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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

#161

Post by EwanToo »

olalonde wrote: post #107
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…

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).

People in Turkey are also massively using Euros, Dollars, and other foreign currencies, right?

While I was there last year nobody wanted the local currency, everyone wanted you to pay in Euros.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#162

Post by eva_cananim »

My understanding is that holding physical gold is a big hassle when you want to sell. Sensible buyers will want to verify that it is real and not gold-plated tungsten.

Fake gold bars are common.

If you want to hold gold as a hedge against high inflation then you want "good delivery" gold, which stays in a vault with chain of custody records.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#163

Post by olalonde »

EwanToo wrote: post #161
olalonde wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

People in Turkey are also massively using Euros, Dollars, and other foreign currencies, right? While I was there last year nobody wanted the local currency, everyone wanted you to pay in Euros.

Of course, they are. I didn't claim they weren't...

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#164

Post by ZiiS »

eva_cananim wrote: post #162

My understanding is that holding physical gold is a big hassle when you want to sell. Sensible buyers will want to verify that it is real and not gold-plated tungsten. Fake gold bars are common. If you want to hold gold as a hedge against high inflation then you want "good delivery" gold, which stays in a vault with chain of custody records.

Unless high inflation topples the banks.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#165

Post by refurb »

rwmj wrote: post #102
qp11 wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not always.

My friend in Vietnam was saying how it wasn’t that long ago (10-20 years maybe?) when property was purchased directly with gold talens.

You exchanged Vietnamese dong for gold, then transferred that to the seller.

I assume it was done to avoid the crazy inflation and concern over validating that a massive stack of bills didn’t include counterfeits. And the lack of foreign currency to convert to.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#166

Post by defrost »

refurb wrote: post #160
defrost wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> blue collar workers uniting and striking don't get to close off access to and from work sites for days and weeks on end, nor do they get to block customers. > protesting government authoritarianism is A-OK in my book - but blocking intersections and pissing off fellow citizens and stopping their free travel is not. The line crossed, in the view of many people who might have otherwise supported them, was the nature…

So clearly you would have supported the same things - suspension of Charter/Constitutional rights, during the BLM protests when businesses were burnt down?

Please don't paraphrase and assume my position, it weakens your position to strawman in that manner.

Depends on the circumstances - which specific protest in the US continuously occupied and blocked off major transport thoroughfares in the USofA for a month?

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#167

Post by kawhah »

noduerme wrote: post #111
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…

Not exactly. I just sent this link to my (Argentine) friends with a different observation. My observation was: The United States is starting to look like Argentina. You must understand: Most Americans are not accustomed to shoving a third party currency under their mattress, or buying physical gold. The phenomenon of hyperinflation is foreign to them, and there's a steep learning curve. The actual significance of thi…

How is it a 'blue dollar' rate?

Firstly the bars are being sold only a couple of percentage points above spot. This is a perfectly normal price for decent bars or coins in small sizes.

Secondly the 'blue dollar' concept refers to the fact that Argentines are restricted from buying more than a certain amount of US dollars. They pay much higher prices to buy dollars illegally. US citizens can buy as much gold as they like, and Costco is not an underground or illicit market.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#168

Post by hartator »

xnorswap wrote: post #142
worstestes wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Costco's credit card policy is all about saving money. It negotiates a partnership agreement with a single payment network in exchange for much lower processing fees. As part of its current deal with Visa, it pays transaction fees of only 0.4%. By saving on fees, Costco is able to keep prices low." https://www.fool.com/the-ascent/credit-cards/articles/why-do... They actually secure a very nice low rate via their cre…

By not demanding better legislation, you're still being ripped off. What you describe as a "very nice low rate" is higher than the legislated EU wide limit. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/EN/legal-content/summary/fees-for-...

In EU, credit card processing is way more than 0.3%.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#169

Post by robertlagrant »

meheleventyone wrote: post #65
olivermuty wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I also think that the fact the prepper vision is a large part of the cultural zeitgeist makes it somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

It's not a large part of it. There's a large vision of self-reliance, which is definitely not the whole country, or more than half the country, but that's not quite the same thing.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#170

Post by dmurray »

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…

In all of these scenarios, the prepper stuff like stockpiling ammo and canned food wouldn't have been much help, but storing your wealth in gold bars for the time after would have been a great choice, certainly compared to cash.

The fact that society didn't descend into complete apocalyptic anarchy made it even better for the gold hoarders, because they didn't get robbed and murdered for their savings.

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