John the Jute

Hi Hawksquat,

One of the reasons for buying tenth ounce gold Eagles is if you are a survivalist. These often-misunderstood people fear that there is a real possibility of war, pandemic, or government incompetence resulting in a near-complete collapse of the US dollar.

Now this not the same as the World returning to the Stone Age or anything like it. When the mark famously collapsed in Germany in the 1920s, markets still sold food, mechanics still mended cars, builders still contructed houses ... but only those who had hard currency (usually gold at that time) could pay them.

Since then, despite institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, there have three hyperinflations that have been worse than Germany: Hungary in 1946, Yugoslavia in 1994 and, tragically, Zimbabwe in 2008. In those situations, people could use US dollars. If the US dollar were to collapse, what hard currency is there?

Gold and silver, the survivalists answer. But one-ounce gold coins are inconvenient for this purpose. You don't want to sell an ounce of gold for hyperinflating dollars just to buy your week's groceries. The remaining dollars will be worth much less in a week's time. Hence the interest in tenth-ounce and quarter-ounce gold Eagles.

Is all this likely? Of course not. Is it possible? Unfortunately yes; none of the four cases I've mentioned would have thought likely 30 years before. Is it worth buying gold to hedge against it? Well, that's up to you.

Survivalists are the most pessimistic of the four levels of gold bug I described in

http://www.cointalk.com/forum/t50049-3/#post556617

Me? I'm only a second-level gold bug (a rainy day saver) so I bought a Zimbabwean 100,000,000,000,000 dollar note for my collection: I do not expect the US to provide me with the same opportunity!

Later

John

hawksquat

Thank you John!

hawksquat

And thanks for the link......very informative, and a little scary.