickly barter can take over when the normal systems are stressed. Watch any WWII movie and you will see that folks used cigarettes as currency. Food was expensive but it was available. Short of total nuclear war or a dinosaur-killer asteroid, trade will go on. Gummints will outlaw barter but black markets will still be rampant. Those with things of "value" will eat better than those who have nothing to trade. Yeah, probably not a bad idea to have some lead along with the gold, but through history, society has stood up amazingly well. YMMV
 
Chuckanut said:
Personally, I have cases of good Scotch single malt that I can trade for food if necessary.
Click to expand...

Coffee is good too. I have started keeping six or seven bags of Jamaican Blue on hand. People will kill for a good cup of coffee.
 
Chuckanut said:
Personally, I have cases of good Scotch single malt that I can trade for food if necessary.
Click to expand...


My thought is that half-pints of cheap vodka, packs of cigarettes and rolls of toilet paper would be more useful as barter material.
 
Gumby said:
My thought is that half-pints of cheap vodka, packs of cigarettes and rolls of toilet paper would be more useful as barter material.
Click to expand...

Agreed, but people still don't get it. A recent conversation with a friend:

Me: You don't have anything in your freezer. Do you have a food supply in case of emergency?

Friend: No, I just go to the store or order out.

Me: You should have some stuff here (freezer) and some shelf ready stuff.

Friend: Like what?

Me: Like canned goods - vegetables, meats, pasta, rice, ...

Friend: I don't like canned food.

Me: Would you rather eat the cat?

Friend: Well, I couldn't do that either

Me: Well, the cat WILL eat you.

and so it goes...
 
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