Bar of silver, that is.
Time to up my game from 1 oz. bars to 10 oz.
Because.
Tag Archives: pms
Tangibles
Silver is down a bit, but the premiums are still obscene. But… a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do:
And then, since apparently it was my birthday last week, someone very generously gifted me this:
Cool, hm?
By the by, as I’ve mentioned before, I am a fan of setting goals. I actually set a goal each year for how much silver and gold I want to acquire. The goal each year is to increase the stash from the previous year by 50%. This goes a ways towards giving me a headstart on 2022. And it gives me an even greater headstart on hedging against whatever whipping up a few trillion dollars out of thin air will bring. But, being a cautious dude, I put money elsewhere as well…..cash, the markets, metals, and ….and…..land. Soon.
Metal
I play the market, sure, but I also don’t put all my eggs in one basket. And, once in a very rare while, I get a deal. Today’s case in point:
What did I pay? Spot. See, some forms of gold are more marketable than others. When someone sells the gold/silver guy some gold ‘over the counter’, he usually buys it as close to spot as possible. But if the gold/silver is in a form that is not really sought after in retail, he buys it for less than spot. An example would be a 100-oz bar of silver. Not alot of people walk into a shop and ask for a 100 oz. bar. As a result, he needs to get into it at less than the price he’d have paid for, say , 100 1-oz. bars/rounds.
So, as it turns out, while small (‘fractional’) bits of gold (1 gram, 5 gram, 10 gram, etc) are easy to resell, the larger metric-denominated versions are less desirable. So…he bought it at less than spot. I offered spot. And he took it. So…score.
The lesson here is that if you’re going to buy metals, and you’re planning on holding them for a long time, and if you can swing the cash, your best value is in the larger single-unit quantities…. 10 oz bar vs 10 1-oz bars, 100 oz bar vs 10 10-oz bars etc.
As for this little guy, it goes in the safe and sits there quietly until next years land purchase. Or the apocalypse. Whichever comes first.
ETA: By the way, I never, ever, buy gold in any quantity without testing it on one of these. A tester like this will set you back about a grand. But if it keeps you from buying one fake gold coin, it’s paid for itself. My guy at the coin shop understands that even though I know he tests any gold he buys across the counter, I need to see it being tested. I could take his word for it, and I trust him when he says he tested it and it tested okay..but доверяй, но проверяй…doveryay, no proveryay…trust, but verify. And he’s cool with that. Honestly, if your PM guy isn’t cool with retesting something while you watch and just expects you to take his word for it….you need a new guy.
Property taxes, hyperinflation, and gold
“The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn’t get worse every time Congress meets.” -Will Rogers
I was going to pay my property taxes the other day and I could not find the stupid second half of the property tax bill. As you know, property tax bills usually come as a binary sort of thing….you make one payment for around half the total, and six months later you make the other half. Then, six months after that, .gov comes back and starts the whole thuggish cycle over again.
So, I was looking and looking and looking…no success. Finally I said ‘screw it’ and went online to look up how much to send to the weasels at the county courthouse. “PAID IN FULL”….huh….and then I remembered: I did well enough last year that I decided to pay the entire tax bill at once. Yay me.
I started wondering – if a period of great economic upheaval occurs..inflation, high unemployment, wage and price controls, shortages, etc…gov is still gonna demand their pound of flesh. And when you are jobless, foodless, and cashless is the worst time to lose your house to some local .gov that insists it get paid even when it’s doing nothing but serving (and saving) itself.
Obviously, the thing to do would be to have enough money in he bank to pay the property taxes for a couple years. But here’s the problem with that…if the economy craps the bed enough that you’re without a job, hungry, and subject to the ravages of inflation, that money in the safe isn’t going to keep pace with your taxes which the .gov will conveniently adjust for inflation. And suddenly that stack of $100 bills in the safe that you thought would cover your property taxes won’t even buy you a new pair of shoes (assuming the stores still have shoes.) So what’s a savvy survivalist to do? Well, I suppose you can hope that in such a crisis things will be chaotic enough that property tax collection will be the last thing on .gov’s mind as it valiantly throws beleaguered police and National Guardsman into the fray of rioters, looters, demonstrators, criminals, and anarchists. Mmmm maybe. Or I can try to hedge my bets and have something to sell for the inflated currency necessary to pay the taxes.
And then I thought about the gold. Hmmm. I should have thought of this before. Keep a couple years of property taxes handy in gold. That way if inflation heads to the moon, it’ll take gold with it. In other words, two ounces of gold pays my property taxes now, and in Weimar-town two ounces of gold still pays my taxes. (Assuming that the tax rate remains the same. Obviously in a crisis .gov is going to raise taxes, so perhaps a little extra gold just in case.)
The more I think about this, the more I like the idea.
Mood enhancers
Kind of a question and answer all in one photo:
By the way, it’s surprisingly difficult to take a picture of gold. The lighting has to be just right or you get hellacious glare.
I really don’t believe there’ll be a time when we’re trading gold and silver in the burned-out rubble of WalMart for cans of out-of-date food. And I’m somewhat sure that a bout of Weimaresque hyperinflation isn’t coming. (Although history has shown that a world war does wonders for economies…maybe we’ve got something coming up against the Russians/Chinese.) And it isn’t really a great investment since it’s returns are lowest among pretty much any investment. (And, yes, gold really isn’t an investment as much as it is a store of wealth. There’s a big difference there.)
But, for some reason, it makes me feel better having it. Like the shelves full of #10 cans of freezedried food, the cases of AR’s, the rack of full fuel cans, etc. It just makes me feel calmer, even though I intellectually know that my odds of needing them are rather slim. But…that could just be the normalcy bias talking.
But, as I said, it makes me feel safer and calm……Which, I suppose, is all the justification I need for what I do.
Anyway, a portion of whatever I have available after the bills are paid goes to metals, some to investments, some to cash, etc. I picked these little generic 1/10ths the other day and they’re just too pretty not to take a picture of.
People everywhere turning …lead… into gold
Took some ammo I don’t need, sold it, and bought this:
I have turned lead into gold. I am officially an alchemist. (Though not a FullMetal Alchemist.)
I actually prefer 1/10 and 1 oz. gold bullion, but I’ve always thought the Swiss Francs were very attractive coins and I’ve always wanted at least one. Over the years I’ve bought silver but I stayed away from gold because, honestly, it’s a big chunk of money to spend at once. But, Between years of frugality, my decent market returns, an insane gun/ammo market, and my newfound appreciation and education in moneystuff, I can, once in a while, buy some of the yellow stuff.
This stuff is as close as youre going to come to a universal currency.
(For those of you who don’t get the reference in the post title, here’s your link. An earworm from the 70’s featuring Stevie Nicks on background and Lindsey Buckingham’s distinctive guitar. A classic. And if you did get the reference….well…youre old.)
Metal
I guess you have to kinda be living under a rock to not notice that gold hit an all-time high the other day. I don’t really keep more than a passing glance on gold prices, but I watch silver pretty closely. You know, it was only a few months ago that silver crapped the bed at around $12. Today its more than twice that. In other words, silver doubled within four months. I can’t think of the last time that happened. Maybe back when the Hunt brothers were working their mojo?
Where does it go from here? Beats me. But, to my uneducated way of thinking, people flocking to metals and driving up the prices is indicative of a belief that perhaps the economic outlook is not that great. If that’s true, I think you’d do well to spend some of that precious metals money on getting your debt knocked out, some food and ammo in the basement, and whatever else you need. If you’re so uncertain of the future that you’re buying precious metals, than that future is uncertain enough that you may wanna backstop with ammo and canned goods. Just sayin’.
But…if the market tanks, people are gong to need to raise cash in a hurry to cover their market losses. And that means selling their metals. And that means a big dump into the market which, as I understand it, depresses prices. Or does it? Seems like all the rules are off these days.
As I’ve said, whatever disposable income I have gets split into three different areas: silver in case things go really, really wrong; my Roth in case things go really, really well; and cash savings in case I’m not sure which way to go. That way I’m not totally caught flat-footed if the economy tanks or if it booms.
As much as I enjoy the sexy parts of survivalism, like guns and gun bunnies, the fact is that you’ll need fifty-dollar bills far more than you’ll need fifty BMG in most emergencies. I can’t recall the last time I had a personal-level TEOTWAWKI that was resolved by the judicious application of M193, but I can rattle off a half dozen where a pile o’ greenbacks turned out to be the multitool that fixed things.
By all means, buy some precious metals when you have the money…but not before you’ve got the really unsexy-but-more-likely-to-be-needed things taken care of.
Silver
I got so wrapped up in grocery store panics that I completely missed silver crapping the bed. Can’t recall the last time I saw it drop that much in one day. Was Friday the bottom? Or will the slide continue Monday?
Silver
Silver was down a bit the other day, and I had the treacherous combination of a few extra dollars in my pocket and a bit of impulse control issues. As a result, there’s another tube of silver dimes sitting in the safe.
Why? Well, thats an interesting question. Intellectually, I know that the odds of there being an event where greenbacks are worthless and we’re trading silver and gold like some sort of Roman market are pretty slim. And if the world collapses in on itself, its probably more likely that a box of .22 or a package of AA batts will get me more merchandise than silver or gold.
On the other hand…. we have plenty of episodes in the last 100 years where a national currency became worthless and people who had silver and gold were able to get the things they need.
Somewhere between “Current standard of living” and “Mad Max” is where the metals will be handy, in my opinion. Today, you can walk into a 7-11 and Apu might not take silver for a pack of Marlboros, and when the bombs fall and we’re all eating our children it is also likely that silver and gold won’t be very valued. But there’s that in-between….that point where the currency still has some worth but is rapidly becoming worthless, and there is the opportunity to purchase needed items. Thats the sweet spot, I think, for the use of metals.
There’s always the wag who thinks he’s being clever and original with some pithy line abou t how ‘if you can’t eat it it, shoot it, or live in it, it’s worthless’. And yet….he’s at the Kroger paying for his groceries with greenbacks that he can’t eat, shoot, or live in. Hmmm.
Now, I’m not saying that after the end of the world we’ll all be trading silver and gold for our transactions. I’m saying that its during the ride to the end of the world where the metals will have the most utility.
And…for some reason I cannot precisely express… I just feel better having some shiny metal on hand. So…a little more silver in the safe.
Article – These Doomsday Preppers Are Starting to Switch From Gold to Bitcoin
I’m not some dinosaur that refuses to embrace technology Because. But what I most definitely am is someone who tries to objectively evaluate the utility of something against what I envision my future needs will be.
I would think the people who froth at the mouth about “If you cant eat it, shoot it, or set fire to it, it’ll be useless after the apocalypse!” will lump bitcoin in there with gold as having no post-collapse utility.
As I see it, gold and silver (and perhaps bitcoin) have utility in the descent from “Times of Plenty” to “Thunderdome”.
Bitcoin does have an interesting use though…as long as there is internet you have a portable, secure, anonymous way to move your wealth. While getting on a plane from Dubai to London with a couple kilos of gold may cause some problems at customs, you can, I suppose, transport that same amount of wealth with nothing but a few passwords in your head.
Do I see a need for bitcoin in my preparations against an uncertain future? I dont think so. But Im also the first to admit that I am probably terribly underinformed on the subject. However, would I divert resources from other preparations I make towards getting bitcoin into those preparations? I would not. I’m just more comfortable with a mix of cash, metals, and, honestly, paperless handguns, as a method of doing commerce…pre- and post-collapse. (And, really, most of my ideas about a sustained collapse are based on economic issues rather than comets/Xenu/rapture/bird flu/nuclear holocaust.)
However, and this is a big however, it might be prudent to dump a hundred bucks into it and just let it sit there in case it blows up again. Much like how penny stocks are fun to play.
