Gold and silver. Discuss - Page 5

A question out of my own ignorance - why invest in actual bars instead of a seemingly more liquid stock or etf tracker?

cause when the shit hits the fan, good luck transforming your paper / virtual holdings to actual precious metal.... Doomsday concept.........

I thought that at first too, but why invest in a mining company who owns a mine in a third world country in this political climate? You run the risk of your investment being nationalized after a revolution.

Great you could have told me this yesterday and saved me some unnecessary anal expansion!

In a doomsday scenario gold and silver won't be worth a thing. Water, food, guns and ammo will be where it's at. If you don't want to hold precious metals the smart way to go is with something like a Kitco pool account. You basically buy X of whatever metal you like and it's held by the company. It also allows you to jump between different metals by converting say X amount of silver to X amount of Palladium for instance. If you decide to actually take delivery you can also do that or just dump it and have a cash account. It makes it easy to get rid of instead of having to actually dump physical bars which can be a PITA. Of course there is some advantage to physical ownership as well. You can go anywhere and sell it at whatever the going price is. The proverbial suitcase full of money without the worry of whether or not the suitcase full of "currency" is actually worth something somewhere else. It's a good hedge against a partial currency collapse.

Funny thing is, we are seeing doomsday scenarios in several countries now, and guess what, metals are booming. So you think we'll revert back to a barter economy?

Edited by Nosu3 - 11/15/11 at 12:21pm

That's what I'm thinking. But what do I know? I have a BS in Economics, which has only taught me just how little I actually know lol

I'm not talking about regional collapses. I'm talking about a real doomsday scenario where everything collapses. In that environment things like gold silver diamonds etc won't be worth anything. At least for a while. Water, food, shelter/building materials, fuel sources, guns and ammo will be your new currency. Now over time gold and silver will come back into play as a currency marker as civilization re establishes itself. That could take years to happen. In matters of surviving a catastrophe there is something called the rules of threes. You can only live three minutes without air, 3 days without water, about 3 weeks without food. If you think about this for a while it gives you an idea of how much we take for granted and how valuable these things are.

Gotcha Cranes, can't argue here. But....I do think stocking up on silver is going to be better than stocking up on canned tuna in the long term. Even though obviously food and ammo should be a given, if not for a doomsday economic scenario, at least for a doomsday weather scenario (I'm in Houston).

Oh yeah I agree. I've been into silver for decades and it's been very good to me. Of course it's always wise to stock up on some food and water for short term headaches. Katrina should have driven that one home for a lot of people.

and u can always throw the silver bars at the zombies........

That's what my AR and Benelli M1 Super 90 are for. I'll save the silver for the vampires.

Should have, but didn't for many. You'd be surprised just how many here chalked the Ike warnings up to liberal media conspiracy only to have to be life-flighted out of Galveston.

Well you know what they say about history Javyn.