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Re: Let's talk about GOLD or other precious metals 

By: De_Composed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (1)
Fri, 23 Aug 24 3:35 PM | 53 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 57065 of 60008
(This msg. is a reply to 57061 by micro)
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micro:

Re: “If you're the only one with gold coins trying to buy something and things are in dire straights, I am not sure anyone else should know you are sitting on gold coins..”Great topic! I'll start with an analogy I've used before. You have a bunch of gold in your pockets and you're in the middle of the Sahara desert dying of thirst. Is your gold going to help you? No. You need water. You can't drink gold.

You bump into someone else who has a little water. Can you buy it off of him? Absolutely not. He values his water and only his water for the same reason you do. If he's only got enough for himself, he'd be foolish to trade it for your gold.

So that's the first lesson. Gold is of little value in a crisis except to those who have more than they need of the things you want: Food, water, shelter, security, medicines. Those are the usual essentials for life, and the most obvious things you'll value during a crisis. Nobody being washed away by a tidal wave has ever thought, "Gee. I wish I had some gold!"

Had you instead run into someone who owned an oasis, might he have sold you some water in exchange for your gold? Yes, he might have. Probably even a lot of water. That's the second lesson: The value of *anything* is relative.

Can you think of an asset that's generically better than gold? I think you'll find that to be a challenge - because whatever you pick, I guarantee you I can come up with a TEOTWAWKI scenario in which you'd have been wrong. If you stockpile money, I'll give you a hyperinflating economy. If you stockpile medicine, I'll give you a famine. If you stockpile beans, I'll give you a disaster that doesn't happen until your beans have spoiled. Ditto for medicines. If you stockpile oil or farmland, I'll give you a disaster in which you have to flee. If you stockpile electrical or gasoline powered tools, I'll give you a disaster in which gas and electricity are unavailable. If you stockpile hand tools and oxen, I'll just laugh. Maybe the disaster DOESN'T involve a shortage of oil or electricity. And what if it doesn't happen for five years? You're really going to load up your house with hand tools and oxen?? Good luck keeping your wife!! That's the third lesson: Figuring out beforehand what people will most value in a disaster of TEOTWAWKI magnitude is a fool's errand. It depends on the nature and timing of the disaster. You don't know what that might be. A prepper should plan differently for tyranny, shortages, war, plague or comet strike. The need presented by the disaster might be short term. It might be long.

So, what makes gold and silver ownership prudent? It's because while they have little utility (true of gold, not silver) and may not be valued during a crisis, they are portable, durable, unspoiling, rare (which means that a small amount packs a lot of punch), concealable, recognizable (again, true of gold, not silver), pretty and have a history that ensures that once crises pass - which, for populations, they always do - they will be valued again.

In a crisis, gold may not help. But after? It will. Gold's "utility" comes from being the best long-term store of value in almost any situation. Even masterpiece paintings are useless if you have no means of smuggling them out of a country gone full-Nazi. The case for gold hasn't changed for thousands of years. After a crisis ends, you'll be glad to have some... and it may even put you in a better financial position than you're in today. Think of it as insurance - a poor "investment" if calamity doesn't happen but potentially invaluable if it does. (Assuming you survive the calamity, of course.) In fact, gold isn't an "investment" at all. Investments are expected to grow, while gold just stays the same. If it grows in value, that's more a matter of luck than it is of rational expectation.

In conclusion, nobody should put everything they've got into gold . . . or into anything else. We don't know the nature and timing of the hard times to come, and we still have to live our lives in these Times-of-Plenty. IMO, the wisest course of action is to diversify for disaster. Store some food, some medicine, some firearms, some hand tools, some liquor, some land, some cash, some gas and some water. For AFTER the disaster, store some precious metal. If you're real lucky, you'll never actually need any of them.















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The above is a reply to the following message:
Let's talk about GOLD or other precious metals
By: micro in 6TH POPE
Fri, 23 Aug 24 2:09 PM 		Msg. 57061 of 60008

My question and argument about these items in any form whether bars, bricks, coins, is always the same.
That is, so end times catches up here. what are ya gonna do with those gold bars or coins?

Ya go to a store and give them a gold piece and are they going to have change for ya? Just because SOME people have gold coins does not mean stores are going to deal in that commodity or what values do those coins have in that time besides face value? Likely worth a lot more than face value but how does that get honored iffen ya needs to buy something?

There is lots of things that are not known as to how that may or may not work well besides making yerself a target for anyone who finds out YOU got gold coins.

Just wondering about how anyone else sees that scenario playing out.. If you're the only one with gold coins trying to buy something and things are in dire straights, I am not sure anyone else should know you are sitting on gold coins..

Anyway, its just my brain mulling over some of these possible scenarios and wondering "what if".


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