My vicious dog Fergus guards them for me.
Silver US dollars seem to be a good bet.
Interesting you say that.
Not long ago someone, and I can’t remember who, pointed out to me that with a gallon of gasoline at $2.50, a silver dollar (at melt value) will buy roughly 8 gallons. A paper dollar won’t even buy a half a gallon!
Yes, because of the "backed by the government" factor.
But where most starting investors make a mistake is in the graded stuff.
And a MS-60-70 Proof Liberty in fancy boxes with "Certificates of Authenticity" still contains only one ounce of .999 silver, just like the BU's fresh off the US Mint press, but at more than twice the price.
Presenting graded silver dollars for food, if the SHTF, will not get you any more food than presenting a circulated one.
Or ammunition or a gun or a gallon of gas, etc.
The "Certificate of Authenticity" is not even good for toilet paper...it's too rough...much like the pages of the koran.
Don't ask me how I know that.
I just want to add that the person who told me this was here on FR.
My vicious dog Fergus guards them for me.
I don’t agree with that, because silver dollars almost always command a greater premium over melt value. If you just want junk silver, quarters-dimes-halves are a better value UNLESS you can buy SDs at a mere 7 or so percent over 4 quarters or two halves or ten dimes. (very close to $1 at present)
A SD is worth about 15.70 in pure melt. (90% * 26.73 gms)
A silver half is about 7.33 (90% * 12.5 grams) so two of them would be worth 14.66 and a 15.7 SD/14.66 is about 7.5% more silver and more worth.
Though a SD contains more silver than 2x a half and 4x a quarter and 10x a dime, the most general way one values these things is by some multiple of face value.
Most sellers believe SDs are “worth more” than two halves, and silver wise, they are. But in my experience, sellers want more than 7% more for their SDs than they want for 4 junky quarters.
At present pricing, if you can buy SDs for only $1 more than 2 halves, that’s fine. And there is nothing wrong with owning a handful of neat old 100+ year old coins.
Morgan & Peace dollars were made from 1873 to 1935 with some breaks in years. From up to 5 mints. As they were made when the Comstock Lode was active, many Morgans were made in absolutely gargantuan numbers, most years. Probably no more than 20 dates/mints have any great scarcity value.
Go to a coin show next time one is near you. You’ll be blown away by how many SDs there are, and forget not that hundreds of millions of them have been melted down.
I forgot to add, but someone else did anyway, that common date Morgans and Peace dollars are nowhere near as “nice” to own as they once were because tremendous numbers of Chinese fakes have been produced and imported into the US. Thus the ownership of same as bullion is not the big party it once was because now, they are suspect and are actually worth less, because the effort now has to be made to scrutinize them for genuineness on surrender. Trust me, fakes are very common. No really skilled coin dealer would be fooled but like anything else, the fakes have gotten much better over time and if you don’t handle them all the time, they could certainly fool you.