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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

#441

Post by landemva »

dredmorbius wrote: post #423
landemva wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Gold you can't travel with (weight and loss due to theft and also probably actually illegal) Which country? Last week I travelled on planes in USA and may have carried 35 pounds of silver coin, about a pound of gold coin, and >$10k cash. No problems other than being careful putting bag in overhead bin. Travelling in/out of countries like Turkey with metal in carry-on has always been easy. One time the screener was…

There are numerous countries with controls over money entering or, more often, leaving the territory. This can apply to cash, gold, or other valuables. The issue generally falls under the general realm of customs regulations though also capital controls. Domestic travel generally as fewer, and often (but not always) no limits. Risks of seizure, forfeiture, and outright theft should also be considered. It's generally…

> Risks of seizure

That happens with account balances in USA. Try to fight an account seizure after the fact in courts in USA, and be prepared to lose.

Tangible items including metal are diversification, and bitcoin and ethereum are incredible across borders.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#443

Post by Ancapistani »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #434
Ancapistani wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone pretty well marinating in "right wing" - based on where I live and the social circles I tend to run in - you're mostly right. They aren't mutually exclusive; you can have guns and friends at the same time. You can even have friends with guns.

Of course, but from what I can tell, all the "preppers" seem to know that they need to buy supplies and weapons, but all of that is useless if you are not part of a community tight knit enough to be willing to defend you, and that takes years of work to build up and constant maintenance of relationships.

There's a weird place between "preppers" and "homesteaders" that's pretty much this.

I'd say I'm "prepper" enough that I'm heavily armed and have enough shelf-stable food to feed by family for a few months in an emergency - but I'm also "homesteader" enough that our garden seems to get bigger each year, I know all of my neighbors, and we regularly share skills and information.

I don't think anything catastrophic is likely to happen, but it's had an overall very positive impact on my day-to-day life. If something does happen, I have far more tools to deal with it than either approach alone would give me.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#444

Post by teleforce »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #438
scottiebarnes wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting the case where the US dollar gets hyperinflated or highly inflated due to something like a debt crisis. Speaking of which...$33 trillion.

A hundred years ago a US silver dollar would buy you a decent steak dinner, and naturally a US $10 gold eagle coin would serve 10 people. Now that same kind of dinner can still be had for the same silver dollar, but the amount of gold in the small 1923 gold eagle[0] would be enough to serve 30 today, not merely the 10 diners of 100 years ago. And some of these are nice restaurants. Today if your dollar does not conta…

Thanks for the info, I didn't know back in the 19th century that the US also used bimetallic currency where 10 US silver dollar is equivalent to 1 gold coin.

This has been (more or less) the standard since like forever, for at least several thousand of years including in major world's empires including the Greek, Persian, Roman (Rome and Byzantine), Islamic (Rashidun, Umayyad, Abbasid, Ottoman) and British Empire until 19th century where bimetallic currency namely silver coin (dirham) and gold coin (dinar) were pervasive.

Fun facts, the word dirham in Islamic empire is derived from the word drachma with the same meaning in Greek, while dinar is derived from the Roman word denarius.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#445

Post by marcosdumay »

plonk wrote: post #440
marcosdumay wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's a wild figure for the US (as a comparison, the US had an year with higher inflation than Brazil). But that lasted for a short period, and it's been measured going down. Anyway, hoarding gold is not a natural behavior for a population at 10% inflation. It's natural for a population that distrusts the government and the financial markets. Inflation by itself pushes people into banks.

Why would inflation push people into banks? In my (EU) country, banks don’t offer anything that matches current inflation besides speculative investments.

It pushes people into high-liquidity short-term investments.

Banks are the main place you find those.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#446

Post by lossolo »

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…

How is the situation currently in Sri Lanka? I'm considering going there for a vacations.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#447

Post by kylebenzle »

bluGill wrote: post #328
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.

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 - odd…

Or, the mostly likely result and the path we are on, hyperinflation.

We hyperinflate the currency by printing $trillllions a year and hading it out to countries at war, businesses that have failed and defending the oceans.

USD has already been hyperinflated, its just the affects are being felt slowly as the money "trickles down" from the 1% to the rest of us.

It's why collectables, real estate and such were the first assets to inflate, because that's what the rich buy, food inflation is much slower.

Hyperinflation is coming, I've been saying it and buying gold since QE1 back in '08.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#448

Post by abracadaniel »

sambazi wrote: post #49
wodenokoto wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have some friends who are into owning gold. Their rule of thumb is: You can own gold mines on paper, but gold, only in hand. There is a belief that there exists a lot more paper gold than actual gold. So when the run on the reserves starts, the price of gold will explode as billions of dollars worth of gold in the market disappears. Although I’m not sure if Costco buyers are thinking like that.

> There is a belief that there exists a lot more paper gold than actual gold. So when the run on the reserves starts, the price of gold will explode as billions of dollars worth of gold in the market disappears. very good sales pitch!

The same pitch used for GameStop stock.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#449

Post by kylebenzle »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #438
scottiebarnes wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're forgetting the case where the US dollar gets hyperinflated or highly inflated due to something like a debt crisis. Speaking of which...$33 trillion.

A hundred years ago a US silver dollar would buy you a decent steak dinner, and naturally a US $10 gold eagle coin would serve 10 people. Now that same kind of dinner can still be had for the same silver dollar, but the amount of gold in the small 1923 gold eagle[0] would be enough to serve 30 today, not merely the 10 diners of 100 years ago. And some of these are nice restaurants. Today if your dollar does not conta…

I like yours but, the rule of thumb for gold I've heard is that from Roman time until today, a 1 oz gold coin is enough to buy a suit of clothes and a fancy dinner.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#450

Post by chiefalchemist »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #407
chiefalchemist wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cronie Capitalism does help as well. When the gov puts it thumb on the scale and clears a clear-enough path, only a fool wouldn't follow the path of least resistance.

Suppose the government did put its thumb on the scale here, how would it impact consumers? Will they now be able to shop for lower prices at a business that earns 1% profit margin or less instead of the 2.6% profit margin that Costco has managed to climb to?

The government is not supposed to be in the favoritism business. When that happens, as we're seeing, there are unexpected and/or unwanted consequences. The government is supposed to level the playing field, not the other way around.
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