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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

#321

Post by noduerme »

addicted wrote: post #251
jtc331 wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re absolutely correct. It’s just irrelevant since you don’t need anything even approaching hyperinflation to have real world impact on people, and the real wage loss over the past several years is clearly in that category.

And that’s the impact of inflation. Not hyperinflation. Words mean stuff. Hyperinflation leads to situations which the U.S. is nowhere near experiencing.

My exact quote was:

>>Like I said, inflation and hyperinflation especially are a steep learning curve.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#322

Post by dahfizz »

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…

Laypeople hear professionals talk about how gold is a good investment, but they don't realize that professionals are trading gold ETFs and futures. Ill informed lay people then go buy a gold bar from Costco.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#323

Post by adgjlsfhk1 »

VHRanger wrote: post #272
idiotsecant wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Cryptocurrencies are inherently bad currencies because of price volatility (except stable coins). That also makes them good speculative assets fwiw

and stablecoins are always fraudulent

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#324

Post by jonathanstrange »

hcks wrote: post #233
bsder wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really left scratching my head about people who buy gold to hold physically and personally rather than as an investment. In any situation where it might be relevant, how are you going to sell your gold? For example, if you bought one of those bars right now , how would you then sell that bar again right now ? And, if things really are completely collapsing, nobody wants gold . They'll want something much more imm…

I’d guess threat model is less “there is a zombie apocalypse” and more “you need to flee to another country”.

But then you need cold coins, not a gold bar. Or, multiple foreign currencies.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#325

Post by rewmie »

noduerme wrote: post #295
arcticbull wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If I had an hour, I'd like to expound on the significance of Americans buying precious metal at a loss through a giant vertical monopoly. Costco occasionally sells gold below spot if Reddit is to be believed. Most of the time it's right around spot. These 1oz bars were going for $1900 give or take, which is spot give or take. It's fairly common to see a small ~$50 ish premium on small quantities like this, around 2…

Costco's not a monopoly by the current definition, but they do occupy a very cozy spot between wholesale and retail, and they do vertically control everything Kirkland from mayonnaise to roast chicken. We have a strange situation right now, in the US, in which any company with at least one major competitor is considered good for the free market; and it takes a hell of a lot of work to show that those two competitors…

> We have a strange situation right now, in the US, in which any company with at least one major competitor is considered good for the free market; (...)

Wasn't Amazon just sued by the FTC due to anticompetitive practices?

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#326

Post by cammikebrown »

Aeolun wrote: post #297
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…

I don’t imagine you’d ever sell these, but what beats having a gold bar in your home? A very tiny one, but still.

Anything with utility? Anything at all?

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#327

Post by mistrial9 »

Symmetry wrote: post #306
mistrial9 wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the US has less than 10% if you read the plea from the Argentine above.. they say "peer networks to measure value" .. it implies that the entire inflation is NOT one single number. It is in sector by sector, with local "shadows" .. In the USA, it is housing obviously in large populated areas, but also health care and the cost of a University education. Those measures have climbed triple digits while yes, petrol and…

I don't believe you that the inflation rate for housing or education is at 100%. If you mean that there's been 100% inflation since some point in the past then, well, yes that's true but it's also true of every other good. But when we say that Argentina has 100% inflation it means that the nominal price of goods doubles every year.

> inflation rate for housing or education is at 100%.

not per year, but .. there are residential housing listings here in California that have doubled in not very long.. I think the point is, that price increases are not uniform.. and it is related to structural forces of money, as well as markets

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#328

Post by bluGill »

idiotsecant wrote: post #268
altacc wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Eventually, but that eventually shows no sign of stopping soon. There are two cases where it stops: the US decides to replace the dollar with something else, and there is a clear trade in program (the EU went to the Euro, and India did something similar); or things change slowly over time so you will have plenty of time where your dollar maybe isn't worth what it was yesterday but still is worth almost a dollar - odds are you don't hold dollars long enough or that loss of value to matter.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#329

Post by rewmie »

pjc50 wrote: post #121
noduerme wrote: post #111

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…

Argentina has 100% annual inflation and going up while the US has less than 10% and going down. The USD is not going anywhere spectacular, because there is no more stable country to flee to. The one thing that can reliably trigger inflation in almost any country is oil/gas shortages on the global market, and you can't hedge that with precious metals nor store a 20 year supply in your house.

> Argentina has 100% annual inflation and going up while the US has less than 10% and going down.

Also, most of the world, including western Europe, has been experiencing >8% inflation rates.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#330

Post by jabroni_salad »

icepat wrote: post #298
op00to wrote: post #229

My dad, near the end of his life, was "convinced" by his UBS money managers to move most of his assets into gold. He had a signficant amount of money, and this yielded a major payday for the fucktard at UBS that told him to do it. I can't see any reason for it!

That's really strange. I've spoken to UBS investment managers, and they're incredibly cautious about everything they suggest. There's a lot of red tape, almost wonder if something dodgy was going on.

> and they're incredibly cautious about everything

Have you ever heard a precious metals ad? The line between cautious and paranoid can wear thin, and that's who the target market is.

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