I not a preper as they say. I just playing both side of the coin, it more about my lad future than anything for me. With my stack so far i would b 50/50 in what i have in regards to shiny coin and bar silver. When it comes to the gold, i dont care if it a nice shiny coin or just a blob it all the same, it the same with the silver coin in the end it just silver...
There we differ. I can not be certain silver and gold will be any higher (relatively speaking) than it is today....could even go lower and stay there for decades. If silver does hit $300, there's good reason to believe that a loaf of bread at that same time will be $100. Your silver may not buy more goods then than it does today. In the meantime as I am waiting for possibly decades for pm's to independently shoot to da moon , I can enjoy the wonderful collector coins I buy and possibly make a little profit at the end if I sell some of my collectable coins and medals. In fact, there's a much better argument today for profit to be made with certain collector items in the secondary market. I would like to think that Ag and Au will go to da moon tomorrow or soon, but I am not going to hold my breath waiting for that dream of mine to materialize somehow. As for you being so sure you can sell all your silver in a SHTF crisis....just who exactly are you counting on to be buying your blobs???? You can't eat blobs. You can't use them to power a radio. You can't do anything with them....they are merely blobs, dead weight and as useless as a door stop in a SHTF scenario. Blobs are useless in a SHTF scenario. If people's money will be worth so little as preppers believe, that would be even more a reason for people to not buy useless blobs. And what will the world be like post SHTF? I don't know but surely there's no guarantee that people will see blobs as something important to lug around. For what purpose? What value will they have to the average person, to the farmer, or to the doctor????? The comparison preppers make to Weimar Germany is actually a terrible (and ridiculous) comparison. Back then, currencies were backed by gold. And besides, then just like now, you can't eat a blob of gold. Ag and Au are fear commodities....they are not rescue commodities. They are of value a long time before a SHTF scenario....not during and likely not immediately (or for quite some time) after either. I am not opposed to anyone buying blobs but I think it's important for people to understand what they are useful for and what they aren't useful for. I could be wrong.....but on the other hand, the preppers could be wrong. .
IMO, I am expecting a full blown SHTF scenario, and a economic and social chaos scene. First a Bond Market crash (my 'Black Swan') followed in a day or days by a Stock market crash, and a Bank holiday. Branches closed, ATMs and EFTs all frozen. I have plenty of cash, food and nil debts, I can last for weeks and months as I am at this moment. I expect a full blown Greece and Venezuela situation to dominate our lives, all in the space of a month or less! If I have to I can sell silver here or at Gold Stackers etc. But I am 100% certain i can stay indoors for 6 months at least if I have to. I can live without electricity and even water, there are bins at every down-pipe. I can fill bath and bins in an hour if we have to. What more can i do? Over-prepared is better than under-prepared. OC
Who exactly is going to buy blobs in a SHTF scenario and why? You really can't imagine that there are much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more important things to buy than chunks of metal? If things will be as desperate as you are insinuating, blobs of metal will be useless to most people. What will become valuable? Power and control of necessities. Land, weapons, access to clean water and food. Fuel and energy will be critical. Medicine will be virtually irreplaceable. People will barter what they need and can't imagine living without. Blobs of metal will be more or less useless during this time I believe. And besides, there is no precedent in recent times to substantiate the claim that blobs will be valuable. I'm sorry to have to break that news to you. If most people in the world have no use for blobs today (and they don't) then what makes you think that in a SHTF scenario that people will somehow magically desire to own chunks of metal instead of food, clean water, medicine, fuel and batteries, protection, etc, etc, etc? Finally, when was the spot price of metals highest? Surely not in times of crisis because if that were the case, metals would have shot to da moon during the later part of 2001 when the US saw the worst attacks on it's soil since the metal prices were recorded. What was the average price of silver from Sept -Dec of that year? $4.50 an ounce. In times of relative calm, the spot prices rose. There really is no correlation between high spot prices of PM's during a crisis....not that I can see. In May of 2011, silver prices hit record highs. So what catastrophic events happened in May 2011 to cause this? None. Life for most people was uneventful...the world was at relative calm (or at least no major crisis to speak of). The point being, during a SHTF scenario or world wide crisis, there's no precedent which shows that Ag and Au will go to da moon. But heck, if you want to stock up on hundreds of the hundreds of millions of ASE's produced over the past few years, don't let me stop you from that project. .
"Who exactly is going to buy blobs in a SHTF scenario and why? You really can't imagine that there are much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much more important things to buy than chunks of metal?" Maybe Gold Stackers can answer that question, it is their bread and butter. ...and how could a Gold Mark be worth 100 Trillion, if nobody would or could buy them? OC
We are not living in the 1930's....this is a very different world. It doesn't make much sense to claim that because it happened in the 1930's Germany that it must happen the same way today....rubbish. It could, but it could not and since a great many things are drastically different, I'm betting that it won't be the same....at least not for America today. Because money used to be backed by precious metals many, many, many, many years ago, people everywhere during those times had a radically different understanding of Ag and Au than they do today.....for the most part. Don't believe me? Well then check out a series of videos on YouTube in which this guy (in the US) tries to get someone to buy his 1 oz AGE for face value.....and he has zero takers on that incredible offer. This is exactly what I'm talking about. Today, in most (if not all) first world nations, most people don't give a damn about Ag and Au....they just don't. These same people will care even less than zero about it if ever there was a serious SHTF scenario. When I say nobody will be looking to buy blobs in a true SHTF crisis, I mean the vast majority of people won't be interested in blobs. Yes, there will be a very tiny portion of the populace who will perceive these metals as an invaluable panacea....but the average person won't care because to them, money is only valuable if a gov't issues and stands behind it. Fiat money, in one form or another, is here to stay whether we like it or not. Just like we will never see sea shells again being used as money, Ag and Au will likewise never be used as money by governments. That's what I believe because human nature dictates that this is the case. I could be wrong, but I could be right. I like polished silver....it's shiny. .
and, 'on the street', http://www.thedailyeconomist.com/2016/08/why-do-you-need-to-own-physical-gold.html An ounce of Silver buys 3 months of food, and an ounce of gold buys A HOUSE! OC
Great link on the what the cost of the gold is in Bolivars. Wow. From my LITTLE understanding of history, this is the first time where every fiat currency in the world is backed by nada, nothing, zero, zip, zilch. As we see, central banks around the world continue to print into oblivion. They justify, rationalize, and conjure up all the reasons why they need to. This has a bad ending. It must. You can't fool Mother Nature forever. Granted, this can go on for a very long time, but eventually the chickens will come home to roost. I've read where the IMF is now wanting to create 100 trillion SDR's, so all the central banks of the world can take their bad debt and roll it up under this 100 trillion, and presto, they have a 'clean balance sheet.' Missing is right, these are very different times. The evil these monsters come up with is astounding (negative interest rates?? Bail-Ins???). I mean these criminals have no boundaries. Can this game of musical chairs go on for 20, 30 years...gasp, I know many of us say, 'no way.' But hold on, folks have been calling for a collapse in the dollar and the world system for a very long time. The charade can go on a lot longer than you & I care to admit. Sure, I'm placing my bets in my belief system where I don't think it will go on more than 5 - 10 years, but I also know I could be wrong. However, eventually the house of cards will come down, and the longer they keep this game of credit/debt building up, the harder, and more devastating the destruction will be. I hope I'm wrong. I also read about how a 100 bill back in Wiemar Germany could buy a house there. The reason was our dollar was backed by gold. That was 5 pieces of gold. I know my gold and silver won't help me much in times of hyperinflation. The necessities of life are all important, right? Food, clothing, fuel, clean air, water, lead, guns, etc...But when we get on the other side of a monetary collapse, that's when I'll be smiling over the gold and silver I hold. I believe the world-wide currencies will be worthless at some point in the future, and gold and silver will have a special place in monetary history. And then the people of the U.S., (and world) will realize how they've been duped by the high priests of the central banks - brain washed into thinking silver and gold have no value, it is some ancient relic. Sorry High Priests of central banks, you can't erase 5000 years of monetary history. Eventually this thing will come down. When? I don't know. I'm just happy to be counting ounces (bullion), and having fun collecting some coins that I love to marvel at. Happy day all.
Actually, fiat currencies can just as easily be replaced with other forms of fiat currency and stability would or could be restored. It's happened more than once over the past few decades. Just because the USD may some day in the distant future collapse, that doesn't in any way, shape, or form mean that the country or its people will resort to treating chunks of metal as a currency. Nations will simply adopt a more stable fiat currency....that's the most likely scenario. Whether that currency at that far off time is some form of digital Special Drawing Rights, or a BRICS-created / distributed currency....I don't know. But it's much more likely that some fiat currency will replace a sunk fiat currency. Now I'm not saying that it's impossible that chunks of metal could some day function like money, but where's the evidence that they unequivocally will? There is no evidence....just a hope that some, many, or most stackers (myself included) probably hope for to some degree. But we are a tiny minority of the population and unless the majority adopts similar views about chunks of metal, there's very little hope that those chunks will function like money even post USD crash. As for the Bolivar being in crisis, that is not in any way, shape, or form an argument in favor of chunks of Ag or Au being seen as something people want to buy nor is it even seen as indispensable or very valuable. By comparison, things like toilet paper and certain food items are what is being seen as indispensable. I bet that if you bartered a roll of toilet paper in Venezuela today to a family who has to go out of the country to buy a roll (and apparently many families do that) that roll of toilet paper could get you enough corn to last a couple of months. That said, if you owned Ag or Au before the Bolivar started it's massive decline, then there's nothing wrong with that. I'm sure in Columbia they could trade that for necessary goods. But I doubt anyone except an elite few are actually buying chunks of Ag and Au now. That's my point. There are plenty things more valuable to most people in a SHTF crisis than chunks of metal. The Bolivar will likely be replaced with a newer Bolivar or another fiat currency altogether if it rapidly devalues very significantly. Meanwhile, for the rest of the world, nothing about how most of the world doesn't care about Ag and Au has changed. That is the world we live in. Beware of the seashell permabulls who argue, "A seashell is money simply because I think it is" I like polished silver....it's shiny. .
Question for my good friend missing. If I had 1 million in Bolivars in the bank and it disappears, and a new currency comes out, say the Bolivaries...what happens to my 1 million Bolivars? My opinion? It turns to trash. If I sank my 1 million of Bolivars in the chunk of metal, and the Bolivaries are introduced, what is my chunk of metal worth? Trash? Or Cash?...oops, I mean the new Boliviers, yes?
I think the first step is to cut 3 or 6 or 9 noughts from the Bolivar, and call it the 'New Bolivar'. The holders swapped the old notes for the new notes, at the exchange rate the 'noughts' gave them. Then when that does not work they bring in a entirely new currency like the 1923 German 'Rentenmark'. The original Mark was backed by the same stuff as us now, an empty promise. They said that the Rentenmark was backedby government assets and government land in particular. But NOT gold! OR, they could do what Zimbabwe did and toss out all the old currency and introduce the US Dollar as its day to day currency. Seems to have worked. Not sure what Russia etc etc etc etc did in the 1990s. OC
What happens depends on a few factors I think. If you are the only person who's money vanishes, then you are on your own. If millions of Venezuelan's, many of them who are already having problems making ends meet, see their life savings vanish due to a currency crash then you have in the very least country-wide chaos and mayhem and possibly at some point a (possibly armed) revolution if it's believed the gov't is responsible for the collapse of the currency. We could see things escalate significantly in Venezuela in the upcoming months. It wouldn't surprise me if Columbia started to provide small arms for revolutionary-thinking Venezuelans. Anyway, I digress a little. In the first scenario, having blobs will be good. In the second scenario, I just don't think blobs will be worth more than they are now valued to the vast majority of people during the SHTF crisis. Things of necessity become the money of the people if the currency totally hyper-inflates. Chunks of metal are not necessities and so very few people will be trading or buying them from you or accepting it as money at a price that you would think is fair. Things that become money are gasoline, medicine, food and water, batteries, weapons, and so on. In terms of a new currency, it couldn't just be the same currency with a couple new letters. It would have to be a medium of exchange that the people could put their trust in. In Venezuela's case, it's conceivable that they would adopt a neighboring nations' currency. I don't know enough about the currencies of C.A. and S.A. to know what is the most likely outcome. Maybe they adopt the dollar....as unlikely as that may seem today. Your million Bolivars would hypothetically be swapped for some amount of dollars X Bolivars to 1 USD or something like that. If you had metal and a currency change was made, you might not get very much for it because you'd first have to find a buy. The central bank may buy your gold, but probably not your silver. For the Au, if they buy it, it would prob fetch spot...which could have dropped significantly. .
Yooooo, yooooo missing. Yeah man, I agree with you about what is most important in times of crisis. My belief is on the other side of the crisis, I'll be glad I have silver & gold vs. holding the greenback. I continue to head down the road of purchasing these things with the belief I'll be a head of the game on the other side of the collapse of the dollar, which again, my belief says it will happen in my life-time - God willing I live into my 60's and 70's - heck, God willing, live another day. This ironman triathlon training is killing me.
Yes, on the other side of a collapse, I too believe precious metals are a potential store of value. If you believe in a USD collapse, then I see stacking blobs as a pro-active thing to do for a post SHTF world when things start to "normalize". I no longer think that will happen in the foreseeable future.....but of course, I could be wrong. In the meantime, I am enjoying buying, holding, and marveling at some wonderful collector coins and medals. .
I will value gold and silver during SHTF because I would accept it for trades, my skills and ability to renew my resources will be valuable to most. No gold or silver? I say carry on sir, find someone else to trade with, I don't need any thing else.
