Gold stash?

[tabs]

Its called the emasculation of the American male into a eunuch. A drone that works from 8 to 5 and sometimes on Saturdays. Then when he reaches 70 he drops dead from a coronary thrombosis. Leaving his poor widow to spend her waning years playing Bingo and eating chocolates, while lavishing the Grandchildren with everything that he denied himself for all those years . And U think it is any wonder that that Amercians want instant gratification. They think that any crisis or problem can be solved in a 1/2 hour time slot and certainily within 1 hour after all we have seen it done on Matlock or CSI so many times.

[competentone]

Originally posted by HardDrive
Can anyone suggest a good place to buy precious metals, either online, or in Seattle or LA?

http://apmex.com/home.asp?orderid=0

For a "shtf" stash, I would suggest gold in bullion coins. I'd also suggest pre-'65 U.S. silver coins. You'd have difficulty bartering for food if all you have are 1oz gold American Eagles; silver dimes and quarters will come in handy for needed day-to-day purchases.

It's less of a factor now, since silver prices are so high, but when silver was low a few years back, buying the U.S. silver coins had minimal downside risks -- this was especially true with the 1965 50-cent pieces (half silver). You had the face value of the coin itself as the least the coin could ever be worth. It is still true today that the premium you pay for the silver content is all you can lose -- which is pretty significant now since it's about 7 times the face value of the coin.

[pwd72s]

Really? All I did was take a bunch of 1964 and earlier coins out of my store's till, once Nixon announced he'd let the value of the dollar "float"....

[competentone]

Originally posted by pwd72s
Really? All I did was take a bunch of 1964 and earlier coins out of my store's till, once Nixon announced he'd let the value of the dollar "float"....

By the time Nixon was in office, most of the pre-1965 silver coins were out of circulation (bad money drives out good). The price of silver hit about $2 a troy ounce in 1967; the silver content in a dollar's worth of dimes or quarters is about .7 ounces which would have given a 40 cent "premium" over the face value. I know my parents were not spending any silver coins they had back then; I think there were plenty of other people who understood the value too and hoarded the coins. Are you sure you have your time-frames correct?

Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard internationally making U.S. currency a completely fiat money. That was in 1973; silver jumped to over $3 an ounce that year.

As a curiosity a similar situation actually exists with nickels right now. The copper and nickel metal in the nickel is actually worth more than 5 cents. Since both copper and nickel market prices are driven by industrial demand more than anything else, I don't think that hoarding nickels will be particularly worthwhile in the event of some type of economic meltdown. They would maintain their value in the event of hyper-inflation -- which could happen if the government chooses to pay off the national debt with the printing press rather than greater taxation.