Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Goldbacks: A Possible Replacement Currency?

I heard about this proposed form of currency being produced and, just out of curiosity, had to order one. They have them in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50. A 1 Goldback bill contains 1/1,000th a Troy ounce of gold foil, and each denomination from that to 50 contains the appropriate proportion, i.e., the 10 Goldback bill contains 1/100th Troy ounce of gold foil, and on up. They all conveniently fit into a wallet.

Unlike our old paper money, it doesn't represent a promise to pay the bearer a certain amount of gold. That amount of gold is actually contained in the bill.

I bought a 1 Goldback bill, just for fun. I don't intend to buy any more, but find the concept intriguing.

Link please.

If enough people would use them for trade we could eliminate the Federal Reserve.

Can you smelt them back into gold? I wonder how long they last before the polymer barrier and gold wear off?

The designs are printed on a sheet of polymer that is then bombarded with the correct amount of atomized gold particles in a vacuum chamber. This gold is then sealed inside by a second protective barrier of polymer, thus creating a beautiful negative image.

Safe to say that it's more valuable in the package it's in, but if you wanted to, a chemist could reclaim 100% of the gold molecules in pure form from whatever number of bills you chose to give him.

Goldbacks are a branded note that is printed by Valarum. Like all the others you can just burn them to get the gold out of the paint, the rest of the note is just plastic. The gold melts out of the paint into flake.

Valarum is who did Ghana's gold note which is legal tender in Ghana and follows the spot price of gold.

I didn't know any nation adopted this system. Pretty cool. The one's from Ghana are much more expensive vs the amount of gold in them, though. Link

Maybe one problem with these is there's an artificial number created whereas real gold is always added by just pulling it out of the ground. That is to say it's still a centrally controlled currency.

They contain real gold. When you acquire it, you own and possess the gold in your hand. No third party risk.

A sucker is born every minute.

Hebrews just killin time..

Mine it from the paper if necessary.

Gold's most valuable use is in the form of currency. Most gold coins have never been melted down for use in electronics or jewelry manufacture. It's too valuable in its currency form. If, for some reason, you prefer your gold in the form of dust, however, there are at least two easy ways to reclaim it from these notes.

Okay...

If my math is simply halfway correct:

Gold = $1820 per oz.

Goldback = 1/1000th of an ounce

Goldback cost = $3.79...... X 1000 = selling gold at $3790.00 per oz.

Where can I find these folks so I can instantly double the value of some gold I may have tucked away?

Spot and the actual gold price are two different things completely. Try to walk into a coin shop and buy an ounce of gold in any form for anything like spot. You're also paying for the cost to put it in that form. But that's recoverable on the trade, so it doesn't matter.

For comparison, check out this one ounce gold coin: Link

Buying is a bit above spot. But not DOUBLE, as the Goldback is...



When I sell there, they pay me 2% over spot.

If it was deemed by the public to be a convenient form for transactions, whatever the acquisition cost worked out to be would be the trading cost also. That's how it worked when gold coins were in circulation. There's a word for it, but I cannot think of it at the moment, i.e., the cost of transforming gold or silver into the form of a coin. That cost carries over. We are speaking hypothetically, of course, assuming this form were to take off as a medium of exchange. A long shot.

P T Barnums quote, I believe.
And it seems appropriate here.

Folks, at this stage in the game, these are mainly novelty items, but also food for thought.