Precious Metals

Depending on your PM strategy, it is worth having a known face-to-face, name-to-name relationship with a local coin shop dealer. My PM strategy is that it is a SHTF investment. Trading in/out is too time consuming, and the premiums keep me from trading casually. What I want from an LCS is honest goods, reasonable price, and instant service/recognition if I ever come in and say I need to liquidate, be it for distress or for unlikely event the price skyrockets and it's time to take profit. For this reason, we've had several meals together and we have each other's cell phones. In the US, they are well-connected to preppers and like-minded conservatives usually.
 
Sanctus said:
I've got some savings kicking around that collects interest - from which the Australian government taxes at around 50% - and I'm wondering if it's worth converting some to gold and storing it in a safe or doing a savings plan where some of my money is converted into gold every month.
I'm kind of new to this type of investing so any advice would be appreciated.
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You must be a high income earner if your paying nearly 50% tax on your interest income!
 
Caduceus said:
Are you sure this is a problem you really will ever really face in your life, or are you just subtly humble bragging ?

One single VERY SMALL gold bar of 1 kilo by itself costs (and is worth) around than 65,000 US dollars.
A larger gold bar (the type you see in movies and that international central banks have in their vaults) weighs between 11 to 13 kilos, and costs (and is worth) around 750,000 dollars EACH.

You will immediately attract a lot of whole lot of unwanted suspicion from any normal gold dealer if you walk into a shop with a gold bar weighing any more than half a kilo.
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Unless somebody has a net worth of at least $50 million dollars there is literally no point to owning large gold bars (unless you inherited it).

The sweet spot for gold bars is 50 gram and 100 gram bars (or in the U.S. were they use ounce sizes I guess maybe 2 ounce and 5 ounce?). The reason that is the sweet spot is your balance liquidity with premiums paid. That is the level where premiums will be generally between reasonable between say 1.5 - 7% (depending on the specific product, its condition and if you buy it on the secondary market or from a dealer). That is a reasonable price to pay for increased liquidity because it still sells well in the secondary market so you are not 100% reliant on bullion dealers which can be a problem in terms of paper trail, KYC, taxes etc. For example in Australia any bullion transaction through a dealer over $5000 Australian dollars must be documented/reported and they have to ID you etc.

Also liquidity from the aspect of exit strategy. For example if you own 10 of the 100 gram gold bars in a bull market you can average out gradually as the price rises or for example you might choose to sell only 300 grams in total, etc. If you own a 1 kilo bar you either sell 1 kilo or nothing. On average by buying say a 1 kilo bar instead of a 100 gram bar you save 2% in premium. Its not worth it for what you give up. If you are worth $100 million dollars and have a safe full of gold bars its a different story but that is irrelevant to 99.99% of people.
 
Australia Sucks said:
You must be a high income earner if your paying nearly 50% tax on your interest income!
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I wish. It's just what the ATO withholds. Who am I to argue with the lovely Australian Government?
This is why I'm looking to buy and store my own gold, to have a tangible asset that can't (hopefully) be taxed and messed around with.
 
Gold currently at 2,145 US Dollars per troy ounce
It's also at all time highs in other foreign currencies.

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Still climbing slowly and steadily. I wonder if it’s going to hold… I’m starting to seriously consider cashing in a little
 
Precious metals are good because they are a physical asset. As good as Bitcoin is being purely digital is a double edged sword. Yes its faster to move bitcoin across the world and its cheaper to store Bitcoin etc but if the world ever goes to shit and the whole grid, electrical system, etc is down (global EMP attacks, nuclear war, etc) your physical bullion is still usable for barter whereas your bitcoin is not accessible until the grid recovers.

Not even that if you end up in some remote village (or with a hunter gatherer tribe), etc in some remote part of the world and you need to barter your Bitcoin will not help you but there is a very high chance they will accept a gold or silver coin.
 
Cynllo said:
Someone posted this on RVF regarding storing of PMs. Thought it was worth preserving.


The most secure safe is one bolted to the floor, or one cast into the floor. Few criminals know how to open safes quickly, but they will haul it off and beat it with sledge hammers until it opens. So unless it is too heavy to move, bolt it down or surround it with concrete.

The better safes are UL rated for fire and burglar protection. If you want one that can not readily be opened by a burglar, look for a TL rating by the Underwriters Laboratory. TL-15 means a semi-skilled burglar with tools will likely take 15 minutes to get into it, etc. TL-15 and TL-30 safes would typically be for jewelry and may be required to get insurance coverage of high-value collections. Run-of-the mill safes will not be UL rated at all.

A safe should be the last layer of security. No high security facility depends only on a safe, it is layer after layer to deter, detect, and delay.

Keep the safe a secret and give no one a reason to think there is a high value item in the house. Have motion lights, cut back shrubbery, etc. Interior lights on timers. Reinforce door jams. Make sure all windows lock securely. Upgrade locks--have a locksmith add mushroom and anti-bump pins to lock cylinders, have them go with maximum MACS (a locksmith will know what that means) for the pinning, and go with an odd-ball 6-pin keyway if possible--that will thwart most picking and almost all bumping attacks. A less common Sargent, Corbin-Russwin, Yale, etc., keyway can be substituted for the ubiquitous Schlage SC1 and Kwikset KW1 keyways in some deadbolts and some key-in-knob lockets. Go with a "paracentric" (i.e., wiggly) keyway. Or go with a better lock (Schlage Primus, etc.) There is an exploitable flaw with the Kwikset "Smart Key" locks and I would personally stay away from them. And go with grade 1 or grade 2 lock hardware. Make sure dead bolts extend all they way into door frames--they do not really lock until the bolt fully extends. Door knobs that lock need to have their strike plates adjusted right so the dead lock feature works so the can not be carded open. For doors that open outwards, there are ways to secure them so hinges can not be removed. For sliding doors, do not have them, but if you are stuck with one, put large-headed screws in above the sliding door so it can not be lifted up out of the track. And add an auxiliary lock to it. Personally, I would remove any garage door emergency release cords.

Have a video system pushing notifications when motion is triggered, and have the DVR in a hidden area. Get a big dog. Have a security system. There are still some you can install yourself. Should have a sensor on every door and window and a glass-break detector on any large areas of glass. Go with cellular communications back to the monitoring company. If you go the do-it-yourself route you can get monitoring for around $10 a month.

If they get past all that, then for a safe, again, bolt it down. Hide it best you can. In one house we had, the safe was in a nook in the basement behind a stack of moving boxes. Beyond that, may want to secure any tools in your workshop that could be used to breach it (drills, angle grinders, cutting torches, etc.) Given a choice, put the safe in a corner where the door opens adjacent to a wall -- harder to use pry bars on it that way. For a better safe, get one that has thick hard plate and multiple relockers. Hardplate tears up drill bits and relockers will fire when a safe is messed with, and then it takes a safe tech, a pile of drills, and a lot of swearing to ever get the thing open again. When people go to the big box store to buy a safe they might be impressed by a lot of large diameter locking bolts. Those are not the issue. You need to take the back panel off the door and see what is going on under the hood. There needs to be a lot of hard plate to protect the lock. Thick steel is not really the issue--with the right drill bit you can go through steel like butter. Hardplate is what is needed. Hardplate destroys drill bits.

I would prefer a good quality mechanical combination over an electronic one. Nearly all electronic locks can be opened quickly by safe techs with certain tools. Those tools are only sold within the industry, and I have heard no reports of criminals getting them, but it could happen. A quality combination lock has no quick way to unlock it without the combination. Safe cracking in movies, where they dial in the combination by feel, is nonsense. Mechanical locks can be manipulated open, but it is not a quick process--it usually takes hours. If one is really worried about it, get an S&G 8410 -- rated for 20 hours of manipulation effort. Or get a Kaba-Mas X-10 lock, although it is electronic, there is no known method of getting past it other than destructive means. But unless you have something incredibly valuable those two locks would be expensive overkill.
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I don’t think buying a $5,000 high-end safe to store $1000 in physical gold in your house makes much sense. And on the flip side…not sure I’d recommend for a very wealthy person to store $100k+ in gold at their residence in a $5k safe. That sounds quite risky as well, even if a thief fails in the robbery, if intel got out somehow to “bad guys” that you have a lot of gold on site, you are putting your life in danger.
 
I read it on kitco news so take it with a grain of salt but some high ups in the gold business think the west has lost control of the price of gold and the BRICS are taking over.
 
Bought a gold bar once in an auction. Wasn’t going to pay retail for sure. Paid for it in cash. Had the gold bar in my office in a drawer. Until I got tired of it and sold it. It was just so f useless.
A friend of mine bought a gold bar and stored it in a bank safe. Bringing it from the seller to the safe was very exciting for him. He made a nice profit from it. This was in 2007 I think. He told me gold prices are 100% manipulated. He has some connections to Antwerp.

Had a gold coin in my wallet worth probably 1k. As I was driving my wallet got stuck in the car door and the wallet flew on the highway. A tow truck retrieved it. Really honest fellow. Coin was gone though.

Gold value also has to do with purity. Gold by itself is not solid enough.
So if you buy gold in Dubai it’s worth less than Spanish gold. The level of purity is lower. Dubai old gold market is something impressive to see.
Only experts can tell the difference from Dubai and Spanish gold.

I had a friend who lived in Syria. He would say if you scratched the surface enough with your hands you would find gold.

You can always buy gold to your wife. But housekeeper might steal it. Once my mother in law dog was carrying a gold ring in her mouth. The house keeper had stolen half of a drawer.

Another hide the gold in flower vases. Construction people went to paint the building. Gold was gone.

I don’t like gold to be honest. It’s useless. It has use in electronics. But that’s different. Real estate is much better. If I would buy again would be just coins. I think in bad situation it would be easier to trade coins for something than a bar. If a bar is worth like 35k and you just want to buy a boat ticket or something like that. Cutting a chunk would be troublesome.

Yeah having a little purse with gold coins like in medieval times would be something nice to look at.

If I were to buy big amounts of it. Probably would melt it and make it seem like average items. Like door knobs. I would make all my door knobs out of gold. Drawer knobs. Something like that. It would have to be hidden in plain sight. Like the movie the Ferrari car was made out of gold.

People who make money connected to real estate don’t feel inflation. We are living the same way. Prices increase. Rents increase likewise. Maybe difference is the level of investment. From the first investment. To return. There’s more risk attached. Don’t know until when will tenants support rent increases. Something will eventually break.
 
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This rally sure feels good for longtime PM holders. The Chinese recently set up another exchange for PMs (not just the old Shanghai exchange). Recently a gap had developed between western market price and the chinese price, with Chinese price being higher. It was enough that people could see the arbitrage opportunity.

I don't know how much that is causing the current rally, but something is breaking the stranglehold that London and New York have long held on PM pricing, with their famous shorting games. There will be plenty of smashes ahead, but volume is very high now. I hope that implies a baseline reset.
 
Pointy Elbows said:
This rally sure feels good for longtime PM holders. The Chinese recently set up another exchange for PMs (not just the old Shanghai exchange). Recently a gap had developed between western market price and the chinese price, with Chinese price being higher. It was enough that people could see the arbitrage opportunity.

I don't know how much that is causing the current rally, but something is breaking the stranglehold that London and New York have long held on PM pricing, with their famous shorting games. There will be plenty of smashes ahead, but volume is very high now. I hope that implies a baseline reset.
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It will continue. The problem for the PM holders will be what the orange coin does. So if you get a good run out of it, realize that you'll eventually be demonetized, so enjoy that risk reward and keep an open mind.
 
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JR5 said:
It is really tricky figuring out where to store physical. You can keep it in a bank security box but they're only responsible for up to $10,000 worth, and there are lots of horror stories of stolen security boxes by bank employees. You can keep it at home and bury it outside if you own your home, I guess, or keep it in a safe, preferably a bolted down one, but that opens up the possibility of theft. You can also insure your gold/silver through companies like Hugh Wood, but that isn't so cheap. There is no perfect solution, everything feels insecure.
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make them into towel rails or curtain hooks, belt buckles and spray paint them black, nobody will steal that, make draw and cuoboard handles etc use your imagination, and to transport it in a plane just pretend you greek and make these huge gold chains with crosses and belt buckles nobody can stop that
 
Dont know too much about this topic but I hear it was the angels who sinned and fell away from God who taught humans about metals.
 
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