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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

#101

Post by Dylan16807 »

sambazi wrote: post #98
Dylan16807 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's possible we could find some very easy deposits, but it's very unlikely they'd be enough to crash the price, and even less likely to permanently crater the price.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#102

Post by rwmj »

qp11 wrote: post #47
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…

In most of the under developed world were financial systems are unstable/dont control the economy, they dont convert gold into local currency. They use it as currency. "You want that cow, give me that nose ring". Ofcourse in the "developed world" the problem is, one fuckhead will show up, who wants to own all the cows, for no logically reason other than he just has too. Naturally gold wont work.

Only in your fantasy world. In the real world they trade dollars.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#104

Post by tibbydudeza »

hliyan wrote: post #73
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…

Sri Lankan here. I personally experienced this last year and was very surprised. We Sri Lankans love to criticise ourselves for our wonky moral compasses, so when the early protests started, I stocked up on food and installed an extra CCTV camera, expecting widespread riots and looting. They never came. There were many organised protests, and protesters did clash with riot police around government buildings, but peop…

People vs the corrupt govt of Rajapaksa - we are all in this together fosters this.

The question of course is the very same people who voted in these clowns in the first place.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#105

Post by Beijinger »

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…

"Direct gold ownership is rife with risks"

Every kind of ownership comes with "risks". It is stupidity not to own gold "directly". Buying a gold ETF is likely a bad idea like having your cryptocurrencies not under personal control.

Precious metals ETF charge a yearly fee. A buddy of mine once developed a financial instrument, where the ETF really owns the metal and does not mimic its spot price but also pays a dividend. (And yes, it was legit and a great idea)

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#107

Post by olalonde »

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #22
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…

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…

What are you basing that claim on? Do you have evidence that Argentinians are not buying gold nor Bitcoin? I don't know about Argentina, but Turkey also has a massive inflation problem and Bitcoin is huge over there. They probably have the highest rate of Bitcoin ownership per capita in the world (or it has to be close).

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#108

Post by defrost »

sambazi wrote: post #98
Dylan16807 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a fact, from the first large scale Rio Tinto mines in Roman times that used hydralic washing (redirected rivers) to todays mega super pits, the total resource requirements per unit gold have climbed.

Today you can see this (subject to access | subscription) in industry Production All-in Sustaining Cost (AISC) Data

People write essays such as:

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2014/06/28/under-the-micros...

and articles such as:

https://www.xetra-gold.com/en/gold-news/news/gold-production...

You can see decade long snapshots such as:

https://www.gold.org/goldhub/gold-focus/2023/04/gold-miners-...

which might convince you that gold is somehow cyclically hard to recover and the cost per unit ebbs and flows .. but the long term (50 year, 100 year) truth is that gold becomes increasingly more resource intensive to extract.

Which makes sense when you consider that it no longer just lies about on the surface in the same frequency as it once did (yes, you can still find surface nuggets .. but they are fewer and fewer).

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#109

Post by AdamN »

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….

I always bring up Somalia. The government crumbled and they continued to use local paper currency even after the printing presses were destroyed and there was nothing backing it. In the actual global collapse scenario, physical cash is likely to be more fungible and still have value than gold.

So if you really want to prepare for that (which should be like step 156 in terms of prepping), the right solution after you have all your direct physical needs (canned food, medicine, etc.) is simply a cash stockpile.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#110

Post by tibbydudeza »

e63f67dd-065b wrote: post #50
thaumasiotes wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The prepper scenario of "I've gotta defend myself against mobs out to raid for food" really doesn't happen. > Maybe a civil war breaks out, maybe there are food shortages, but for the most part if violence breaks out, it's organised, mainly in the form of civil wars. If a war breaks out, the tradition is that the armies will raid you for food. The issue was never that other locals would do it. A war breaking out is…

Ah yes, my gun and my gold will protect me against the organised army out to raid for food. That's what I meant -- people get organised very quickly. In Rwanda, people quickly formed armies and militias, the same in Ethiopia, Columbia, and literally every other time this has happened before . One guy is not gonna accomplish much. Civil war is also, by most measures, the least likely outcome. Usually civil war causes…

In South Africa we strict gun laws - getting a 9mm sidearm is difficult enough - don't bother with something like an AR-15.

But we have per capita probably the largest number armed private security companies - what happened when we had unrest in one of provinces - the owners of these companies formed self defense groups where they lived with their staff and had AK'47/AR-15 and stuff not available to normal citizens.

Our suburbs are still racially segregated so they turned around those folks who did not fit the profile.

They kept the looters out - but some got out of control and shot up innocent people that was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The army was eventually mobilized and the sight of soldiers and wheeled APC's convinced them it is was time to go home now that the professionals were here.

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