Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Physical Gold

Silver coins for smaller purchases. Gold for larger trades.

You can accumulate gold coins that are .11 Troy ounce. There's also silver, which can be had in all sizes, down to silver dimes containing a mere 0.072 Troy ounce each, up to a kilogram bar, and everything in between.

Hawkeye, if you are paying for stock trades you are with the wrong broker.

No comparison as with gold ....none at all.

I have some 1/10th oz gold coins. That less than $200 a pop.

How do the brokers make a living?

even if you had 'spendable' size gold, who is going to be setting the price at the time of the transaction? For SHTF, gold and diamonds are just awful when it comes to dependability.

I keep some physical boomer rocks around mostly for the slight chance I might want to use them as a stopgap. I don’t buy into any of the common SHTF scenarios where an economic collapse in the US would happen too fast to liquidate other assets, or happen in such a way that fiat and securities become worthless.

There are reasonable scenarios where it might make sense to transact in boomer rocks. Probably fewer than in a decentralized crypto but who knows.

Having a few % of assets in physical gold or silver doesn’t really have much opportunity cost.

How many stocks have increased in value 580% in 23 years?

I'm sure there's a few. But not many.

Brokerages have more than 109 ways to make money other than trading fees. Margin loans are a big one, and securities lending for the shorts who are probably trading on margin.

The more recent one is getting paid for order flow. There are outfits that will pay them to send trades their way. A big part of the reason this has value for those involved is the data they get on what positions of what size are being taken to feed their high speed trading systems.

An absolute ton. Just an S&P 500 index fund would return close to that.

The ones that do it "commission free" or for next to nothing like Robinhood are compensated most often by payment for order flow. Basically, they are getting a kickback for poor executions. The SEC did a study and Robinhood paid a $65,000,000 penalty for making claims that their executions were "equal" to the other firms like Merrill Lynch, etc... The SEC found it would have been cheaper for the clients to pay a traditional commission vs. the "no commission" in most all of the transactions.

Nothing is for free.

I have some of these in both gold and silver. The premiums aren't bad on the gold ones but are too high on the silver ones. I only buy the silver ones when a local shop gets them because they give me a deal on them. I got a good deal on a 100g gold one from them a few years ago. I only paid a bit over spot. I bought 20g gold ones for my kids.

For small silver I prefer mercury dimes.

Bb

My point exactly. They have to make it somewhere. Their living doesn't just appear out of thin air. Ultimately, it comes from the buyers and sellers of their product. It's just hidden when it's "commission free."

Exactly. Investing in gold in normal times is one thing. Hoarding gold and silver for a shtf type of situation will leave many in rough shape if chit ever does hit the fan. Society devolves into pure chaos and guns, ammo, food, fuel, water ect will be where everyone wished they put their money

The time period chosen to do a comparison of gold to any index will greatly skew outcomes.

Another example….

Do the math….. one non-gold bug financial site calculated the total return on the S&P from 2000 to today at 379.74 % … and that is with all dividends re-invested and no income taxes paid.

S&P in year 2000…about 1320….today at 4300….4300/1320 = 3.25

Gold in 2000….about 285….today at $1950. 1950/285 = 6.84


Btw…. One previous poster commented that the best way to acquire metals is through inheritance. This is pretty much true. Especially good at avoiding “inheritance tax.” Also, the cost basis for the ones getting the inheritance is fixed at the current price at time of death.

SHTF may be quite far away time wise, but that doesn’t mean times won’t get worse between now and then. Boomer rocks might come in handy.

Last comment….there has been a “market” for gold for thousands of years. This market may change in how it is conducted, but it will not go away. There may be more bartering needed than we would like, but the market will be there. Anybody who grew up near the Mexican border knows about “bartering.” If the circumstances of a barter don’t look good, make sure the other side of the transaction knows about your wing man hiding in the weeds.

Hawkeye,

Don't get into stocks ....you do not have the mental acuity.

Everybody gets excited about gold and silver when they hit peak prices. That’s when you sell, not buy.

If one has disposable wealth in bad times, by all means buy gold. In bad times is when people will be more likely to sell at an affordable price as they will be willing to unload it for a deal. (meal)

I’ll turn in my Series 7 immediately.