Today, Saturday I just bought a couple grand worth of Silver

Homesteading & Country Living Forum

Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
zoomzoom said:
But sometimes it doesn't work like that. When stocks crashed when COVID started, so did precious metals. Also look at the last week or 2 when the market took a strong downturn. Precious metals did the same.
Click to expand...
No guarantees, obviously. Playing in statistical probabilities here.

Regarding covid onset and metals, gold went from 2000ish to 1800ish. I guess I don't think that is a crash, although it is significant. And, I never once felt like I needed my gold during Covid. In fact, I welcome all downturns in gold prices, since I'm still a buyer.

During the 2008 crash, there was a brief but noticeable dip in metals as investors withdrew from the market, and held their money in cash as they watched what was happening, then they started putting their cash in gold, and it climbed very quickly. The fast moving wealth is moved from growth stocks to conservative stocks, then to cash, and then from one currency to another, and then to paper metals and real metals.
 
SheepDog said:
metal funds are typically "over sold". Like futures they have some value but that value can disappear if the mining company goes bust.
Click to expand...
I think many are. Sprott may be, too, but they say they are not. Who knows? I can't put my hands on that wealth now, so it has to go somewhere. Most is not in metal, but some is.
 
angie_nrs said:
I get why you have paper PM's, but nothing (for me) is more satisfying than having that shiny stuff in hand. It is more expensive and cumbersome to hold, but it has the advantage that it won't disappear either.....unless someone steals it. There are pros and cons to both for sure.
I told the kids not to bother with physical PM's since the one's I have will likely outlive me and they are not trying to protect wealth but instead trying to get PM's as an investment. I don't consider them an investment per se. I consider them to be some protection from complete loss.

The FED is supposed to make an announcement soon. I wonder if that will have any effect on current PM prices. I still think PM's are set to go up. I don't see how they won't, considering the dollar is losing value by the day now. :mad:
Click to expand...
Agree on all counts.
 
Jay said:
I prefer silver coins myself. But be careful to buy from a reputable dealer, as there are counterfeits out there, I would also never buy from a pawn shop.
Click to expand...
The Princess may purchase some more junk silver soon.

Ben
 
Tacitus said:
I think many are. Sprott may be, too, but they say they are not. Who knows? I can't put my hands on that wealth now, so it has to go somewhere. Most is not in metal, but some is.
Click to expand...
We have moved a good bit into Sprott which I understand is physical. I relaxed quite a bit after we did that.

Ben
 
Picked up one of these. Hard to find lately. A British Sovereign, 0.2354 troy oz gold, minted for over 200 years. Premium was 4%, which is the going premium for modern full ounce gold coins such as the American Gold Eagle (AGE) at the local coin store...which is a low premium. I like the smaller size (about a quarter ounce) and the smaller premium, and the fact that it is very common and well known around the world.

images
 
Picked up some more gold. Why...when the price of gold is still high? My reasoning:
  1. I have been saving aggressively for the past few years...and I mean aggressively, storing away wealth in physical cash in preparation for a "sudden bank holiday" or worse economic problem...so, I had cash on hand.
  2. I was moving digital money around in my retirement account, from a cash-like fund into another fund, and I thought, "Why am I more comfortable moving big chunks of these digits between funds than I am "buying" gold with physical cash?...isn't "buying gold" really just moving physical cash wealth into physical gold wealth, and if so, I should be as comfortable moving physical wealth as I am moving digital wealth. I realized I have been more concerned about the price of gold than I was any fund I was buying, and that had kept me from acting sooner.
  3. I saw several reports on inflation, and thought, "Why am I holding my physical wealth in the form of physical cash? If I am going to hold physical wealth at all (and not spend it), I should hold it in a non-inflating physical form...e.g., not in the form of US dollars. I had been waiting to spend that money, but I decided the time was now, given the inflation reports.
So, the price is high, yes. But inflation is coming, so the price really should go up further (as the value of the dollar goes down). So, I transferred a bigger chunk than normal of my wealth from dollars into gold...which seems crazy because I was buying when the price was 2/3 what it is now...then again, my 401k is in stocks and bonds that have increased that much as well, and I'm still buying them.

This time, this is all the local coin store had in stock. (Well, this and gold bars, but I like government minted coins instead of privately minted bars...easier to sell, because they are more recognizable and more trusted.) All other gold coins were cleaned out, even American Gold Eagles which they get from the US Mint. So, I'm not the only one doing this.

I thought I would post a picture here. People need to know what these things look like. You can get Krugerrands in tenth, quarter, half and full ounce sizes. (There are also "2 Rand" coins which are the exact same size and gold content as the Sovereigns above.)
gold-south-african-krugerrand-coins.jpg
 
Last edited:
Tacitus said:
Picked up some more gold. Why...when the price of gold is still high? My reasoning:
  1. I have been saving aggressively for the past few years...and I mean aggressively, storing away wealth in physical cash in preparation for a "sudden bank holiday" or worse economic problem...so, I had cash on hand.
  2. I was moving digital money around in my retirement account, from a cash-like fund into another fund, and I thought, "Why am I more comfortable moving big chunks of these digits between funds than I am "buying" gold with physical cash?...isn't "buying gold" really just moving physical cash wealth into physical gold wealth, and if so, I should be as comfortable moving physical wealth as I am moving digital wealth. I realized I have been more concerned about the price of gold than I was any fund I was buying, and that had kept me from acting sooner.
  3. I saw several reports on inflation, and thought, "Why am I holding my physical wealth in the form of physical cash? If I am going to hold physical wealth at all (and not spend it), I should hold it in a non-inflating physical form...e.g., not in the form of US dollars. I had been waiting to spend that money, but I decided the time was now, given the inflation reports.
So, the price is high, yes. But inflation is coming, so the price really should go up further (as the value of the dollar goes down). So, I transferred a bigger chunk than normal of my wealth from dollars into gold...which seems crazy because I was buying when the price was 2/3 what it is now...then again, my 401k is in stocks and bonds that have increased that much as well, and I'm still buying them.

This time, this is all the local coin store had in stock. (Well, this and gold bars, but I like government minted coins instead of privately minted bars...easier to sell, because they are more recognizable and more trusted.) All other gold coins were cleaned out, even American Gold Eagles which they get from the US Mint. So, I'm not the only one doing this.

I thought I would post a picture here. People need to know what these things look like. You can get Krugerrands in tenth, quarter, half and full ounce sizes. (There are also "2 Rand" coins which are the exact same size and gold content as the Sovereigns above.)
gold-south-african-krugerrand-coins.jpg
Click to expand...
Sounds like you were collecting physical gold and silver about the same time as myself. If you consider dollar cost averaging it works out to still being a decent deal.

Crypto is mucking with the price of gold since people look at it as competition with gold. I think it is artificially deflating the price of gold. The next time crypto corrects gold could adjust upward.

We have an order of junk silver coming soon.

Ben
 
Cascadian said:
We have purchased in the last few months also. As far as prices go we figured part of something is better than nothing.
Click to expand...
It's always a good day to trade Federal Reserve Notes for money.
 
Cascadian said:
We have purchased in the last few months also. As far as prices go we figured part of something is better than nothing.
Click to expand...
If you have inflation (like we do now) putting your money in anything besides dollars is almost always better.
As the price of everything goes up, the price of your investment value will too.
The piles of cash in your safe will not.
Many think the stock market and the price of stocks hitting record highs lately is a sign of a booming economy; it is more an indicator of how many of your shrinking dollars it now takes to buy a share of stock. :(
 
Last edited:
lilmissy said:
If you go to a local coin dealer, how do you know that coin you purchase is legit?
Click to expand...
Good question!

I would like to learn how people handle that. The Princess authorized me purchasing touch stones but I never got around to that. In a pinch I have a triple beam balance and graduated cylinders to determine the density of coins if I had to do so.

I had an associate that put together an application for a company dealing in precious metals when gold was at its peak. Scamners were plating lead and other metals with gold. They had the density thing figured out. The application monitored what the coins sounded like when struck with a soft hammer. Gold would ring at a specific frequency but the sam stuff at a different frequency.

Ben
 
lilmissy said:
If you go to a local coin dealer, how do you know that coin you purchase is legit?
Click to expand...
This topic was actually covered in this thread......somewhere. I believe Tacticus started that discussion here.

I have a magnet, a scale (both digital and plastic) and a Fisch. There are also testers that you can buy, but I don't know how accurate they are. Neither gold, nor silver are magnetic.
 
angie_nrs said:
This topic was actually covered in this thread......somewhere. I believe Tacticus started that discussion here.
Click to expand...
Yes. This post, among others in this thread.

I use the Fisch balance and the Fisch ringer to test the gold I buy. I also ping the gold on the table top at my local coin store (LCS) to hear the ping before I leave. Gold has a high pitched pinging sound. Fakes have a thudding sound, but no ping (or, they will be too big or too light for the Fisch balance/slot tester). (There are apps for phones out there which supposedly check the frequency of the ping, but I have never used them.)

I don't have a tester for my silver, but Fisch does make one for the large coins. I guess I hope that the smaller silver coins don't have enough profit to be worth faking. If they are going to fake a silver coin, I guess I think it will likely be a collector coin, but I only buy bullion coins which sell based only on bullion value, not based on collector value. So, hopefully, the coins I buy are not worth the time of the fakers. That may be naive of me, I don't know.

But, if you are uncomfortable about this, you might consider buying current year coins. If you know your LCS orders from one of the US Mint wholesalers, then it is very unlikely to be fake (it probably goes direct from the mint to the wholesaler to your LCS--ask about that). You may pay a little extra for that peace of mind (for a current year coin, semi-direct from the mint), but it does make me feel better when I buy AGE's or ASE's. Hopefully you have a trustworthy LCS in your area that does enough volume to be able to place orders like that.
 
Last edited:
The wife had an "uh oh" moment last night regarding the risk of inflation, while we watched the news. She authorized me to convert some of our emergency physical cash to gold.

It helps that she doesn't think we need as much emergency cash as I do, so she thinks that cash was being wasted anyway, so we might as well put it in a form that won't devalue with the dollar. Like a good husband, I agreed with her. So, I converted some of that wealth to metal today.

On the way home, I withdrew some cash to start building up our emergency cash again. It is pay day, after all.
 
Tacitus said:
The wife had an "uh oh" moment last night regarding the risk of inflation, while we watched the news. She authorized me to convert some of our emergency physical cash to gold.

It helps that she doesn't think we need as much emergency cash as I do, so she thinks that cash was being wasted anyway, so we might as well put it in a form that won't devalue with the dollar. Like a good husband, I agreed with her. So, I converted some of that wealth to metal today.

On the way home, I withdrew some cash to start building up our emergency cash again. It is pay day, after all.
Click to expand...
Wink wink say no more say no more ...

B
 
Well, I thought I was all done with stocking PM's. But, I'm getting that creepy, 'oh crap!', feeling that my bank accounts are going to be worthless. Gee, I wonder why? :rolleyes: I'd really like to invest in property, but the prices are so inflated right now that I just don't see it happening anytime soon. In addition, property carries a pretty heavy maintenace fee, called property taxes.:mad: That's one thing I like about PM's. Once you buy therm, there are no taxes as they just sit there and look pretty.

I think folks are going to start running to PM's if inflation keeps shooting up. I don't see where there is anything out there that's going to stop that, so I loaded up again today. People are waking up and that's going to put pressure on PM's that the central banks are going to have a hard time covering for. There was a nice dip this morning so I made my order. Cash just doesn't feel comfy like it used to. Every time I order, I feel like I'm giving the middle finger to the central banks.....it feels pretty good.:) So, here we go again.......
 
angie_nrs said:
Well, I thought I was all done with stocking PM's. But, I'm getting that creepy, 'oh crap!', feeling that my bank accounts are going to be worthless. Gee, I wonder why? :rolleyes: I'd really like to invest in property, but the prices are so inflated right now that I just don't see it happening anytime soon. In addition, property carries a pretty heavy maintenace fee, called property taxes.:mad: That's one thing I like about PM's. Once you buy therm, there are no taxes as they just sit there and look pretty.

I think folks are going to start running to PM's if inflation keeps shooting up. I don't see where there is anything out there that's going to stop that, so I loaded up again today. People are waking up and that's going to put pressure on PM's that the central banks are going to have a hard time covering for. There was a nice dip this morning so I made my order. Cash just doesn't feel comfy like it used to. Every time I order, I feel like I'm giving the middle finger to the central banks.....it feels pretty good.:) So, here we go again.......
Click to expand...
If your looking at buying property try to buy a place where you can take advantage of timber and or AG exemptions. It will reduce your property taxes substantially. I think in my state it requires 5 acres or more to qualify for the exemptions, check with your county assessor. We have a large ranch, and with the timber and AG tax exemptions our property taxes are way less than for a small house in town.
 
Mountain trapper said:
If your looking at buying property try to buy a place where you can take advantage of timber and or AG exemptions. It will reduce your property taxes substantially. I think in my state it requires 5 acres or more to qualify for the exemptions, check with your county assessor. We have a large ranch, and with the timber and AG tax exemptions our property taxes are way less than for a small house in town.
Click to expand...
That's a good point. Most people that live around here are pretty well aware of what their timber is worth, although not all. Hubs is well versed in that area and knows the right people to call in order to do harvesting/marketing if that happened to be the plan. When we bought our homestead, it was being logged off at the time but the seller knew us and was responsible with the cut. We've since had it thinned again and the money we got from that almost paid for the property itself. Still, prices on (even vacant) property right now are in a bubble. We're waiting for that bubble to burst before we step in, so we can scoop up some deals. I just don't know how long we'll have to wait.

In the meantime.....PM's it is.

This month I noticed the money market account interest went from .31% to .2% effective Oct 1, 2021. That cash sitting in the account is doing practically nothing. I'm betting that PM's will beat that over time, plus I don't have to pay income tax on the gain when I sell it.....at least, I don't think so. It doesn't matter.....I don't plan on selling it anyways, but ya never know. Taking wealth out of the hands of the central banks and putting it in MY hands just makes me feel good right now. Plus, as a bonus.....it's private. Big brother doesn't have access to my PM's and can't see what I have sitting in front of me......I hope. :oops:
 
angie_nrs said:
That's a good point. Most people that live around here are pretty well aware of what their timber is worth, although not all. Hubs is well versed in that area and knows the right people to call in order to do harvesting/marketing if that happened to be the plan. When we bought our homestead, it was being logged off at the time but the seller knew us and was responsible with the cut. We've since had it thinned again and the money we got from that almost paid for the property itself. Still, prices on (even vacant) property right now are in a bubble. We're waiting for that bubble to burst before we step in, so we can scoop up some deals. I just don't know how long we'll have to wait.

In the meantime.....PM's it is.

This month I noticed the money market account interest went from .31% to .2% effective Oct 1, 2021. That cash sitting in the account is doing practically nothing. I'm betting that PM's will beat that over time, plus I don't have to pay income tax on the gain when I sell it.....at least, I don't think so. It doesn't matter.....I don't plan on selling it anyways, but ya never know. Taking wealth out of the hands of the central banks and putting it in MY hands just makes me feel good right now. Plus, as a bonus.....it's private. Big brother doesn't have access to my PM's and can't see what I have sitting in front of me......I hope. :oops:
Click to expand...

Do you mind sharing who you are dealing with? I haven't bought from dealers in some time.
 
angie_nrs said:
This month I noticed the money market account interest went from .31% to .2% effective Oct 1, 2021. That cash sitting in the account is doing practically nothing. I'm betting that PM's will beat that over time, plus I don't have to pay income tax on the gain when I sell it.....at least, I don't think so. It doesn't matter.....I don't plan on selling it anyways, but ya never know. Taking wealth out of the hands of the central banks and putting it in MY hands just makes me feel good right now. Plus, as a bonus.....it's private. Big brother doesn't have access to my PM's and can't see what I have sitting in front of me......I hope. :oops:
Click to expand...
This is correct.
In 7 years, not only will they have no clue how much you bought, when it was bought, more importantly they will have no clue what you paid for it (cost basis).
I sold some stock I had bought over 10 years ago, spanning a couple years, when the 1099 came in, the box for "cost basis" was blank. :oops:
I asked the H&R Block guy, what number do we put down for that?
His reply: "Any number you want";).
*Disclaimer: Not tax or investment advice.
 
I buy from APMEX most of the time. I trust their quality, so I don't do a lot of shopping around. I probably should, but I get bogged down in details sometimes and with PM's, the cost is mostly market based, so I don't worry myself too much over it if I pay a few cents more than I need to. I've dealt with them before and have never had a problem, so that's where I usually go. I can usually find a coupon code online for $15 (or more) off my order and I buy enough when I place an order that I don't have to pay for shipping.
 
I fell into the precious metal trap around Y2k, THEN during the Vid outbreak, I discovered one eye opening thing, if its not there, you can't buy it at any price, and what fool is going to trade already scarce goods for metal. Investing and trading for the now is great, but turn the profits into preps, but don't expect the coins to feed you in bad times, you could melt them into bullets I suppose, maybe fishing weights BUT... the caveat here is when the rebuilding starts and silver is 100$ an ounce, BUT you have to get to that point alive. My advice is to trade only in things you can build wealth on in the here and now, and hell, its a fun hobby bet depending on metals to feed you in bad times is stupid. I saw a guy at the flea market a year ago selling rolls of Charmin for 2$ each AND GETTING IT! Store stuff like TP, booze and such if you want to make a profits! I sold boxes of OLD PMC 22 lead heads at 5$ a box., others got 10, I'm not that greedy though. I paid off my AR-10 in fact doing it. store ammo, even the junk, reloading tools and a bunch of popular dies would make a fortune in times of no ammo at all.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Back
Top