If silvers price had been driven up after you bought, and you sold, you wouldn't have complained and wouldn't have talked about diversification. And the same problems rise there: if you start such a 25/25/25/25 'portfolio', one component may be overpriced 50 and not be compensated for by combined gains of the other 3 components and to avoid that you need to micro manage them (playing with the ratios), which in turn requires for success know well about all 4 and thus takes away the crucial benefit of specialisation. On average you're not better off than chosing one component a given time and another component another time. And on top of that, if you think that you can compete with your micro management with the macro+micro management of the 'pro's' (read: institutions, central planning) that have tonnes more data available much faster than you, then think again. Your problem of need of fiat is not due to lack of diversication, but to bad choices. You shouldn't have paid the higher silver price (I can blame myself here too), and you should have foreseen renovations / any shorter term cost, and skipped the silver purchase, since in the end, silver is an inbetween step to what you later wanted and it doesnt make sense to do so if that 'later' is within your real needs time frame. Unless you foresaw the price trend better, but in that game ones gain is anothers pain. From the beginning I decided to rout out my system dependency, I bought not only silver but also various stockpiles alike you mentioned some. I still do so. I sometimes buy decoration and other unneeded stuff / art, just because I like it and I think other people will like it too in some future, when I want to sell it again. Basically, it all comes down to the very same: picking out the things that you think hold their economical value better than those others you think not. One can fail here as well as with micromanaging portfolios. And alot supposed to be diversifications aren't as such. Some people already name different kinds of silver diversification, and gold and silver, and stocks and bonds. Despite the different things, components can still go the same way, and NOT be compensated for by others, on any given moment, including the one that matters for you.
Being a poor starving pensioner, I gather my pennies in a cookie jar and count them every night! After many moons I find I have enough for a poor lonely coin, and I look for a bargain at the going rate, whatever that may be. Sometimes that rate goes up the next day, and sometimes it goes down. I care not of profit or loss! It is all but another premium on my Insurance Policy, for I know the overpaid fools running the show will eventually drag the system down into chaos. JMO OC
