Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

cnbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 515 posts

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#251

Post by addicted »

jtc331 wrote: post #203
oblio wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The phenomenon of hyperinflation is foreign to them, and there's a steep learning curve. LOL. What the US has is in no way, shape, or form hyperinflation. I've lived in a place with hyperinflation and less than 10% ain't it, chief :-)

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.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#252

Post by addicted »

infecto wrote: post #208
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…

No. The easier explanation is that Costco whose customers are regularly middle class and above, love to buy whatever Costco shoves in front of them. There are other observations to be made based on cultural demographics that could also explain why these get sold so quick. I don’t think any of it has to do with your conspiracy theories though.

This is almost exactly it. Costco shoppers will buy whatever they push. And I suspect the cultural factors you’re talking about are the large number of middle class Indian and Chinese Costco shoppers who will buy gold regularly culturally, and if they see gold being sold in Costco I suspect they will buy it instantly.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#253

Post by alephnerd »

tokai wrote: post #220
atdrummond wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve lived in two dozen countries and the US is the most community oriented of them all outside major cities. US charitable giving alone suggests your view of the country as individualism run amok is likely not the whole story.

Charity is peak individualism. In real communal places helping those in need is handled structured and organized, not just hinging on individual decisions.

Charity used to structured and organized locally with Local churches, rotary clubs, and Samaritan organizations working to help less well off people in a town/neighborhood/city.

All this has fallen to the wayside in the US as we have some weird form of individualism permiating on both sides of the political spectrum.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#254

Post by ClumsyPilot »

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.

> one thing that can reliably trigger inflation in almost any country is oil/gas shortages

I am convinced we are making a huge mistake by conflating shortage of raw material with general inflation.

If there was shortage of food tomorrow, the correct responce is not to raise interest rates - that would cause even greater problems and famine.

The correct responce is immediate intervention to expand supply - build greenhouses, accelerated permits, zero interest finance for agriculture, etc.

This issue will lead to disaster as climate change bites - we are only managing fictisious financial parameters and ignoring what is happening to physical atoms.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#255

Post by RandomLensman »

Frost1x wrote: post #245
rightbyte wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have to figure out how to convert that gold into something somebody will actually take You need coins. You can't walk around with a gold bar. I would say silver coins to keep the value down, too. As a "my government made our money useless" back up. USD cash are good too unless you are American, obviously.

>As a "my government made our money useless" back up. I think that's where you first get into "some other governments money may be less useless" as a first stage backup. Precious metals in direct ownership are really a hedge against all or most other governments money collapsing. Until you reach a global societal collapse, having gold in your possession seems like a negative ROI and I wonder if, should that case happ…

In collapsed societies gold isn't great either. You would want to have things that people actually need. Some gold might buy you some antibiotics but the valuable thing isn't the gold and the antibiotics seller would know that.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#256

Post by cf141q5325 »

brutus1213 wrote: post #152
cf141q5325 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'd love to see an economists take on the value to a consumer of holding gold in this form, at the price. I doubt you will find any unbiased opinion. Its important to remember that economists arent solely focused on the IS state. Its not a science, its perception management. The narrative is self fulfilling. I really enjoy the npr article on the Brazilian inflation on this https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2010/10/…

Totally correct. Was watching an interesting town hall by the Fed for educators, and it was interesting to hear JP say "we have so many fine [Econ] textbooks", and in a different sentence say "it takes a few editions to catch up to our innovations". It was perfectly illustrating what I learned in undergrad Econ .. it is the science of explaining what happened. Extrapolation is fine but under no warranty. I have made…

>My new take is the govt will bail out the masses in some instances, so just follow the trend.

Unless they are too incompetent or corrupt to keep the ship sailing. Which you could also reword into the problem becoming too complex and the process missing means to counter steer.

Especially with the later framing it becomes clear that one might have unrealistic expectations for the process the problem got delegated to. Stuff is complicated and checks and balances in form of the fourth estate are currently dysfunction due to a lack of a financing.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#257

Post by infecto »

kenneth wrote: post #216

I used to buy gold bullion as a sneaky way to get credit card points on the cheap (and then use them for first class flights around the world). You could usually do the trade profitably and quickly and quite safely with insured shipping via USPS. $50k at a time. It was a bit sketchy to have that much in bullion at home, and I quickly got bored of it. The things you do when you're young…

Did the same with those $1 US coins when the mint was allowing you to purchase them for $1 free shipping. We would get as much as possible and then turn around and deposit into the bank.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#258

Post by extraduder_ire »

j7ake wrote: post #199

I wonder if one can arbitrage using credit card to buy gold then sell it back later. If you assume gold prices can fluctuate a few percent, one can imagine making profit purely through the credit card rewards. Essentially credit card funded benefits.

I'm wondering if these are exempt from costco's legendary return policy.

I'm just imagining someone walking in and asking to return some items, then plonking five of these on the counter. Granted, From what I've heard, ~$10k sales/returns at costco are not that uncommon.

Re: Costco gold bars are selling out within hours

#259

Post by cpursley »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #176
didntcheck wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, the government debanked people for organizing peaceful protests against them. That's hardly reassuring

When the accusation was thought crime, I find it pretty reassuring. Sometimes governments jail people for protests, and locking a bank account seems similarly or slightly less bad to me. Not great but not newly worrying. Or is it that you don't consider direct organizational efforts to be a subset of taking part in a protest? I'm generally fine with it, I think. Do you have anyone in particular in mind that was in th…

Locking someone’s bank account means you can’t pay your rent/mortgage (become homeless), can’t buy food, can’t purchase your medicine, can’t work.
Post reply on HN