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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

#261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I bet the vast majority of gold being purchased at Costco is by Indian and Chinese immigrants who buy gold culturally and not as a response to global financial events and movements.

Why do Indian and chinese buy "gold culturally"?

Would it be the same reasons african americans rejected the covid shots in greater numbers than the rest of the US population?

Maybe they perceive something "culturally" , or maybe something historically....which has not been forgotten?

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#263

Government can take away all your gold: https://theconversation.com/how-the-us-government-seized-all... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

What if you hid it well? How are they going to find it?

"Hi, Costco. We would like to subpoena you for the customer records for every person that bought gold. Note that 'would like to' means 'are going to, and you will comply'. Love, the US Government."

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#264
post #106

What's the real spread on these things (i.e. how much can you sell the gold for directly after you buy it)?

Well... you cannot divide gold, unless you are using it specifically for barter. In today's market, if you split the gold bar, people will buy it from you at a lesser value than if the bar was whole. If you sell the gold whole, I don't know of anyone that will buy it for it's true value in weight. The best strategy for gold is buy and hold until the buyers will offer more than what someone bought it for.

Physical gold is absolutely a "long-term" strategy.

IMHO, coins from reputable national mints are best b/c easy to verify w/o assay.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#266
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Protests are meant to be disruptive". It was a very effective protest, and from my memory almost entirely peaceful, which is way more than can be said of other protests in 2020-21. Honking horns somehow caused more media outrage than actual riots It was surprising to see how quickly people turned around into saying that blue collar workers uniting and striking was a bad thing (with several suggestions that they be f…

> I have no faith in "yes the law has technical pathological cases but obviously nobody would do that". I used to, but I've just seen enough cases of the letter of the law being twisted with complete disregard to the spirit. E.g. practically any law to do with terrorism I actually count this as the primary positive outcome of COVID. So many people woke up to the reality of state power during that period. No more "thi…

You somehow missed the cold war, the draft, ... Societies have a lot of power and at times use it; and such use might not be wrong. People believing those things don't exist were just ignoring history. If you want to check out of society that will need quite a bit of doing.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#267
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I looked into this, the consensus seemed to be that the best form of gold, if you want to physically hold it yourself, is gold coins minted by reputable national mints. American Gold Eagles, South Africa Krugerrands, etc. These trade at close to spot. And a 1 oz Krugerrand or Gold Eagle is about $20,000. If you can afford enough volume of those that it’s difficult to secure them, you can afford to secure them.

Funny story: when we bought our second house we found the previous owners had left high in a cupboard a small trumpet case containing a trumpet, a set of freemasons regalia and about 20 krugerrands. We took it round to the old owners new house and passed it all over. They seemed happy. I think I'd have struggled to keep it the law not withstanding. Three months later we found a box of (from what I am told, illegal, m…

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Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#268
post #243

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…

I notice this when travelling the world and it's one of the main reasons I think the many of the arguments for cryptocurrency are flawed. I've used decades old dollar bills in SE Asia that have been pretty much detached from the US economy for decades and have held value better than bitcoin ever has. The value of the dollar is linked not just to the US economy but also a global black economy and that has some unoffic…

This will be true right up until the point it is not. The US dollar dominance is not a feature of the universe, it's a social agreement that, like any such agreement, will eventually come undone.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you hid it well? How are they going to find it?

"Hi, Costco. We would like to subpoena you for the customer records for every person that bought gold. Note that 'would like to' means 'are going to, and you will comply'. Love, the US Government."

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Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just as with the people who wake up every morning expecting the Second Coming, or indeed a Nuclear War, these folks fixate on a hyperinflationary US economy so much they begin to hallucinate. Everything must be a sign. Strong job figures? Those are a precursor to hyperinflation. More mortgages fail than average? Hyperinflation on the horizon. Trump gets elected? He'll certainly cause hyperinflation. Trump loses? Demo…

HN seems to have a lot of kooks these days, or maybe the kind of people who would push back have just stopped. I've seen a surprising amount of vaccine denialism, xenophobia, unsubstantiated pop Econ takes, Peter Zeihan bullshit, etc. YC should just cut the cord on this forum tbh. It's not about "Hackers" or "News" anymore.

Segments of HN have been predicting the imminent collapse of the US dollar for at least the last decade. One thing 10-years-ago HN had but today doesn’t is the constant predictions of the imminent collapse of the VC startup model in general, or maybe I’m just looking in the wrong threads these days.

That said, you may be correct in that the voices have gotten louder. Also, the Covid conspiracy stuff drives me up the wall, and I didn’t remember older HN being like that.

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