storing bullion

I have a 5.0 CF safe bolted to the floor. The bottom is filled with 15 boxes of nickels. The rest..my valuables. The safe weighs 800 lbs empty. With all my stuff, I'm guessing it weighs about 1400 lbs. Its in a deadbolt locked closet in my basement and no one is getting it out.

My only concern is a burglary turning into a robbery. That is, someone breaks in, sees the safe and either waits for my return, or comes back when he knows I'm home. I have a CCW and I carry for my job. If I have to defend myself I will. If someone is in my house and threatening me, or my family, I'll use whatever force is necessary to remove that threat.

I also have Broadview home security and at 100 lb German Shepard that doesn't like strangers in his house.

If I'm going to invest in PM I want possession of them. The government banned private gold ownership in 1933 during a financial crisis. Don't think it couldn't happen again. Plus, a lot of the ETF's and such don't even have the gold/silver that they just sold you. If there is a ban or the SHTF a bunch of pieces of paper that say you own a bunch of PM aren't worth anything.

Big thing is to diversify. Stocks, cash, real estate, PM, etc. That way you're always covered...no matter what happens. I'm also big on not keeping all of something in one place. Yeah, I have a safe, but I also have other places where I've stashed stuff.

There is risk keeping valuables at home..no doubt. There is also risk keeping them in a safe deposit box or to have someone "store" them for you. It all comes down to what risk you are comfortable with.

 

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its junk silver, and i am not to worried on how it looks. also i am not to worried about someone braking in, i am pretty much always home and there is always someone home.

also, people actually run away from my dogs when i take them for a walk, and my dogs are only scary when there is a stranger over. i think the average thief will skip my house when he see's the heads of a 100lb pit bull with the head of a watermelon and a 60lb crazy protective pit bull, staring out the window. both wouldn't hurt a fly, but there bark is pretty intimidating. the real dog to worry about it, the 5lb Maltese, she will rip your head off! i guess that is the one case, when peoples prejudice against pit bulls come in handy...

if you get a bolt down safe, get one with the bolt on the inside! most thieves have common tools on them, and are ready to use them. but with the bolt inside,they would have to have the key/combo before they took it. i guess the last most important thing to let you know is...don't be cheap! in case of fire, flood whatever, hopefully does not happen. there would be nothing worse then relying on your safe to find that it failed and took in water or melted.. get a good brand.

that is exactly how my pits are. i honestly think, if a thief sees our dogs they will move on. think about how many houses there are, that don't have big, strong, protective dogs.. its not worth there time, they got a lot of other things to worry about and with a dog that could possibly be a guard dog, who knows what else is behind the door. best home security you can get!!
btw, i love german shepards!! when we move i plan on getting one, beautiful, smart dogs..

 

Some of the armored car services have security storage facilities on their premises in certain locations, and the rates are often better than what you would pay for comparable space when renting multpile safety deposit boxes at your bank. At my bank, the largest SDB costs $35 annually and is only 1-1/2 cubic feet. I would need four of them just for my primary collections. The unit provided by the armored car service is 135 cubic feet and only costs $180 annually. It is also an advantage since the facility is staffed on a 24/7 basis, and climate control is around-the-clock unlike a bank which shuts down the A/C when they are closed. Since I live in South Florida, there is also the concern about hurricane flood waters (look what happened to bank and coin dealer vaults in the New Orleans area after Katrina) and the armored car facility that I use has the security storage on the second floor which is about 20' higher. The only drawback is that I have to make an appointment to visit my unit.

Chris

 

If anyone wants your stuff bad enough they will find a way to get it. If they know whats in the safe they will wait for you and make you open it. If you spend money on better locks for your house, they will break a window, or kick in your door. You are burdened by a chance and hopefully no one ever has this horrible thing happen to them.

 

One last thing.... don't tell people about your safe. My wife knows in case something happens to me and my Dad knows in case something happens to my wife and I. That's it.

Don't have coin publications mailed to your house, either. Don't talk about your hobby with friends or co-workers.

Don't drive a flashy car.

 

I have 2 safes each are 72"x 60"x 36" each are cemented to the basement floor and bolted from the inside to the floor and wall behind. Windows are barred and solid wood steel enforced door with 3 dead bolts 1 high 1 low and 1 middle .... most important is the alarm on the house and the guns stashed through out the house... I have some coins on the wall look great but not that important... the bad guys can have them.. the PM's are secure in the basement..........:hail:

 

One thing to keep in mind is that in 1933, the government was more interested in taking gold out of the banking system than taking it from individuals. There was an exemption of five $20 gold pieces per person, so a family of five could keep $500 in gold, a pretty good sum in 1933 and equal to about $30k in gold bullion today. The government did not confiscate silver, so people could convert their gold to silver, or convert it to numismatic coins that were not confiscated.

Regarding the ETFs, it is very popular for untrained bloggers to make claims on a variety of goldbug sites that the ETFs hold no bullion. They frequently quote each other and not a single one has provided even the smallest amount of proof that the claims are true. Since the general public can't distinguish between fact and opinion, this sort of stuff passes for investment analysis. I would urge everyone to stick with facts, not fantasy when making investment decisions.

 

Cloud, regarding ETF's, I figure you might know the answer, are they subjected to audits of their physical bullion holdings? Are they even required to hold all or a certain ratio?

 

Safes/Safe Deposit Boxes

I have to say when I kept my holdings and collections is safe deposit boxes I could never just get up and pull them out to enjoy. I have a very sturdy safe in the house now so I can love my coins anytime I want. Me and the wife make a point of not telling anyone even friends about the safe.

Lovin Them Coins!

 

I can't really give you a blanket answer because each ETF is a bit different in procedure and I haven't owned or performed due diligence on all of them. Most of them are grantor trusts for tax purposes that flow through income and expenses with various custodial arrangements for the physical metal. Most publish a bar list. You should carefully read the prospectus for the fund you are interested in owning. That said, the funds hold a substantial amount of institutional money and are offered by institutions with senior managment that has no interest in going to prison. It's an entirely different situation from, say, Bernie Maddoff where you basically had a lone crook stealing from gullible individuals. I think it is the responsibility of those who claim the metal isn't there to provide at least a tiny bit of evidence to support their claim, but to date none have done so.

 

Thanks for the response Cloud, I'm going to research the topic a little so I can understand GLD and SLV a little better before I invest.

 

The burden is not on the investor to prove that the metal isn't there. The investor shouldn't have to prove a negative. The burden is on the ETF fund to show that they have possession of the PM they want to sell you.

Also, make sure you are clear on whether the silver you buy via ETF is allocated or non-allocated... BIG difference. If its non-allocated, I wouldn't even consider buying it. If its allocated make sure they have it. If they can't give you concrete proof that they do have it, find another company.

 

The ETF will generally have audited financial statements, an inventory of bars by serial number, and a variety of SEC reports and filings with regulatory agencies. I agree with you that anybody who doesn't believe the metal is there in the face of this information, and requires a level of proof beyond what is legally required has no business investing in the ETF, or any other stock or bond or mutual fund or bank. You have no assurance beyond the paper trail that any company or institution does or owns what they report. Just own physical bullion in that case. You should never buy anything you don't feel comfortable owning.

On the other hand, if your only evidence that the metal is not their is that someone wrote it on the internet, you are back in the same boat of believing without requiring the writer to prove it.

I recall that SLV has almost entirely allocated silver bars in storage with the custodian except for a very small amount. You are correct that everyone should read the prospectus to get comfortable with the procedures followed by the ETF you are thinking of buying.

 

You can hide a North American Mini Revolver almost anywhere. Yah, it's a last ditch weapon, but cheap enough to place a few strategically. PM safe, under a kitchen table etc. Just an option, something to think about.

 

what that video proved to me was that the owner is stupid for leaving his save in the middle of the floor for the burglars to just tip over, 2nd that wasnt even a real wold test nothing in it to add weight no other obsticles around it for the most part the two guys were calm and just so many factors that were not present for that test. IMOP

 

. One example of this was when GATA seized on part of my explanation of basic gold trading and banking practices and, once more misrepresenting and distorting both reality and my comments, implied that I had exposed gold as a fractional reserve asset, as if yet another conspiracy had been revealed. The fact that gold trades on a leveraged basis, as well as on an ounce-for-ounce basis, should not be a surprise to anyone in the markets, and certainly should not come as any surprise to the self-described “experts” at GATA. However, because I have become aware that this is an area of confusion for many retail investors, I’ll take a moment to set the record straight.
Fractional reserve banking is not a new concept. It has existed for thousands of years. There is nothing shocking nor revelatory about this. The fractional reserve nature of bullion banking is analogous to the widely understood concepts of fractional reserve banking in currencies such as U.S. dollars. If one wants to own U.S. dollars outright, it is possible to keep a pile of bank notes (dollar bills) in one’s mattress or in a safe or vault. Alternatively, one may choose to deposit the money in a bank. The bank doesn’t really have enough cash on hand to allow all the depositors to withdraw all their cash at the same time. However, a system of checks and balances exists to ensure that a “run on the bank” can eventually be met, even if not immediately. Prior to the creation of the Federal Reserve System in the United States no such checks and balances existed, and people who put money in private banks often found that there was no money there when they came for it. FDIC insurance was implemented to give depositors more confidence in their bank deposits after bank runs in the wake of the 1929 stock market crash.
Similarly, if one wants to own physical gold outright, one may do that. In the bullion banking industry, this is called an allocated account, meaning that the investor has specific gold bullion bars allocated to them. The investor is the legal owner of that gold bullion, and the bank, if one is involved at all, is merely providing vault storage for a fee. This is exactly analogous to a bank offering safe deposit boxes which customers can use to store cash if for some reason they are skeptical of the bank’s ability to make good on money deposited in a regular account. Instead of being paid interest for depositing cash in a bank account, one would have to pay a fee for the safe deposit box. Similarly, allocated bullion accounts always involve the client paying storage fees to the bullion bank for the use of its vault to store their bullion.
However, gold also is a financial asset that is banked. In bullion banking jargon, this is called an unallocated account. Just like cash deposited in a checking account, the bank represents that it has enough assets to service the expected volume of withdrawals, but it doesn’t necessarily have enough bullion to allow all the depositors to withdraw all their gold all at once. many gold “certificate programs” are unallocated bullion accounts.This is well understood by professionals in the industry and by most investors involved in these assets. Again, it should come as no surprise to anyone with bona fide credentials as an expert of any kind in the gold bullion marketplace. Yet GATA has tried to portray the fact that banks are required to hold only a portion of their gold assets, as they do money, as somehow being scandalous


This came from CPM group Jeffrey Christians. Here read the article yourself.

http://www.kitco.com/ind/jeffreychristian/jeffreychristian2010-05-27.html

What other proof do you need?

 

LOL! Yep, you gotta throw in a snarling, barking dog or two who's freaking out, trying to tear pieces of flesh off them, a blaring alarm, sirens in the background, and a ringing phone while trying to tip over a bolted down, full safe.

 

I'm not sure how this relates to this thread.

 

I keep my gold coins in a food saver bag at the bottom of grand mothers fish tank under the gravel.

I keep my silver, also in food saver bags at the bottom of the Koi pond at my summer home in the Smokey Mountains.

 

QUIKE, EVERYONE ONE HEAD TO THE SMOKEY MOUNTAINS AND SEARCH EVERY KOI POND. DINGA DA DING DING DING-Banjo chasing music