Investing in silver coins

Zimbabwe (Pop.: 13 mln)is one extreme example; there are hundreds of failed paper fiatscos in history, and millions have suffered that lesson before us.

But how come no one ever mentions the Rouble in 2014? Over 130 mln Russians use Roubles today: a Rouble-holder could've bought Gold for ~R.50,000/Ozt and its now worth R.65,000/Ozt. or 30% appreciation at least.

Gold has been a great short-term currency hedge for average Russkies, past year or so. (Again: thinking more of security than investment.) PMs are politically safer there than Uncle Sam's paper, also.

I don't know for certain, but I'd presume Silver coins did just fine in Roubles, too. Are there any numismatic/bullion pensioners from there posting here, to confirm or refute?

 

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A little-known statistic; in the U.S., gold is off 37% from its 21st Century high, but in many others, it is only off 6% or 11% or 18%, etc. Hard to draw a conclusion, but it's still a fact.

 

When a country's money supply is strong and not inflationary, all things being equal, gold usually goes down in price compared to that country's currency. As bad as we are with printing money, debt, etc, the stats you mentioned means those countries, "many others", are even worse than we are with the money printing presses..

 

Well, one conclusion is pretty obvious and simple to draw: if those folks had bought tattered, scrofulous, unconstitutional paper dollars instead of gold at its peak, they'd be substantially further ahead. For now, of course.

 

This makes no sense at all.

Those assets are tied to paper dollars exactly as much as gold and silver are. If the dollar starts to plummet, the dollar price of homes, farmland, stocks, antiques and collectibles -- and precious metals -- starts to soar. That's what "a plummeting dollar" means.

What am I missing here, that nobody else has pointed this out?

 

The sense of it IS, diversify your assets. If everything you own is tied to paper dollars, or paper any-currency, and something goes wrong, then you're screwed. In general, your income is not going up as fast as prices for essentials. That is the whole point of PMs, to preserve the purchasing power of your liquid assets. It's a waste of time discussing this, you and Junior and a few others are in love with paper dollars.

You learned nothing from French assignats, Weimar million-mark bills, post World War II Hungarian coins denominated in the billions of forints, etc., where the government(s) acted in their own interests, not the people's. You need look no further than newer laws like Dodd-Frank:

"In addition to the FDIC encouraging big banks to seize deposits during bankruptcy to maintain the stability of the banking system as it protects the FDIC Insurance Fund from being totally depleted by over-sized bank failures, depositors in the U.S. face an additional risk of loss under U.S. bankruptcy law among all sizes of banks that invest in derivatives. During bankruptcy, derivative counterparties receive “super-priority” status above all other creditors, including depositors. This means that derivative holders will get all of the bank’s assets before any other creditors, including depositors, are paid..."

This is a high price to pay for failure to diversify. The current notional value of global derivatives, by the way, is ten times annual World GDP. A 1% default event (10% of global GDP) would mean the end of the good life for decades.

Clearly, if the timing and inflection points of the various bullions were logical and predictable, we'd all be millionaires, of course. The best a middle-class citizen can do, is diversify into the face of an exploding money supply, which can't end well.

 

If I were you sticking with the 90% stuff will /should get you most of your green back should you need it in the future.

 

He's set for t.p. for a while,eh? All tho' no food no need....

 

But you just finished saying:

...which is what I said didn't make sense. If you've got real estate, stocks, collectibles, and Treasuries, you are diversified, by any sane definition of the word -- maybe not diversified enough, but certainly diversified, as in "invested in different asset classes that are not expected to rise or fall in tandem".

But then you pulled out the bit about "sell any of them... and you get paid in paper dollars", as though they're all just other forms of fiat, and as though somehow you wouldn't get paid in paper dollars if you tried to sell PM.

Now, setting aside for the moment my own imputed love of fiat currency, could you take another swing at explaining what you're actually trying to say?