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Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

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Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#91

Post by victorbjorklund »

anonzzzies wrote: post #89
ggm wrote: post #8

I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…

The only reason for keeping it personally would be barter in case of a total economic collapse. I mean; my precious metal ETF, nuclear energy ETF and accidental USD currency purchase at the right time kept me fully clear of any inflation here in the EU, but I doubt physical gold would do anything like it. However for barter….

If everything breaks down (like not just a blackout etc but all of society disapears) you are probably better off bartering with useful stuff like guns, food, tools etc

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#92

Post by defrost »

cpursley wrote: post #77
Dylan16807 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define "supporting the free speech rights"?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_2_of_the_Canadian_Ch...

It's not the free speech rights of the truckers that was the issue in Canada.

The problem came with the freedom of assembly, which is bound up with the right to protest ... and long curtailed with restrictions from causing substantial disruption.

That last part was the line crossed when roads were shutdown for days on end, horns blared round the clock, etc.

Additionally, IIRC, the Canadian Gov't didn't debank individuals for the act of donating .. they froze accounts that donations were flowing into. The last time this came up in a forum several people linked to discussions in the Canadian Question time (or some equivilant) where "gotcha" questions were being posed about whether the law in question could be used to debank individuals .. as it was broad legislation targeted toward shutting down the protests by drying up funds the answer "yes, but ..." .. followed by a general failure to produce any non core individuals that had their general savings frozen - just the accounts used to collect donations and some(?) organisers taking part (again, IIRC).

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#93

Post by bjackman »

anonzzzies wrote: post #89
ggm wrote: post #8

I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. Investment gold is usually kept in vault, and you trade ownership arms length. Direct gold ownership is rife with risks: fineness, substitutions and overpriced purchase. Yes, you can always sell at a mall gold trader but that's way way off market price. So it's an inflation hedge with a lot of cost and risk and d…

The only reason for keeping it personally would be barter in case of a total economic collapse. I mean; my precious metal ETF, nuclear energy ETF and accidental USD currency purchase at the right time kept me fully clear of any inflation here in the EU, but I doubt physical gold would do anything like it. However for barter….

As well as collapse I think there's a case to be made for hedging against loss of access to the normal financial system.

E.g. maybe one day the CIA will believe very strongly that you are a terrorist. In that situation a kilo of gold might be extremely useful!

Actually this is probably an even stronger case - gold will lose almost as much value as money in the case of economic collapse. Whereas wanted terrorists can probably still get a fairly decent price.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#94

Post by localplume »

olivermuty wrote: post #44
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why people keep thinking that a financial meltdown means societal meltdown. There's plenty of places where the economy is or has already melted down even right now -- Sri Lanka, Argentina, Venezuela, etc. We can observe what happens when political institutions completely and utterly collapse, because it's happened multiple times already . What happens is not immediate apocalypse where people riot a…

I think that prepper scenario is way more likely in a «I got mine, screw you» society like the US. All the countries you list have their issues, but their base level of societal egalitarism is orders of magnitude higher. I would not be surprised if the US is one of the few countries to end up like Mad Max if the world order should fully collapse due to climate change or other large scale events.

except prepping mostly isn't "I got mine, screw you" but "I need to protect myself and my family". even then, US society isn't even "I got mine, screw you". I don't understand where that even came from because its not even close to true. maybe europeans thinking they're somehow more collectivist even though I've found Americans to be far more friendly and collectivist than europeans.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#95

Post by gniv »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #3

Spot price appears to be manipulated for quite a while. Lots of demand for precious metals, yet the price isn't really going up, especially with inflation.

Why assume manipulated? Could be just lots of supply.

The supply of new gold at least is pretty high: https://twitter.com/LynAldenContact/status/17066072297915888...

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#96

Post by raverbashing »

ArtTimeInvestor wrote: post #46
e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can see it happening right now in Argentina: the local currency is worthless, and people are flocking to ... US Dollars. Not gold, not bitcoins, but good old benjamins. So gold isn't even a good inflation hedge: if you walked the streets of a failing economy (pick one: Argentina, Venezuela, Sri Lanka, there's plenty more) and tried to exchange gold for goods, you're not gonna get far (and will probably get mugged…

Why do you think that people in Argentina are flocking to Dollar and not to Bitcoin or Gold? When I look at the search trends in Argentina, I see Bitcoin in a very volatile longterm uptrend, Gold in a longterm downtrend and the Dollar being constantly a distant third: https://trends.google.de/trends/explore?date=all&geo=AR&q=go... Over the 20 years which the Peso has been devaluing, Bitcoin has outpaced the others by…

People in underprivileged countries have a lot more experience in keeping the value of what they have when push comes to shove

Dollar means liquidity, stability and "money in pocket". Dollar inflation is nothing compared to Peso inflation

Bitcoin can help with some of those aspects but with much less liquidity and more volatility.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#98

Post by sambazi »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #78
sambazi wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pure gold does exist in nature, pure aluminum not so much

Right, that's exactly why aluminum had such a wild swing in value. Gold is not hard to extract, so that won't happen with it. Instead it's hard to get in any form, so people can dig out more but the cost of extraction keeps increasing.

> the cost of extraction keeps increasing

seems logical given the diminishing supply, suggesting some "peak gold".

is it rooted in fact thou? you know, could be that humanity just hasn't found as much and is underestimating the remaining quantity.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#99

Post by jokethrowaway »

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #35
Ekaros wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Physical gold might have value in situation where financial institutions and markets start to lose any trust in themselves. Either by manipulation, government confiscation or fraud. But, things will be pretty bad at that point from every viewpoint. As essentially global markets are crashing. On other hand, in even bigger crisis gold won't be that valuable at least for a while. If food and fuel are first priority peop…

I don't understand why people keep thinking that a financial meltdown means societal meltdown. There's plenty of places where the economy is or has already melted down even right now -- Sri Lanka, Argentina, Venezuela, etc. We can observe what happens when political institutions completely and utterly collapse, because it's happened multiple times already . What happens is not immediate apocalypse where people riot a…

Because governments indoctrinate people into thinking they're needed to keep society stable and safe. I'd argue the opposite is true.

I suggest reading Larken Rose - The Most Dangerous Superstition.

I feel way safer in places with a neighbourhood watch and local people banding together to fend off criminals over places where the police may show up some times, if they're done fining people for going 5km over the ridiculously low speed limit or jailing people for selling pot.

Source: the EU pays my government to allow into the country jobless economic migrants, males in their 20s-30s, and local people have to defend themselves because the police won't do shit.

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