Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire I Like Silver

You won't do it with cash at Kroger unless you have exact change.

I'd like to hear why platinum is so cheap right now.

Well said.

Simple supply and demand. It has never been money in the world's history, but gold has always been money, so when folks start seeing the writing on the wall regarding fiat currency, they run to real money more so, even, than to commodities like platinum.

Commodities are just that, and it doesn't take much imagination to initiate a trade.

Imagine someone has just baked 6 loaves of bread, and maybe they can eat 3 before they go stale. Might be easy to trade a Mercury Dime for a loaf of bread.
And the bread baker might trade that Mercury Dime for baking powder or yeast and sugar.

And this might be accomplished with any number of commodities. Rimfire ammo is often touted as a potential currency.
I'll tell this story;

During the late Obama administration years ammo of many sorts became expensive and hard to buy. Rimfire ammo became almost impossible to find and was scalped heavily by individuals across the country.
Now, I got married in the early 1980s. First one child, and before long there were three. In the wake of my first hunting season after marriage I noticed that I
had used less ammunition than normal.

I thought at the time that I'd make up for the usage someday and continued to buy ammo as per normal. In just a few years I had more shotgun shells than I could keep and either blew them off in private clay shoots on the farm or made gifts of some of the better stuff. And I backed off on buying shot shells.

But the rimfire ammo stacked and stored easily. And occasionally I'd have a weekend or a week where i really used a lot of it, so I kept buying. Two or three boxes of Mini Mag a week, and maybe a box of Federal bulk once a month. By 1995 or so I realized that I'd never really use all my rimfire ammo. But some of the LGSs had failed and closed, so I used purchases of rimfire ammo to support those that I could. Again 2 or 3 boxes of mini mag a week.

Even then, and still today I did and do a fair amount of shooting. But I never had the time to shoot anywhere near as much as I was buying. By early 2000 I had multiple storage totes full of rimfire ammo. Never hoarded, never bought anyone out, and there were no shortages at the time. Everyone had all the ammo they wanted.

Along comes Obama... And Hillary....
For a couple of years I was the major donor for 2 different youth shooting programs. And along the way there were a lot of local kids who got their first .22s and had no ammo. Handed a fair number of boxes of bulk Federal out to grateful dads.

Fall of 2015 my youngest needed an expensive tow home. He signed the ticket and got delivered with his truck at home. When they came in the lane and the tow driver saw me he tore up the ticket. I had met him a year or so before as he stood glum faced in a LGS trying to buy ammo for his son's first rifle.

There's a very good local bar and grill owned by a woman who raised her kids alone, and with the help of a 4H club. I love the place but am embarrassed that I can't pay for anything there. (Waitresses love a $50 tip)
What a few summer evenings and a few boxes of .22 ammo can accomplish.

I have never charged a nickel for ammo that I have parted with. But the potential is certainly there.
End of story...

I still don't understand the whole picture when it comes to the precious metals topic. There's good points being made both for and against. All I know for sure is that my financial advisors have a small portion of my widely diversified portfolio in some precious metals investment vehicle. Been that way for years and they never got out of it or changed it so to someone like me it looks like it may be worthwhile to at least be partially involved in precious metals. But what do I know concerning stuff like that ? I just let the investment gurus handle it.

BTW, I shot for a lot of years with Mini-Mag ammo marked $3.45 on the box.

I'm currently using stuff marked $4.95...

And I've never stopped buying CCI ammo when It's available. I bought it at $10 something a box. Currently $7.45...

2 or 3 boxes a week...

I knew all that since I was a 9 year old kid collecting coins. The San Fran Bicentennial quarters in 76 were 40%. But in mint sets

I really took for granted that so many people ‘should’ know that 64 was the cut off for silver aside from the clad halves.

People can just be dumb, numb robots.

Im sure you could quiz half or more of bank tellers on this. Of course thst was reason up until just a few hears ago like (5) last time I did it. Go the bank get a handful or roll of halves, be a 64 kennedy in the lot.

My last silver purchase cost me $697. Bought a $50 face value bag of Dimes from APMEX. Doesn't take much space. Doesn't eat anything.

I don't understand the whole picture either. But a small piece of potential security is doable

I don't keep enough silver that I lose sleep worrying about thieves. I do keep enough ammo that thieves lose sleep thinking of me.

I get where you’re coming from. I have an extremely limited grasp of macroeconomics. I’m sure there’s no shortage of CF members that extremely well-versed, but that education (in my personal opinion) is only suited to keeping the economic machine moving. Not dealing with a collapse.

Its my interest and application of history to current events that gives me the cause and reason to see what is happening. Like I said several times: Economies collapse, kingdoms fail, empires break up, but since the moment the first minting of gold and silver coins were adopted by a civilized society, its been the standard in which every since economy has started and every single economy has returned after failure.

I don’t have a crystal ball or claim I know what’s going to happen. I’m just applying history to establish the odds and 100% (to this point) is about as good as it gets. Every argument against it may start off on logic and reasoning, but it always boils down to an emotional decision that’s the equivalent of “That’s just stupid.”. I’m can’t help but believe that same reaction was portrayed by millions over history.

As for financial advisors, please consider that they make money, even when you lose it. I’ve always wondered why each one of them isn’t a financial whale. It would make sense that their understanding of the economy and the market, in particular, would provide them greater wealth by investing in it, rather then telling others how to do so. Of course, they could be closet millionaires just helping their fellow man.

I am the OP. I didn't get that silver bar for the SHTF scenario. I have other stuff for that. Lots of other stuff.

I like the feel, the weight of that big silver bar. I like to pick it up and look at it.

Gold and silver are worthless. Only been used as money for the last 6000 years or so. Also have many valuable uses in manufacturing. Stack both!

You want to see something cool? Buy yourself a small rare-earth magnet disk. Place the bar at a 50 degree angle (or even a little more). Place the rare-earth magnet disk on top, like it's a child at the top of a slide, and let it slide down. Pretty cool to see the result.

It's due to certain physical properties of silver. It will slide down smoothly, and in slow motion. This isn't because magnets are attracted to silver, which they are not. If that were the case, the magnet would just stop or, if too weak to hold, simply slide off at free fall velocity, neither of which happens. There is a different force involved than magnetic attraction.

PS The above is a simple test for silver bars being real silver, which is why those who invest in physical silver typically also have a bunch of rare earth magnets. It will catch a large percentage of the fakes, but to be certain you should use several different tests, since some fakes can pass the rare-earth magnet test alone. But it's a good first test, and then you do more depending on how well you know the seller. Other tests are simple weight vs circumference/thickness, water displacement vs weight, specific gravity test, the ping test (silver rounds make a distinct sound when pinged), and there are a few more ways without resorting to drilling and chemical testing.

I'm always amazed at how kind hearted and altruistic the precious metal sellers are. They are willing to trade their valuable metals for my worthless fiat currency. How cool is that?

I suppose gasoline is worthless too, because there are both buyers and sellers of the stuff. That argument makes no sense. Silver traders make money both ways on a sale by selling slightly above spot and buying slightly below spot. Same as gasoline sellers. Yet the value of both fluctuates, while remaining fairly stable over time.

Send them my way. I currently have a surplus of US Currency. And the currency is not valueless, but it is backed only by confidence in the government.

Realize though, that there will be "Good Guys" and "Bad Guys". Nothing wrong with taking the spoils of war.

Don't you imagine that most precious metal buyers/sellers have a personal store of the stuff they hold onto? Their own stash?

Precious metal dealers are like auctioneers or bookies. They don’t give a chit who wins or loses as long as they get their cut.

The US dollar had value as it was the worlds oil trade currency. Libya's leader was killed to keep it that way as other nations with a lot of gold were going to stop trading our currency for oil.

They still are going to start traiding it in gold, to have their assets increase in value rather than decrease as happens with stores of fiat dollars. The Khazarian Mafia money changers are losing their grip. Thats why they, through their central banks, are trading dollars to accumulate gold. They see the writing on the wall and they are moving to try and survive.

Is gold worth more, or is the dollar becoming less valuable?

TRH, what does that mean for stocks?