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

[The Innkeeper]

PMs are not the answer for every situation but they have their place. History has shown many a person has purchased their way to freedom or necessary supplies using them. There are scenarios will they will have little short term value, where they will have immediate value or others where they serve asa portable stash of wealth.

 

[Meerkat]

If I had any PMs which I don't I'd not tell anyone but then if I tried to spend them I wouldn't have to tell, everyone would know.
Plus in times of trouble the gov confiscates it all anyway. Asset forfeiture big time.

 

[Terri9630]

I wasn't talking about the asking price, I was talking about the value of the pm's, who sets the value post SHTF when there are no currency rules?

You do. Do you want the item bad enough to pay what they want or not. You aren't trading silver for paper money at that point. Just goods. If a guy has a chicken and wants an ounce of silver then its worth it if someone is ready to pay it.

 

[Rick]

JMB spot ask up to $16.54/ tr ounce now...

 

[Tacitus]

Until food is readily available precious metals will have little place in the market. Precious metals are in your stash to preserve your wealth and they should not be expected to have an advantage in purchasing power while food and water are in short supply. During the depression you could buy more goods (other than food) with a $5 sack of potatoes than you could with a pound of gold or jewelry. When people are barely staying alive they have no use for metals. You can't eat gold or silver.

No offense, but I don't think a $5 sack of potatoes was ever more valuable than a pound of gold, or even an ounce of gold. We have never gotten to the point in this country when that was the case.

I agree in an high effect, perfect storm EMP-like scenario, where everyone is thirsty, and 90% of the country is busy dying off, gold wouldn't be worth much. But, in almost every other scenario short of that, gold would have some value. And, in some scenarios, gold would have much, much more value than it does today. I prepare for many scenarios, and one of them is one you correctly identify: to preserve wealth in less-than-TEOTWAWKI scenarios.

 

[Tacitus]

i'm packing supplies not currency, if the financial system collapses i'm not lugging gold bars about!

They would definitely be lighter and less bulky than the supplies.

I view PM's as just another hedge against a situation that may or may not happen. It likely won't do me any good, but that's OK. It makes me feel better to have a little bit of it on hand, and that is worth something to me. Anything that I have that helps me sleep better at night is worth having. Someday perhaps my kids or grandkids will think I was an extremely wise woman......or maybe just a paranoid woman. LOL! Either way, I'm sure they won't mind having those physical assets if I never have to use them.

That about sums up my views.

 

[SheepDog]

Tacitus,
During the depression the very rich were trading buckets of gold jewelry for simple food items. That is history. You can learn from it or repeat it.
Store what you eat and eat what you store. Grow and raise your food. Leave the gold and silver to maintain your wealth.

 

[The Lazy L]

Maintain your wealth, I still can't wrap my mind around this.

For the last hundred years (if my memory is correct) silver has averaged at $20 an ounce. For this discussion my great great bount an once of silver for $20. $20 back then was 20 days pay. Today the $20 could be 1 hours pay. Silver has not kept up with inflation. What I don't grasp is how that purchase by my great great maintained wealth?

 

[Caribou]

Buy PM's or don't. We all get to make our own decisions. We all know people that don't have even a weeks worth of food in the house, they get to make that choice. I put PM's on the tail end of prepping. The people that advise PM's suggest 5% to 10% of your liquid assets. PM's are a hedge, if you think you are going to get rich off your silver you might want to think again.

You need to have money. PM's are money. If you have a bank account that is currency. Banks go under and currency gets devalued. When that happens PM's will probably hold their value. Gold might melt but it is still gold and floods won't hurt it. Might someone overcharge you for food, probably. That's your fault for not keeping enough food set aside. What about Venezuela right now, do you think people are getting overcharged for food? Whether it is Venezuelan cash, silver, or tools, you are going to be on the short end of any trade for food.

 

[hiwall]

Many say to have around 7% of your invested money in PM's. That seems like a fair advice to me.
So if you have extra money laying around you have few choices.
Risk it in the stock market.
Risk it in bonds that now have very low interest.
Risk it in a bank that pays you 1% if you are really lucky.
Put it in a canning jar and bury at your place (not a bad plan).
Buy some real estate and hope it goes up in value while you pay the property taxes.
Or risk it on some PM's.

Or do some of each like many people.

 

[Tacitus]

Tacitus,
During the depression the very rich were trading buckets of gold jewelry for simple food items. That is history. You can learn from it or repeat it.
Store what you eat and eat what you store. Grow and raise your food. Leave the gold and silver to maintain your wealth.

Hi Sheepdog,

No one had to carry buckets of gold. In the US, cash did just fine for those who had it. And, since we are talking about people who could afford buckets of gold, we are talking about the richest of the rich, so we are talking about people who had cash. There was deflation during the Depression in the US. Cash held value, but no one had it. An ounce of gold in the US was worth $20-35 during the 1930's. You could buy a lot with a $20 coin or bill back in the '30's. You didn't need a bucket of anything unless you were buying a mansion.

Now, if you are talking about Weimar Germany, then you might have a point. Even so, the price of gold and bread skyrocketed in terms of German Marks. So, as the Mark inflated (lessened in value), you needed more and more marks to buy bread. But, the price of gold also went up, and it tracked the price of bread, so the same amount of gold could buy the same amount of bread, while the amount of Marks required to buy that amount of bread increased hourly. So, no buckets of gold were needed, just small amounts of gold. But, definitely buckets (wheelbarrows) of cash were needed in Weimar Germany.

Note: I expect that the next Depression in the US will not be deflationary; it will be inflationary. Our monetary system is different now, so the next economic disaster will be more like Weimar than like the US Depression.

I agree to have stores, and I agree generally that precious metals are to maintain wealth.

 

[Tacitus]

Maintain your wealth, I still can't wrap my mind around this.

Over the long run, precious metals hold value...not in terms of inflated dollars, but in terms of other commodities or products.

As the saying goes, 100 years ago you could buy a nice suit in New York City with an ounce of gold ($20), and today you can buy a nice suit in New York City with an ounce of gold ($1400). You could say gold went up in value ($20 to $1400), but really gold held its value, and the dollar lost its buying power. During that time, gold held its value and preserved your wealth (it preserved your ability to buy the same suit over time...regardless of what the dollar was doing). Money certainly did not hold its value during that same time. (I think gold is a better wealth preserver than silver, but we can see that an ounce of silver was about $1.40 100 years ago, and it is about $17.50 now, so similar principles apply.)

If you keep any amount of your wealth in US dollars, you might want to consider converting a small portion of that to PMs. If you don't keep any of your wealth in US dollars, then I can see why you might not care about PMs, because you are not interested in fungible mediums of exchange.

For the last hundred years (if my memory is correct) silver has averaged at $20 an ounce. For this discussion my great great bount an once of silver for $20. $20 back then was 20 days pay. Today the $20 could be 1 hours pay. Silver has not kept up with inflation. What I don't grasp is how that purchase by my great great maintained wealth?

100 years ago, a US dollar coin had 77.34% of an ounce of silver (and quarters and dimes slightly less). So, to have an ounce of silver in your pocket, you needed about $1.40 in your pocket. Now, it is $17.50. If you invested with the market, you can out perform silver. If you kept your money in cash, silver far out performed you. In times of crises, silver increased in value greatly, returning to lower values as the economy improved. Gold is climbing now, but I'm not using it yet. I'm holding it until a time of true crisis, when the dollar becomes greatly inflated.

I personally have a very small portion of my wealth in silver or gold, as a hedge. If the dollar crashes, I will lose most of my savings, except for that savings kept in the form of PMs and other commodities of value (grain, etc.).

 

[Tacitus]

Many say to have around 7% of your invested money in PM's. That seems like a fair advice to me.
So if you have extra money laying around you have few choices.
Risk it in the stock market.
Risk it in bonds that now have very low interest.
Risk it in a bank that pays you 1% if you are really lucky.
Put it in a canning jar and bury at your place (not a bad plan).
Buy some real estate and hope it goes up in value while you pay the property taxes.
Or risk it on some PM's.

Or do some of each like many people.

I couldn't agree more.

 

[hiwall]

Maintain your wealth, I still can't wrap my mind around this.
?

 

[Caribou]

During the Great Depression our cash was gold, or at least backed by gold. Our next depression our cash will be fiat.​

 

[SeventiesWreckers]

During the Great Depression our cash was gold, or at least backed by gold. Our next depression our cash will be fiat.​

From Legal Tender, to fire tinder. Sad state of affairs it is.

I like silver, always have. Memories as a child holding a newly minted silver quarter, and enjoying the rich luster & depth that only real silver has. I've always felt that we lost some of ourselves when we abandoned The Silver Standard. I missed it then, just the same as I miss it now.

 

[Sewingcreations15]

If we have a recession here in Australia or the States and you have PMS they will go up in value.

Currently if our bank interest rates get any lower here I will withdraw it and put some into PMS but also hold cash reserves. We get taxed highly here on our bank interest and in the near future we will be loosing money keeping it in the bank taking into account inflation. Personally we are not in the stock market as I believe that if you invest you have to be prepared to loose it all in the volatile markets although my super is in the stock markets which I have no control over.

Other preps for us are food, prepping and all needs storage.

 

[lonewolf]

They would definitely be lighter and less bulky than the supplies.

cant eat PM's post SHTF and I wont be able to find anyone here stupid enough to swap their food for pm's, although there are a few who would qualify for the title.

 

[SheepDog]

Maintain your wealth, I still can't wrap my mind around this.

For the last hundred years (if my memory is correct) silver has averaged at $20 an ounce. For this discussion my great great bount an once of silver for $20. $20 back then was 20 days pay. Today the $20 could be 1 hours pay. Silver has not kept up with inflation. What I don't grasp is how that purchase by my great great maintained wealth?

I was buying silver for $5 to $7 an ounce in the mid to late 70s. In the late 70s to early 80s silver sold at $17 to $20 an ounce (for about 3 months and then the bottom fell out which nearly bankrupted the Hunt bros who were attempting to corner the market.), At the same time period gold was at $500 an ounce.
In the nineteenth century (a bit before my time) an ounce of silver was worth $1 and an ounce of gold was $20. In the early 20th century gold went to $34 and an ounce and silver was worth about $1.24.
So in the last 100 years gold has gone from $35 to a bit over $1500 and silver has gone to just over $17. Silver lost value when it was no longer used in photography and gold went up when they started using it in electronics.

 

[The Lazy L]

I found a graph for the price of silver for the last 100 years.

 

[angie_nrs]

Some people think that silver could be a better hedge b/c the top hasn't been reached yet and hasn't soared like gold. I have no idea if that line of thinking is correct or what the future holds. I have a bit of each just in case b/c I had some cash that I wanted to put into PM's. At this point it really isn't worth a whole lot to me since I have no intention of ever doing anything with it. I knew this full well when I bought it. I'm still OK with that. For me, it gives me peace of mind and helps me to diversify my holdings. It has advantages and disadvantages......just like everything else I own.

Even though I value a food supply over PM's, if I were to put all my cash into food, it would go bad before I could eat it all. I'm not putting all my cash into LTS foods since I don't eat LTS foods presently and things would have to get really bad for me to rely only on those freeze dried foods, since I much prefer fresh fruits, veges, and meats. That doesn't mean I don't have any LTS, but it does mean that I'm not going to put all my eggs into that particular basket. To each, their own.

With the rhetoric/trade war ratcheting up against China, I have also traded some of that cash for things such as several extra pairs of shoes, clothes, batteries, detergent, jars, kitchen utensils, appliances, hygiene products, etc. Anything I can stock up on now at a good price and can keep in storage will pay off if the trade war goes off the rails. If it doesn't, I still have things that I will use in the future and would likely still go up in price no matter what. So, there are other things that can be traded for cash aside from PM's that can help you to preserve your wealth, it's just shorter term preservation since those "things" won't last as long as PM's. If you have your needs met, and don't have to spend money later on anything, then I'd say that's a good position to be in. For me, PM's are just part of the overall strategy in planning for the future, no matter what it holds.

 

[hiwall]

Gold and silver should never go up. If they do it is because the value of our paper money has gone down.
In the first 150 years or so that America used gold coins for money there was basically no inflation.
Gold and silver prices have been suppressed for many years. Several banks paid huge fines for doing this so it is an absolute fact. Of course the banks are still doing doing the same thing. Major banks (and countries) are stockpiling gold (and to a much lesser extent silver). Why are they doing this? If they are stockpiling gold should you too?
The government and the banks have brainwashed the public into thinking that we should have inflation. That is just bizarre. We should not have inflation and we wouldn't if we still used gold for money instead of paper. Every single day that twenty dollar bill in your pocket is worth less. Every day!

 

[Tacitus]

It is strange looking for graphs of silver going back 100 years. The London Fix is often given, but prices were very different in the US. Also, check to see if the graph is inflation adjusted or not.

I have silver...it was a gateway PM for me. I have to say that I don't trust it as much as I trust gold. It is hard to get into gold, because it is so much more valuable (and therefore costly), but you can buy "small" or fractional gold coins for $290-$350 (e.g., French 20 Franc coins or British Sovereigns). I personally think preppers should get to know these coins. There are smaller (fractional ounce) US and Canadian and Australian coins, and others, but modern fractionals carry higher premiums, whereas these two older coins (still made today, but millions of these coins are out there) carry much lower premiums, and they have been made for hundreds of years (and so there are many coins of this precise size and weight, but with different images on them as governments and monarchs changed.

The 20 Franc coin is almost a fifth ounce. It was the first "euro" in that dozens of countries across Europe made coins of this precise specification. They looked different, but everyone knew they were the same size, so they were used interchangeably. French and Swiss are the most common today.


The British Sovereign is almost a quarter ounce. Mints all over the British Empire made these, and so they are very well recognized around the world, relatively speaking.

 

[angie_nrs]

The silver coins I bought in August of 2018 for $15, are today priced at $24.38.
However, I bought a much smaller quantity in April of 2013 and it was $29.23 at that time.
I guess it doesn't really make any difference on price for me since I don't plan on selling them back.
Just FYI, PM's have been trending up since this spring.

 

[zoomzoom]

I wasn't watching my silver for several weeks. Pleased to see it go over $21/oz.

 

[phideaux]

Question,
I don't own any pm.
Been thinking about.

If the dollar value goes to zero.
Pm is valued by the dollar , right.

I mean 10oz of silver is valued/worth is 300 dollars, which is worth zero.

What's that silver worth ..
Just trying to figure a place for some cash to turn it into some shtf value.

Guns and ammo are good for barter ,if the dollar goes to zero value, not so much the pm.

Jim

 

[Rick]

Looks like I did the right thing I bought silver in significant quantities 2-3 times a year over past 2 years.

 

[Rick]

Silver coins buy anything in Venezuela,
gasoline, guns, ammo, food, TP..

 

[SheepDog]

Jim,
The value of the dollar is set by gold or silver, not the other way around. If the dollar dropped to $0.01 the silver would be worth $2300 an ounce.

 

[phideaux]

I understand that .
Now if dollars is worthless where you gonna get the value of the silver .
You gonna sell it for 2300 useless dollars?

You can't eat it , sell it for worthless dollars , why?

Barter it to someone, because it's valued at 2300 worthless dollars.

I don't know.
I need something that I can use , that is worth more than worthless dollars.

I guess I just see the dollar becoming zero value and anything gauged by that dollar as being worthless.

Jim