Posted on 11/20/2014 6:40:09 PM PST by blam
Nov 20, 2014
Guy Christopher
Guy Christopher writes: A lot of folks took advantage of recently falling gold and silver prices to beef up their precious metals holdings.
Those adding to their portfolios understood the old adage of buying low and selling high. Unfortunately, others wait until dollar values of gold and silver have zoomed before deciding to convert their paper money.
Still, most make buying decisions for their own good reasons. They either have the confidence of their convictions, or they have good questions still unanswered.
One of the frequent questions we get at Money Metals Exchange is a good one – How would I go about “spending” my gold and silver in a barter-type economy?
Readers and clients want to know if gold and silver would be accepted by a shop merchant or by a tradesman offering his talents. They ask how a seller would “make change” for gold and silver coins or bars. We feel those are perfectly valid questions.
The answer highlights the simple advantage gold and silver would give you in every financial transaction.
(snip)
You'll recognize another way of saying it – He who has the gold makes the rules.
(snip)
(Excerpt) Read more at marketoracle.co.uk ...
Greetings LevinFan:
IMHO, the most valuable SHTF metals are a well thought out balance between gold, silver, copper jacketed lead and blued gun steel.
Those who beat their swords into plowshares work fields for the swordkeepers. Gold stores wealth. Silver is the medium of gentlemen. Barter, medium of poor free men. Slaves work for script.
So, what will a one ounce gold coin bring? Perhaps twenty, one ounce silver coins or in unprocessed food terms, four heifers. And what might a one ounce silver coin purchase in food? One quartered fryer. Unprocessed, eight layer chicks or eight dozen eggs.
Cheers,
OLA
“...now you’re looking at something with a decent value to weight ratio, and that’s gold.”
Lots of things can be used for bartering (ammo, junk silver, coffee, booze, talents) to get by on. The gold is more of a long-term thing, once things get better.
Or, more realistically, when stocks go bad (but not a total collapse of the economy), you have gold to offset some of those losses.
Not if I’m the one selling the chickens.
Good points, but...
You say “Even for the nobility, gold was excessively valuable.”
So, you and your neighbor both go to the King and arrange a trade for food. Your neighbor has paper, you have gold.
Who’s going to be eating fried chicken that night? You, of course. That is, if the King didn’t have you beheaded and just take your gold.
“There are several issues the gold people miss. First, my big question. If money is so worthless compared to gold, why are they willing to give me something valuable(gold) for something worthless(paper)? Clearly they value the paper.”
Because paper does have value BEFORE a SHTF situation. After it’s over, during the rebuilding of the economy, gold, silver will reign over paper until things stabilize. I’ve read in history books where folks from the south papered their walls with Confederate notes. Never heard of them gluing gold/silver coins to their walls.
“Currency might make a comeback after a SHTF situation, as currency is easier than barter, but not during one. During one, people will only be interested in things of practical value.”
Another good point. That’s why I listened to my grandpa when he said “Never put all your money in one pocket”.
” Those who beat their swords into
plowshares work fields for the
swordkeepers.”
But those who beat their plows into swords are going to get put down quick. Remember who they are dealing with. The survivors are not going to be peasant minded wimps, or stupid.
They see a neighbor trying to be lord of the land, I make laws and get to tax you, they’ll kill him.
Wouldn’t you?
As for blued steel? Forget it. You aren’t hammering out a colt 45. Guns are precision machined. If those tools survive, so does the tools for making blued steel.
” So, you and your neighbor both go to the
King and arrange a trade for food. Your
neighbor has paper, you have gold.”
First, there is more than gold and paper. In the past, working class did not trade in gold much. Second, it is the king buying the chicken. He isn’t a farmer, he lives by taxing others.
Third, good luck with that. It won’t be a bunch of weak pansies he is lording over. Try and lord over your neighbors, and they’ll kill you for it.
won’t be making a plow outta gold...
people just cannot get past the idea in their head that gold has value - its only value is what everyone agrees the value is, when its a currency
LOL. Guess you missed the point. Firearms and ammo make excellent currency, too. Our Neighborhood Watch is well regulated militia.
Gold got value in a world of mud and wood because a few well to do had the luxury of something shinny and pretty. Swords got a high rep mostly for the same reason. Swords had limited value as weapons, but were pretty in a world of ugly.
We don’t live in that world. Gold’s value is as arbitrary as paper. Always has been. Most likely, its value will either be too high to trade in, or worthless trash.
As I had said, in a 90% kill off, trade of any
kind will die. The left over rubbish of our world would see to that. You won’t give a chicken for gold, if you can walk to the decaying mall and clean out the jewelry cases.
Oh, I get the value of guns. Maybe. In a 90% kill off, nothing will have value.
But you won’t be making guns without the same industrial capability to both get the metal, and machine it. If you have the machining tools to make a gun, you have the ability to make the steel. Thus hording gun metal is worthless. And a gun needs more than just gun metal.
I know several refuge families who attribute their survival to owning P.Ms
“P.Ms”
P.Ms ? What is a PM?
precious metals I assume
(typically gold and silver)
“I know several refuge families who attribute their survival to owning P.Ms”
“precious metals I assume
(typically gold and silver)”
Ahh, well there is a difference between refugee situations, and a societal melt down. In a refugee situation, there is the assumption of heading out of the disaster area into areas of security and stability. You expect to be able to trade that precious metal into that functional economy.
A melt down is different. There is no functional economy, or one so small it would be easily saturated.
Think of it in terms of Mexico melting down, money worthless. (no far stretch that). Fleeing north. Your money is garbage, but you’re headed for an economy that will easily value your gold, and has abundant resources to trade for that gold. They still have the luxury of gold.
Now reverse it. Mexico alone survives a melt down, and has the survivors of the world trying to buy whatever they can with the vast stores of gold the world has. Gold value crashes, maybe into nothing.
Or maybe even Mexico itself doesn’t survive any better.
Gold’s value only has value so long as others have the luxury of valuing it. In a SHTF scenario, if you need that chicken, chances are I need it almost as bad as you do.
10s of thousands fit in a few cubic feet.
I just weighed roughly a cubic foot of 9mm, which should be close to 0.22 in weight/volume if not worth, at 60 pounds. At about $500, that’s $8.31/lb, or 6 tons per $100,000 (vs less than 6lbs of gold to store the same value). I don’t know the relative cost of 0.22 vs 9mm, but with gold coming in at 2,000 times better as a store of value in large quantity than 9mm, I’m thinking it’ll beat 0.22 pretty easily as well.
I happen to agree with you, but I think they'll stack side by side quite well.
So what if they just cut the dollar in half.....then what?
” I just weighed roughly a cubic foot of
9mm, which should be close to 0.22 in
weight/volume if not worth, at 60 pounds.
At about $500, that’s $8.31/lb, or 6 tons
per $100,000”
I think you’re forgetting that bullets would spike in value. All consumable goods would. Gold, being unessential to survival, would not.
If you had thousands of unreplaceable rounds, would you so easily sacrifice that for gold? And if gold does maintain value, how do you make change?
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