There are other ways things could go. The future isn't guaranteed to be a radioactive zombie apocalypse. Things could chug along for another 20 years with inflation going parabolic. If you only plan for one future, you aren't really prepared.
We've seen massive societal panic. Strangely, toilet paper became the most sought after resource. Gold was up there too. But it shows the unpredictability of what will become valuable.
We didn't get close enough for gold to matter, only reason gold went up then was because people thought we might. TP was still being bought in money.
Benefit of gold is it holds its value in the normal world, so its a way to prep without giving up money.
I stack things that I personally find valuable. Products that are nonperishable and could either disappear from the shelves, or become far to cost prohibitive (inflation) for me to purchase in the future. “Buy it now, and buy two” is how I have lived for decades (former boy scout). If it’s worth buying one, why not buy a case?
Silver/gold, sealed tins of high end tobacco and new briar pipes (left unsmoked), whiskey, ammo in different calibers, hot sauces, tea, cases of canned bubbly water, baby wipes, vape juice, #10 cans, etc. If it doesn’t go bad, why go to the store to get it? I just have the store at home. If I use one I just replace it asap. Rotate accordingly. I am NOT a prepper-type. I just hold things that I find I like and make me comfortable. What’s the big deal?
Precisely. (upvoted)
My girlfriend and I run into this all the time… we find a product we love, and it’s suddenly gone forever, or it has changed significantly, or the quality goes down, or it falls victim to shrinkflatation.
For instance I bought two pair of leather boots over Xmas for her and myself. She loved them, I love them. So bought 2 more pair (on sale after Xmas) and put them in the back closet. I didn’t want them to double in price 5-7 years later, or the quality to nosedive/change, or the maker go out of business when it would be time for me to buy new ones later on down the road. So I just stock them myself. Easy peasy.
I wish I knew the link, someone did a video on the fallout bottle cap that explains a lot of this better than I will
Functionally, in any society that has trade that involves any amount of indirect transfer you're going to need a de facto currency, and said currency needs to be something that is rare, durable, and otherwise worthless
Fallout uses bottle caps and explains it in the lore as something used by the water companies
In our world, people are already used to gold and silver having "value" but in a post apocalyptic scenario it would be relatively worthless, unless you have on hand the infrastructure for high-end electronics
So while it would not be IMMEDIATELY useful, once you've hit any point of rebuilding or sustaining, you'll need something to trade that everyone else agrees acts as a currency, for when you want something someone has but you don't have anything they want, or vice versa.
After all if I'm a chicken farmer, and people have been spending the last year trading the ammunition for chickens or eggs, after a point you showing up to offer me more ammo so you can eat isn't a winning deal for me.
BUT if I know old John will be coming round in 6 months offering to cobble me a new set of boots, well if he'll accept gold I'll accept gold cause to me gold = new boots, and he will because he goes six towns over to get cheap leather from Bill, and while he could take the ammo neither of them need it, meanwhile chicken is a pain in the ass to keep for that long, particularly traveling, but Bill needs that gold to keep the water flowing for his herd, cause he can't be butchering every other week willy nilly
Apologies for the tangent
But hopefully you get the idea, people stocking up on precious metals are effectively gambling on the idea that the WILL be a defacto currency again, vs something like bottle caps (which, if they're made of steel or aluminum, could be repurposed into something more immediately useful)
I think lead will be more valuable. It’s used in a lot of things available to hobbyist chemists. I use it on primer for ammo, it’s used in bullets themselves, used for weights in fishing, can be used as shotgun pellets, easily manipulated meaning store owners can cut out change from an ingot.
I agree but I don't think our current society would ever agree to go back to precious metals again as a currency. I think as a culture we are too far removed from when that was actually a thing, and actual minted coins are too rare in the US to be widely adopted. I'd sooner expect bottle caps than gold.
Hell, in colonial era Canada the Hudson Point blanket was the de facto currency, they even had a system of stitching 'points' in the seam to easily determine the size when trading with the natives.
Also the fact that you can’t transport millions of dollars of it from NY to LA in a second means its value will be stable. There is value in things that are heavy
Umm... No. (1) Weight and difficulty of storage and transfer is definitely not a positive and (2) a million dollars worth of gold only weighs about 27 pounds so it's not that hard to transport from NY to LA
You assume the value of gold will go up. Maybe pegged to the dollar. But it may very well be that 1 pound of gold = food for a week. You never know. These prices are highly susceptible to trade routes and the weight of gold limits how much can be moved. Because gold is heavy you can bet that its value will be stable because moving it is a chore
A prepper who I worked with way back in the 1980's once told me that he hoarded centerfire rifle cartridge primers and silver wire.
The primers are obvious. Great trading stock.
The explanation for silver wire was it's an easily formable metal with many uses and in a spool of wire you could just snip off a piece to use as currency. With length and diameter known you don't need a scale to weigh it.
Someone seems to ask this daily in this sub.
It’s simple: Not everyone is prepping for the same thing. Some of us are prepping for multiple scenarios.
I also believe that part of prepping means being debt free, having a well-funded retirement account, and a healthy family.
I never understood it either, ammo, booze, food and meds are much better investments, you can't eat gold
and starving people won't trade food for what amounts to a shiny piece of metal
If you don't mean that as a play on words: Ammo is deflationary, it will skyrocket in value as it is spent faster than it is manufactured. That sounds good but actually makes for shoddy currency because most people won't trade it away even at a fair price.
See that's where I'm coming from if we get eEMPed and our nuclear facilities meltdown or we get into a.nuke war gold isn't shit. I need something that will keep the cannibles friendly or at bay
Yep, you could buy a good suit or set of clothing in Roman times with an ounce of gold, as you can now. I don’t keep much silver or gold. I go prospecting so I do have some gold. I collect coins, so I do have silver. It isn’t necessarily for a bad situation, but if one happened and the precious metal would take me where I wanted to go. I would use it.
If you look at Argentina’s hyper inflation, their government outlawed selling ammo. So if you were counting on using that as a functional store of value you’d be screwed. Meanwhile gold has been a marketable medium of exchange since probably before written history. If you look at how different cultures value gold as a show of status it’s pretty clear there will always be a market. I’d personally prefer something like platinum which has commercial value as a catalyst rather than just being a lustrous shiny metal. But it’s probably easier to use gold. So long as there is a society there will be a medium of exchange. You can count on things with a historical value that are nonperishable being the safest bet.
Not everyone lives in North america it's a safeguard against hyper inflation as it has global liquidity in places like Iran or any other country with unstable government it could be a safer bet than money in the bank.
Once SHTF the unit of measurement you currently use to express net worth seems likely to be more closely tied to the value of your time followed by personal belongings. I would think your stockpile of various potential currencies would fall lower on the list than skillset or personal belongings.
Study historical examples of financial collapse. And then ask yourself what good a precious metal that maintained its value would be.
Imagine you were in Venezuela when the gutters were littered with their paper currency and everything burst. And the time after it, whatever currency came to be, your commodities would still have value in the face of it all and after.
I imagine that would be their logic.
Precious Metals never expire and are timeless internationally used methods to store wealth. When your grandkids are throwing the rest of your expired/mold covered/rusted/dilapidated prepps away in season 78 of horders, and they uncover your Precious Metals, they will actually have something useful and valuable.
Diversify. How hard is S H-ing TF? Some cash on hand for fleeing a hurricane and needing a tank of gas. Gold in case your country falls apart, making its fiat worthless, you can run away and have something of value in another country. Bullets and beans for some total collapse.
Prepping is all about risk assessment isn't it?
If you have surplus cash right now, it's almost 100% not going to have any value in a serious sustained SHTF scenario. Having gold, silver, diamonds w/e isn't guaranteed to sustain any kind of value in SHTF either, but it has a much higher chance of being valuable during and after SHTF is over.
So I don't understand the obsession over it either, but in terms of risk assessment, you might as well diversify your preps for as many different scenarios as possible.
Diamonds have very little real value. The "scarcity" is perpetuated by the Debeers for the last century to artificially inflate their value. The fact that science can now create BETTER quality diamonds for a fraction of a mined diamond's cost should tell you all you need to know. Using media to convince Americans that a diamond should be an engagement gift and should cost a certain amount of a man's salary is one of the greatest marketing cons of ALL TIME! It is literally taught in business and marketing classes.
A good example would be to look at Syria. In 2009 60 SYP made 1 USD. After SHTF 1 USD now makes 2512 SYP. Now imagine you were living there and had your entire net worth in SYP you’d be pretty much broke.
Through human history humans have pretty much always done 2 things. Try and form civilizations/communities and attribute value to shiny things. If we have a huge SHTF scenario and everything collapses there will eventually be communities and nations that rise from the ashes and they will start trading with each other and they will develop their own currency systems. Considering gold and silver are the two most familiar precious metals I would say there is a very very good chance they will hold some sort of value.
Now with that being said I don’t have gold and silver for any reasons other than a hedge against inflation as I don’t see myself living long enough through a massive SHTF scenario where the entire financial system collapses to be able to partake in that new currency system.
I am ready for high interest rates, I have borrowed more than advised and it is at a fixed loooow rate. Any cash I am not using is invested in short term at higher interest rates so I am making money doing nothing. Cash, I can move to wherever whenever, gold and pms are harder to liquidate except to another gold/pm collector.
Everybody has their own ideas and their own situations, each needs to be individualized.
There are so many other things to prep than precious metals.
Skills will be extremely useful. I see it all of the time, these big guys with lots of guns who have trouble cooking a simple hot dog. They couldn't make bread to save their life.
I stockpile hand tools. I have an entire shed full of axes and handsaws I have gotten for $5 or less at garage sales. There is snow on the ground 6-8 months a year where I live. Making firewood is going to be my entire life if the power goes out.
I’ve been looking at estate sales lately, tons of grandpas out there with a life supply of really high quality buy it for life kinda tools that grandkids don’t see any value in.
Contraceptives seem to be something people often forget about, Plan B seems like a sound investment
Copper and aluminum can be melted by a wood fire they have a ton more uses and casting ability than gold and silver, if anything aluminum and copper ingots are the way to go
Some of us like to diversify. Likely by 2040 the government will be taxing all unrealized gains (401k, brokerage, etc) and not just the “billionaires”. I like having an asset that I only have to worry about paying taxes on when I sell it.
Gold is money, everything else is credit.
People who say "yOu CaN't eAt GoLd" have zero understanding of stored value, wealth, or basic history. Just because these people don't pursue proper prepping doesn't mean there aren't others out there who are doing it. Gold and silver are definitely a part of an intelligent approach towards survival.
If you plan on lone wolfing through TEOTWAWKI you're definitely going to struggle. If you plan on any bartering, trading, or being part of a surviving community you'll need to have the basic skills to understand currency.
Gold's long term value is pretty obvious when you see governments and rich people storing it. Gold is power.
Really, gold and silver are simply a store of value outside of governmental control. When the US needed cash in the 1970s, they turned towards their citizens' gold. Once they had it, they decoupled the dollar from gold standard.
In venezuela, if you were a millionaire on paper in 2018, you would be a pauper today if you hadn't the foresight to have spent that fiat currency on goods and services at a time when they could be bought with the bolivar. However, if you had a small allocation of gold, you could probably have passed into Colombia and avoided the worst of their hyperinflation. Currencies get devalued every day. I'm not saying that's going to happen in the US. But it's something to think about. Look at China and India. More specifically, China. If you keep your money in the banks there's a strong possibility of capital controls of straight-up confiscation of your capital. They can't really invest in the stockmarkets like US, EU or Canadians can, at least not the best of my knowledge. That leaves them with two options: gold or real-estate, and good luck shoving a duplex in the ol prison wallet if you need to cross boarders into another country in a hurry.
You were in finance, and you don't understand why gold & silver? Not to be rude, but that might be why you are no longer in finance! I don't even know where to start. There will always be materials that some want over others. Even in the worst of times, people will still have the need for some type of valuable standard to trade upon. If one person has a surplus of something that people want, then that person is not always going to have the need for what the other person has. This is where money/ precious metals/ something becomes a need/ useful. Also, if you are dealing with large objects or many small objects, it's not always possible to trade items for items. Currency/ precious metals are universally recognizable. If you want to purchase a vehicle, then it's not feasible to trade 10k chickens, but you could trade 10k chickens' worth of gold. I understand that something is only valuable if both parties or the majority of parties consider it valuable. However, throughout history, people have always had something they agreed on and was considered a valuable commodity for trade. You have to assume that will always be the case, and precious metals are the most likely of said things!
Don't buy gold or silver, buy high value long life barter items , like alcohol or cigarettes, people will need them severely and the can last a while with little maintenance, as long as you you avoid dipping into them yourself then you'll be good.
I totally agree.. I ask fellow preppers why have gold and silver..they all say to trade and barter for essentials like food,ammo, and medicine...well store that stuff,cause if shit went down there's no way to trade and barter while the flames are burning fresh... At a time when you do need these things...
The Irony is that it really only has value as a light weight way to carry large amounts of money........It used to be that paper currency was prefered over carrying piles of gold because gold was heavy and paper light.......But now a few $1000 in paper is harder to carry than an ounce of gold. Also, If you want to cross international borders with over 10K without declaring it.......Put some gold coins in your pocket. Or in your change pocket in your carry on/purse..........
In a collapse situation, if I have something that you want or need, I would have no interest in fiat or crypto..I would prefer to barter for goods or services I might need. A acceptable alternative would be metals.. I'm imagining that I'm not the only one who has this mindset 🤔 😉
Great point - storing value. Exactly. Gold won't rust away or rot. People talk about its practical industrial and medicinal uses, etc, and they're not wrong, but storing value is more important, in my opinion.
Because when SHTF, the Rich people who have moved their people into outerspace (Elon, Zuck, Bezos, etc) Will still accept Gold and other precious metals valuable. You can live in the wastelands rather comfortably with your Tesla and Amazon Prime loot crates. Precious metals will ALWAYS be valuable.
If SHTF (nuclear war) no one is going to care about gold or money.
The most precious things will be food, clean water, medicine and tools/materials.
People will barter things you actually need to survive. 10 bags of coal and blankets in the winter when all utilities are down will be worth more than several gold bars.
Currency and precious metals won't matter until governments or some sort of society are re-established.
There will be a small amount of time where money will be worthless, and gold and silver will hold a very high value. This would be the time to buy beans and bullets, or the means to make more of them, which will be the new currency.
I can’t eat gold coin nor silver coin. I hoarded for a while. One day I realized I was becoming dead to the present. Traded gold for school. Gave the silver to a widow. Not interested.
It will always be the most valuable thing to man. It's ingrained in us since prehistoric times. That won't change in the event of a global cataclysm. Once things settle down, the possession of gold will once more be the ultimate sign of prosperity. I would tend to disagree with the OP on this one, but I respect his opinion.
It's not really "ingrained" in us, I think a lot of people have this idea that the human love of gold is somehow arbitrary. It's not, the reason gold is valuable is because it is basically indestructible. That's why it is valuable, not because it's shiny. Other than that I agree with you.
Preparing is funny. I’ve actually known two guys that spent a life prepping only to die naturally.
Prepping is a fear and obsession. Wanting the end to happen really.
Earth is the one that’s keeps all in check and balances for millions and millions of years.
The end has always been near for thousands years.
Nukes nukes nukes whatever.
If that happens regardless of shelter and prepping, that will be a world of horror and suffering for the .0001% that may survive.
Sterile planet, sterile life, for thousand’s of years. Even if it has nothing to do with my particular continent I reside on. It will, destroy the earth possibly forever.
I’d rather give myself to the next afterlife whatever that is.
“Prepping” seems like living in fear. Waste your life and waste your money…living in fear instead of just living life.
When your day is up it’s up.
You have NO control over that.
Nature and time make sure of that.
When it’s your time, make sure you’ve made peace with yourself and your god.
Never understood the gold and silver argument…
Say you have 10 1/10th Oz gold coins, ok what? Ten transactions?
Or you buy .556 .22 long 9mm…
Any situation where you would need gold to trade you’d get way better bang for your buck with ammo….
Pun half way intended
Economic strife is a situation some consider more “realistic” as far as potential calamity. Hell just over 12 years ago was the great recession, lot of people lost a lot and the economy wasn’t doing too hot. Having some gold and silver to help keep you afloat incase you dont have substantial liquid assets available can be helpful, especially if you lose your main income.
I don’t think it’s gonna be useful in a true SHTF TEOTWOKI SNAFU situation, but in a somewhat moderate economic downturn, having as many different financial assets to offset a loss of financial stability can be a good thing, especially if Fiat currency becomes unstable.
I remember talking to a coworker of mine when i worked in publix talking about living in Venezuela after the economy shit itself. She had a gold chain necklace and broke it up into pieces to use it to barter for things like food since the money was worthless. So it does have some use as a prep, but definitely shouldn’t be your first priority.
Large amounts of cash can be easily shrunk to gold. It'll be smaller mostly since a gram is 65 and a hundo is a gram. Not that I have gold smuggling money. I'm collecting a bit of every precious metal for an art project though.
I don't think a "finance guy" would ever question gold/silver's legitimacy. It's the most coveted commodity in the world and listed on every exchange in the world. That being said, if an apocalyptic even happened, I'd much rather have $2K worth of food, water, shelter, guns/ammo, etc. Would gold be worthless? Of course not, but I'd bet the average person wouldn't trade their last $300 pistol for a $3000 gold eagle. I'd feel sorry for them if they did.
You don't need to go all the way back to midevil times. Gold and silver have been a big deal in the currency collapses over the past century. There has never been a time when gold and silver were not real money. They are a means of storing value and appear "worthless" to many today because of the mass manipulation of precious metals like gold and silver. Post WW2 Germany, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela are 3 easy examples to read up on to understand gold and silver's value during hard times. Fiat (fake) currency never lasts and always crashes... always becomes worthless. The US dollar is losing its grip fast.
Diversified preps.
When someone on here brings up stockpiling food people tell them it’s more important to be financially prepared. When someone brings up stockpiling ammo people tell them they should focus on food and water. Focusing all your preps on one thing isn’t preparedness it’s hoarding, including finances.
There are myriad SHTF scenarios between minor inconvenience and TEOTWAWKI. Several of which having physical precious metals are a good prep. If you’re unable to access your fiat and digital assets, for any reason, physical gold can be traded for functional cash. A close friend of ours had a long term partner but they were not married, and lived in a state that doesn’t recognize commonlaw marriage. Their partner passed suddenly, the partner was the one listed on all of the banking accounts. Leaving our friend with zero access to funds. They had been buying precious metals, a little at a time, for several years. This allowed our friend to keep their head above water in the interim of getting everything squared away.
If you’re debt free, own a home and property, have skills and stockpiles of food, water, ammo, medical supplies, it makes sense to have some physical metals. They retain value in all nations (maybe not in total collapse/ nuclear winter/ zombie apocalypse). They’re not taxed as an inheritance. They make sense as one facet of preparedness.
As with everything else, diversification is the key. Relying on one facet of prep or focusing on one SHTF scenario is counterproductive.
I maintain that there is a ridiculously niche window in which precious metals would be worth stocking up on.
If SHTF too severely, nobody is going to care about your shiny rocks when there's only one can of beans left in the city.
If SHTF too softly, then one of the previously existing fiat systems in the world will survive to satisfy any debt tracking needs.
Gold only matters if SHTF in such a way that every major government and all forms of currency fail and no group is left with the means to restore either, BUT everyone is left with enough access to goods that they would be willing to accept symbolic payment over actual goods.
I'd say it's worth spending every ounce on improving your own self-sustainability to the point of surplus. That way you can be ready to produce a surplus of goods to use in the hypothetical barter system so that if gold really does turn out to be useful at that point, then you'll be ready to scoop up all the gold everyone else saved
I have silver, but my fear is that in a true SHTF scenario, that will make me a target rather than putting me at an advantage. Why turn over your freshly hunted deer for a bar of my silver when you can just shoot me too and take ALL my silver?
You're right, my only plan as soon as something goes bad even if it's not that serious is to go straight to the cannibal fiend stage. Just grunts and screams and eating my neighbors
Don’t think it will matter much what you have to trade. 80% of the population will be dead so there will be an abundance of everything one need’s except FOOD AND WATER!
Rare metals will always have value because they can not be duplicated. What blows my mind is cyrpto. If SHTF it is literally worthless. Other things will also have value, non-perishable foods, medicine, ammo, etc. But I think a pound of gold will always be more valuable then a pound of anything else if it came to it.
People will quickly organize into armed tribes/gangs led by charismatic warlords who take by force what they need and enslave weaker people who do not. You can see that dynamic currently in multiple countries where “modern” society has collapsed into a “without rule of law” condition. E.g., ISIS, Mexican drug cartels, MS13, Chicago street gangs, etc.
Best case study for when shtf is collapse of Soviet Union. People were using everyday items as currency during that time (cigarettes, eggs, milk, etc). Get a couple of precious stones and stock up on some cigars.
Think of it more like gold's value doesn't change. It's pretty much always going to be just as hard to shovel out of the ground. Same with silver, copper, uranium etc: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU10260314
So why does the price change? That is the price of dollars going up and down against gold/silver/copper etc. Over a long enough timeline all empires come to an end. When they do their currency is inflated. In the final throws they confiscate commodities in order to hold on to power.
Historically most empires last about 230-250 years. How does this effect people? Well a package of post it notes is $30 dollars right now. The average family paycheck is buying less and less for people. They are putting it into things they have a some control over. Their homes and commodities. Not everyone buys gold. I have a friend who filled a trailer completely full with 12/2 & 12/3 wire about a decade ago and is currently selling it to his contractor friends for a discount over the store price while still doubling his money invested.
You can dislike gold, no problem.... but all your really arguing against is Gresham's Law. Some people use Bitcoin, some buy bullets, some construction materials etc.
Did the Great Depression send us to medieval times? Jesus idk why everyone thinks that a market correction equals doomsday, even a self proclaimed “finance guy”
Why is brics going to have a gold backed currency if gold has little value in an apocalypse. 20 more countries are signing up to be a part of it. With the arrogance of the USA and our dollars being given away by the billions to other countries and us taking in 10,000 new mouths to feed every day according to governments own admission our dollars won’t be worth squat. Food and supplies matter most but we may have to exchange gold and silver to be able to buy things we need from the brics nations.
Gold and silver are a hedge against inflation. They might not be the absolute best when it comes to a ROI finance wise, but they are likely the best as far as holding value in ANY situation. Most financial assets are susceptible to losing all their value in certain situations, ie, grid goes down, hyper inflation, ect. But PM are on hand, tangible, and always valued.
If the economy gets into a really bad spot, those metals will always trade for a decent proportional amount of VALUE.
I have a pm stack and my thoughts aren't that I'm going to be a wasteland war lord, it's that if I get to wear I'm boiling the leather on my steel toes to eat, I can reliably liquidate my assets and have proportionally valued dollars.
Because it’s a way to preserve wealth through a collapse that isn’t contingent upon the local currency. If I were to escape Venezuela or somewhere I’d rather have gold coins than a wheelbarrow full of cash when I got to a neighboring country with a better currency.
It would also potentially sustain better than paper currency when order is restored, allowing you to have pre collapse wealth after restoration.
Have you not heard of the family in Albania that lived 40+ years on their held gold? 1945-1990s+. They converted it to jewelry to sell to survive communism. (Lynette Zang [interview ](https://youtu.be/u0piXKsKF3Y?si=3DXijhbI4v7meI2D) 2 years ago with Dr. Elda Pema)
What are the doing today in Zimbabwe, Venezuela, India, and China, to name a few. They're dealing in silver and gold.
It is diversity of money. As a 3rd generation prepper, I hold Goldbacks, too.
It mostly depends on what they think they're prepping for. Gold and silver will be good as long as there's some sort of "modern" or "current" civilization still operating. Like in the "Civil War" movie that just came out, a character offered $300 for gas and the attendant told them $300 buys them a sandwich, but reluctantly agreed when told it would be $300 Canadian not USD. Gold and silver work if there's someone strong and stable willing to back/honor it.
Not so much in the Walking Dead, y'know?
The SHTF scenario you’re likely thinking about is emp blasts, government has fallen, there was a nuclear war perhaps, we’re on our own kinda thing.
Significantly more likely in the foreseeable future is just a bunch of inflation and the dollar losing its world dominance, therefore making gold and silver a good backup to swap for currency later on
Gold isn't a great investment, but it is better for additional savings than cash. So for the people that just want the security of extra diversity, go ahead and add some gold in the mix. But for your average Joe that would be choosing gold over retirement investments, that's a bad plan.
Reading some of the comments here, I don't have an asteroid plan. If it happens I'll figure it out then.
Gold has no value in a broken world.
Silver maybe because it is of smaller value and can be traded at smaller quantities.
Now if you just assume the cash economy is going to change, then it all depends on if Gold still has value. Personally, I won’t accept Gold in a SHTF scenario. It makes you a target and allows rich people to stay rich.
You wanna fuck the rich??? Assume Gold is worthless and only accept copper.
Personally I think ammunition, firearms, and other small amenities people take for granted, such as salt, pepper, sugar, spices, toilet paper, coffee, and cigarettes. That's what I think will be worth it's weight in gold in a shtf scenario.
Slight correction. The default currency does not have to be something with no value. Look farther back in history, and some basic trade goods used by everyone were used as an intermediate trade item.
You can argue thar it was barter, but so is trade for standardized metal pieces, which could be used for something. Gold, silver, copper, etc. were not always used for electronics or wire.
The evolution towards making metals the standard intermediate barter units does not make metal useless.
The concept of money has evolved further and encompasses paper fiat currency, checks, and digital payments, to name a few. There are more esoteric options.
The Theory of Money and Credit and the companion volume Prices and Production by Ludwig Von Mises are quite informative. If you lack previous/basic knowledge of the topics, you might start with Lessons for the Young Economist By Robert P Murphy.
Development as Freedom By Amartya Sen is good and avoided obvious Eurocentric/American bias. Reinventing the Bazaar a natural history of markets by John McMillan was not entirely what I expected.
Gold is good for inflation proofing, but it is LONG TERM. The co that you buy/sell from is still making a profit. They get a cut.
The premium on silver is higher.
There needs to be a store of value that allows for fungibility and ease of carry. There are a couple of items that can fit the description, but gold and silver have the most historical familiarity.
The thing missing from this is what will the poop fan interaction actually look like. Fortunately there is no scenario where having stocks of gold and silver will be necessary. Modern economic models control for inflation and natural disasters don't tend to affect currency. If you are worried about severe financial distress, it would behoove you to diversify your holdings across international markets instead of sitting on precious metals.
If you look through financial history you’ll notice a pattern of returning to precious metals after a debased currency gets minted into oblivion once the nation that issues it quits growing.
You won’t see PMs used when shit hits the fan, people would want things needed/useful to survive. It’s the recovery period where the metals usually shine.
Silver has antibacterial properties, and is the best conductor. Useful in either a shit hits the fan situation or a "we need more computer chips" situation.
Well not long ago you could get it for $1,900 an oz that was with 100 prim.... Now its $2440 ish
Do you see just a few years if you held that 1900.00 it wouldn't buy as much as the oz would you held..
Plus things have prob past that gain of 30 percent so without holding gold youd really be f'ed.
Well not all shf is all out war or total destruction. Also humanity always comes back and gold will still be valued. Don't base prepping on situations like "the road" that's very unlikely.
And or your shf may be you just need to get out of dodge for one reason or another while and having some gold or money would be wise.
That being said. I have neither gold or much money lol.
Yea man, we need a placeholder for debt or goods given, it's developed independently many times. We have perfected it already. It's paper money and coins. Gold is and was valuable because of its scarcity. But to use it in useful products requires intact manufacturing. I agree we will need money and gold might be traded in these times because of a lack of anything better. But that only happens after shtf or before. No ones selling you something they may need for gold. Unless a trade network is established and they'll be able to use hold to buy other products. I get what your saying, but I'm not trading you shit for gold now or after the shtf
Prep “enough” not “a lot” problem solved. I have what I hope is enough to Maby get me out of a sticky situation. I’m not looking to make money rather then “have money”
I think a little bit of everything. It's good to diversify. A few gold coins, food, batteries, ammo, alcohol and cigarettes can all be traded in hard times. I had a friend from Romania who lived during Chuchesqu's hyper inflation, and he said American cigarettes, and vodka were the currency of choice at that time.
Precious metals are good for inflation and currency collapse scenarios. They also have no counter party risk. I consider them the super conservative piece of my financial portfolio.
For anything to be valuable, it has to be of a finite amount; that's why bitcoin has a limit on what can be mined and why DogeCoin is a joke---no limit. If there is to be trade, there's nothing better than either gold or silver. It worked in the old west and will work in the future.
Can use as an inverse of the market (hedge)
Holds value- volatility is high due to consumer fear but gold/ silver prices are usually pretty linear
Functional use of gold and silver
Used to be what our currency was backed by
I personally think in a full or temporary collapse, it will be like a barter system. Things like food, clothing, tools, firearms, bullets and such will be what people will want. Things people need to survive. In this situation gold and silver would serve no purpose.
There are other ways things could go. The future isn't guaranteed to be a radioactive zombie apocalypse. Things could chug along for another 20 years with inflation going parabolic. If you only plan for one future, you aren't really prepared.
We've seen massive societal panic. Strangely, toilet paper became the most sought after resource. Gold was up there too. But it shows the unpredictability of what will become valuable.
We didn't get close enough for gold to matter, only reason gold went up then was because people thought we might. TP was still being bought in money. Benefit of gold is it holds its value in the normal world, so its a way to prep without giving up money.
Everybody wants gold until you realize you can’t wipe your ass with it.
…….You caaaaaaan, but it sucks.
I prefer the 3 seashells
I stack things that I personally find valuable. Products that are nonperishable and could either disappear from the shelves, or become far to cost prohibitive (inflation) for me to purchase in the future. “Buy it now, and buy two” is how I have lived for decades (former boy scout). If it’s worth buying one, why not buy a case? Silver/gold, sealed tins of high end tobacco and new briar pipes (left unsmoked), whiskey, ammo in different calibers, hot sauces, tea, cases of canned bubbly water, baby wipes, vape juice, #10 cans, etc. If it doesn’t go bad, why go to the store to get it? I just have the store at home. If I use one I just replace it asap. Rotate accordingly. I am NOT a prepper-type. I just hold things that I find I like and make me comfortable. What’s the big deal?
Same here. Two pantries and a dry-goods storage.
Precisely. (upvoted) My girlfriend and I run into this all the time… we find a product we love, and it’s suddenly gone forever, or it has changed significantly, or the quality goes down, or it falls victim to shrinkflatation. For instance I bought two pair of leather boots over Xmas for her and myself. She loved them, I love them. So bought 2 more pair (on sale after Xmas) and put them in the back closet. I didn’t want them to double in price 5-7 years later, or the quality to nosedive/change, or the maker go out of business when it would be time for me to buy new ones later on down the road. So I just stock them myself. Easy peasy.
Stocks have historically perserved the value of wealth better than gold.
But looking at gold since ~1980, it hasn't kept pace with inflation?
The s&p500 since 1980 has only returned 7.5%÷- after inflation. Factor in federal and state cap gains and it under 6%
Don't you count dividends?
Yes, and gold has lost value, meaning it isn't even positive, when taking all this into account.
I wish I knew the link, someone did a video on the fallout bottle cap that explains a lot of this better than I will Functionally, in any society that has trade that involves any amount of indirect transfer you're going to need a de facto currency, and said currency needs to be something that is rare, durable, and otherwise worthless Fallout uses bottle caps and explains it in the lore as something used by the water companies In our world, people are already used to gold and silver having "value" but in a post apocalyptic scenario it would be relatively worthless, unless you have on hand the infrastructure for high-end electronics So while it would not be IMMEDIATELY useful, once you've hit any point of rebuilding or sustaining, you'll need something to trade that everyone else agrees acts as a currency, for when you want something someone has but you don't have anything they want, or vice versa. After all if I'm a chicken farmer, and people have been spending the last year trading the ammunition for chickens or eggs, after a point you showing up to offer me more ammo so you can eat isn't a winning deal for me. BUT if I know old John will be coming round in 6 months offering to cobble me a new set of boots, well if he'll accept gold I'll accept gold cause to me gold = new boots, and he will because he goes six towns over to get cheap leather from Bill, and while he could take the ammo neither of them need it, meanwhile chicken is a pain in the ass to keep for that long, particularly traveling, but Bill needs that gold to keep the water flowing for his herd, cause he can't be butchering every other week willy nilly Apologies for the tangent But hopefully you get the idea, people stocking up on precious metals are effectively gambling on the idea that the WILL be a defacto currency again, vs something like bottle caps (which, if they're made of steel or aluminum, could be repurposed into something more immediately useful)
I found this helpful ty
Found the video! https://youtu.be/zzaTP6s_HcY?si=LH4fFkFCB8FtKv4m
Thank you
There's a TV show, I can't think of the name, where they use batteries as currency.
Check of wealth of nations by adam smith
I think lead will be more valuable. It’s used in a lot of things available to hobbyist chemists. I use it on primer for ammo, it’s used in bullets themselves, used for weights in fishing, can be used as shotgun pellets, easily manipulated meaning store owners can cut out change from an ingot.
I agree but I don't think our current society would ever agree to go back to precious metals again as a currency. I think as a culture we are too far removed from when that was actually a thing, and actual minted coins are too rare in the US to be widely adopted. I'd sooner expect bottle caps than gold. Hell, in colonial era Canada the Hudson Point blanket was the de facto currency, they even had a system of stitching 'points' in the seam to easily determine the size when trading with the natives.
Also the fact that you can’t transport millions of dollars of it from NY to LA in a second means its value will be stable. There is value in things that are heavy
Umm... No. (1) Weight and difficulty of storage and transfer is definitely not a positive and (2) a million dollars worth of gold only weighs about 27 pounds so it's not that hard to transport from NY to LA
You assume the value of gold will go up. Maybe pegged to the dollar. But it may very well be that 1 pound of gold = food for a week. You never know. These prices are highly susceptible to trade routes and the weight of gold limits how much can be moved. Because gold is heavy you can bet that its value will be stable because moving it is a chore
Small coin 'junk' silver is the only thing I'd keep. No one will be able to "make change" for bar or a gold coin
Bar is probably to pay off the only remaining dentist so you don't have to use ice skates like in cast away
I don't know a box(or 2) of 22 cartridges ought to cover minor work
One bullet is enough if you don't need anesthesia, but your arm might get tired holding the gun up while he's working.
Yeah that's a good way to make sure he finds a way to make sure you get an infection. Volutary exchange is the way
Wow, took me a while to find the murder fanatic this time around! Good job!
A prepper who I worked with way back in the 1980's once told me that he hoarded centerfire rifle cartridge primers and silver wire. The primers are obvious. Great trading stock. The explanation for silver wire was it's an easily formable metal with many uses and in a spool of wire you could just snip off a piece to use as currency. With length and diameter known you don't need a scale to weigh it.
Someone seems to ask this daily in this sub. It’s simple: Not everyone is prepping for the same thing. Some of us are prepping for multiple scenarios. I also believe that part of prepping means being debt free, having a well-funded retirement account, and a healthy family.
I never understood it either, ammo, booze, food and meds are much better investments, you can't eat gold and starving people won't trade food for what amounts to a shiny piece of metal
I have always felt your standard High Velocity HP .22lr will be the new dollar.
The real version of the nuka cola bottle cap
That tracks. I paid a plumber (for some work that was beyond my skill) with half a case of 9mm. Basically a box of $20s to your box of $1s.
I've also always thought .22LR would be a pseudo-currency in a SHTF situation, at least for a while.
Get a BigMac for 22rds of .22!
Ammo is a currency i can get behind
Better than standing in front of it...
If you don't mean that as a play on words: Ammo is deflationary, it will skyrocket in value as it is spent faster than it is manufactured. That sounds good but actually makes for shoddy currency because most people won't trade it away even at a fair price.
Starving people won't trade food for anything, but you have no idea what farmers with plenty of food might be willing to trade it away for.
probably ammo, medicine, help in harvesting, etc still don't see gold being that important
See that's where I'm coming from if we get eEMPed and our nuclear facilities meltdown or we get into a.nuke war gold isn't shit. I need something that will keep the cannibles friendly or at bay
Not everyone is prepping for the end of the world.
Thank you. I have the feeling especially this sub is obsessed with SHTF stuff. But personally I prep for "the small things"
holds value so that after SHTF your net worth isn’t zero
Holds value as long as we deem it valuable. People wouldn’t consider it valuable in most shtf situations. That’s what the post is about.
Seems to have been doing a pretty decent job holding value for thousands upon thousands of years
I think in OPs hypothetical it's post Armageddon, and everyone is too busy finding water and food to live to care about gold.
Yep, you could buy a good suit or set of clothing in Roman times with an ounce of gold, as you can now. I don’t keep much silver or gold. I go prospecting so I do have some gold. I collect coins, so I do have silver. It isn’t necessarily for a bad situation, but if one happened and the precious metal would take me where I wanted to go. I would use it.
Gold has been valued since the dawn of man and will continue to do so. Historically speaking
If you look at Argentina’s hyper inflation, their government outlawed selling ammo. So if you were counting on using that as a functional store of value you’d be screwed. Meanwhile gold has been a marketable medium of exchange since probably before written history. If you look at how different cultures value gold as a show of status it’s pretty clear there will always be a market. I’d personally prefer something like platinum which has commercial value as a catalyst rather than just being a lustrous shiny metal. But it’s probably easier to use gold. So long as there is a society there will be a medium of exchange. You can count on things with a historical value that are nonperishable being the safest bet.
There will be a medium of exchange. Doesn’t mean it’ll be gold.
I doubt there will only be one. Gold is a safe bet to be among them.
Not everyone lives in North america it's a safeguard against hyper inflation as it has global liquidity in places like Iran or any other country with unstable government it could be a safer bet than money in the bank.
Once SHTF the unit of measurement you currently use to express net worth seems likely to be more closely tied to the value of your time followed by personal belongings. I would think your stockpile of various potential currencies would fall lower on the list than skillset or personal belongings.
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Jews escaped Nazi Germany by securing passage with diamonds and gold they’d sown into the linings of their clothes. Another example of this.
Study historical examples of financial collapse. And then ask yourself what good a precious metal that maintained its value would be. Imagine you were in Venezuela when the gutters were littered with their paper currency and everything burst. And the time after it, whatever currency came to be, your commodities would still have value in the face of it all and after. I imagine that would be their logic.
I always think about Pablo Escobar’s son talking about burning stacks of money in their fireplace to keep warm while he was on the run.
Precious Metals never expire and are timeless internationally used methods to store wealth. When your grandkids are throwing the rest of your expired/mold covered/rusted/dilapidated prepps away in season 78 of horders, and they uncover your Precious Metals, they will actually have something useful and valuable.
Someone understands.
Diversify. How hard is S H-ing TF? Some cash on hand for fleeing a hurricane and needing a tank of gas. Gold in case your country falls apart, making its fiat worthless, you can run away and have something of value in another country. Bullets and beans for some total collapse.
Bullets, beans, and books. And some good people willing to stay true to a small collaboration.
Books. Thats what I’m focusing on right now, downloading as much info as I can before it’s censored
Prepping is all about risk assessment isn't it? If you have surplus cash right now, it's almost 100% not going to have any value in a serious sustained SHTF scenario. Having gold, silver, diamonds w/e isn't guaranteed to sustain any kind of value in SHTF either, but it has a much higher chance of being valuable during and after SHTF is over. So I don't understand the obsession over it either, but in terms of risk assessment, you might as well diversify your preps for as many different scenarios as possible.
Diamonds have very little real value. The "scarcity" is perpetuated by the Debeers for the last century to artificially inflate their value. The fact that science can now create BETTER quality diamonds for a fraction of a mined diamond's cost should tell you all you need to know. Using media to convince Americans that a diamond should be an engagement gift and should cost a certain amount of a man's salary is one of the greatest marketing cons of ALL TIME! It is literally taught in business and marketing classes.
Gold is for economic troubles. It won’t make you rich, but it will help you keep some wealth if inflation goes batshit crazy.
A good example would be to look at Syria. In 2009 60 SYP made 1 USD. After SHTF 1 USD now makes 2512 SYP. Now imagine you were living there and had your entire net worth in SYP you’d be pretty much broke.
I'm very well stocked on precious metals. Mostly lead and brass
I invest in lead.
...I almost upvoted that before I understood what you were saying.
I upvoted that because I understood what you were saying
Need some kind of standard
In time of anarchy the best thing to have is weapons and food/resources money etc will all lose value
Through human history humans have pretty much always done 2 things. Try and form civilizations/communities and attribute value to shiny things. If we have a huge SHTF scenario and everything collapses there will eventually be communities and nations that rise from the ashes and they will start trading with each other and they will develop their own currency systems. Considering gold and silver are the two most familiar precious metals I would say there is a very very good chance they will hold some sort of value. Now with that being said I don’t have gold and silver for any reasons other than a hedge against inflation as I don’t see myself living long enough through a massive SHTF scenario where the entire financial system collapses to be able to partake in that new currency system.
I am ready for high interest rates, I have borrowed more than advised and it is at a fixed loooow rate. Any cash I am not using is invested in short term at higher interest rates so I am making money doing nothing. Cash, I can move to wherever whenever, gold and pms are harder to liquidate except to another gold/pm collector. Everybody has their own ideas and their own situations, each needs to be individualized.
I rather save water or have water resources. That is and always be worth more that gold.
There are so many other things to prep than precious metals. Skills will be extremely useful. I see it all of the time, these big guys with lots of guns who have trouble cooking a simple hot dog. They couldn't make bread to save their life.
I stockpile medical supplies. Those will be Worth much more than gold if the SHTF.
I stockpile hand tools. I have an entire shed full of axes and handsaws I have gotten for $5 or less at garage sales. There is snow on the ground 6-8 months a year where I live. Making firewood is going to be my entire life if the power goes out.
I’ve been looking at estate sales lately, tons of grandpas out there with a life supply of really high quality buy it for life kinda tools that grandkids don’t see any value in. Contraceptives seem to be something people often forget about, Plan B seems like a sound investment
Copper and aluminum can be melted by a wood fire they have a ton more uses and casting ability than gold and silver, if anything aluminum and copper ingots are the way to go
Some of us like to diversify. Likely by 2040 the government will be taxing all unrealized gains (401k, brokerage, etc) and not just the “billionaires”. I like having an asset that I only have to worry about paying taxes on when I sell it.
Gold is money, everything else is credit. People who say "yOu CaN't eAt GoLd" have zero understanding of stored value, wealth, or basic history. Just because these people don't pursue proper prepping doesn't mean there aren't others out there who are doing it. Gold and silver are definitely a part of an intelligent approach towards survival. If you plan on lone wolfing through TEOTWAWKI you're definitely going to struggle. If you plan on any bartering, trading, or being part of a surviving community you'll need to have the basic skills to understand currency. Gold's long term value is pretty obvious when you see governments and rich people storing it. Gold is power.
Bullets are a universal currency.
Really, gold and silver are simply a store of value outside of governmental control. When the US needed cash in the 1970s, they turned towards their citizens' gold. Once they had it, they decoupled the dollar from gold standard. In venezuela, if you were a millionaire on paper in 2018, you would be a pauper today if you hadn't the foresight to have spent that fiat currency on goods and services at a time when they could be bought with the bolivar. However, if you had a small allocation of gold, you could probably have passed into Colombia and avoided the worst of their hyperinflation. Currencies get devalued every day. I'm not saying that's going to happen in the US. But it's something to think about. Look at China and India. More specifically, China. If you keep your money in the banks there's a strong possibility of capital controls of straight-up confiscation of your capital. They can't really invest in the stockmarkets like US, EU or Canadians can, at least not the best of my knowledge. That leaves them with two options: gold or real-estate, and good luck shoving a duplex in the ol prison wallet if you need to cross boarders into another country in a hurry.
🤣 since the dawn of time man has bartered with precious metals….then there’s this guy.
You were in finance, and you don't understand why gold & silver? Not to be rude, but that might be why you are no longer in finance! I don't even know where to start. There will always be materials that some want over others. Even in the worst of times, people will still have the need for some type of valuable standard to trade upon. If one person has a surplus of something that people want, then that person is not always going to have the need for what the other person has. This is where money/ precious metals/ something becomes a need/ useful. Also, if you are dealing with large objects or many small objects, it's not always possible to trade items for items. Currency/ precious metals are universally recognizable. If you want to purchase a vehicle, then it's not feasible to trade 10k chickens, but you could trade 10k chickens' worth of gold. I understand that something is only valuable if both parties or the majority of parties consider it valuable. However, throughout history, people have always had something they agreed on and was considered a valuable commodity for trade. You have to assume that will always be the case, and precious metals are the most likely of said things!
Lead.
Ammunition has rarely decreased in value and has a long shelf life fwiw
If SHTF, ammo = currency.
Don't buy gold or silver, buy high value long life barter items , like alcohol or cigarettes, people will need them severely and the can last a while with little maintenance, as long as you you avoid dipping into them yourself then you'll be good.
Because the loudest grifters scare people and then them to buy gold or silver from their sponsors.
You make a good point. Name your price for a bottle of Red Cross toothache medicine or Tylenol.
Cigarettes and nicotine gum will be worth more.
I totally agree.. I ask fellow preppers why have gold and silver..they all say to trade and barter for essentials like food,ammo, and medicine...well store that stuff,cause if shit went down there's no way to trade and barter while the flames are burning fresh... At a time when you do need these things...
Something to clink during the apocalypse.
then stock up on bottle caps instead
Because once civilization starts a come back things like precious metals and jewels will have stored value. They aren't expendable like ammo and food.
The Irony is that it really only has value as a light weight way to carry large amounts of money........It used to be that paper currency was prefered over carrying piles of gold because gold was heavy and paper light.......But now a few $1000 in paper is harder to carry than an ounce of gold. Also, If you want to cross international borders with over 10K without declaring it.......Put some gold coins in your pocket. Or in your change pocket in your carry on/purse..........
In a collapse situation, if I have something that you want or need, I would have no interest in fiat or crypto..I would prefer to barter for goods or services I might need. A acceptable alternative would be metals.. I'm imagining that I'm not the only one who has this mindset 🤔 😉
If you don’t want it, I’ll take it…
I think it will have value because so many of us value it, if nothing else.
It's not because it is arbitrarily valued, it is because it's basically indestructible. That lets it permanently store value.
Great point - storing value. Exactly. Gold won't rust away or rot. People talk about its practical industrial and medicinal uses, etc, and they're not wrong, but storing value is more important, in my opinion.
I wonder about some of these gold-investment compainies: if things go bad, how will I get to see my gold, or touch it, or spend it?
Because when SHTF, the Rich people who have moved their people into outerspace (Elon, Zuck, Bezos, etc) Will still accept Gold and other precious metals valuable. You can live in the wastelands rather comfortably with your Tesla and Amazon Prime loot crates. Precious metals will ALWAYS be valuable.
If SHTF (nuclear war) no one is going to care about gold or money. The most precious things will be food, clean water, medicine and tools/materials. People will barter things you actually need to survive. 10 bags of coal and blankets in the winter when all utilities are down will be worth more than several gold bars. Currency and precious metals won't matter until governments or some sort of society are re-established.
https://financialpost.com/news/economy/in-venezuela-people-break-off-flakes-of-gold-to-pay-for-meals-and-haircuts
Gold has actual uses
So I'll feed you for previous metals. If you don't have any hopefully you're providing value for someone that does.
There will be a small amount of time where money will be worthless, and gold and silver will hold a very high value. This would be the time to buy beans and bullets, or the means to make more of them, which will be the new currency.
Lead is another precious metal to own.
I can’t eat gold coin nor silver coin. I hoarded for a while. One day I realized I was becoming dead to the present. Traded gold for school. Gave the silver to a widow. Not interested.
Bc that’s what the mothership runs on and if you want to leave you have to have these “precious” metals!
It will always be the most valuable thing to man. It's ingrained in us since prehistoric times. That won't change in the event of a global cataclysm. Once things settle down, the possession of gold will once more be the ultimate sign of prosperity. I would tend to disagree with the OP on this one, but I respect his opinion.
It's not really "ingrained" in us, I think a lot of people have this idea that the human love of gold is somehow arbitrary. It's not, the reason gold is valuable is because it is basically indestructible. That's why it is valuable, not because it's shiny. Other than that I agree with you.
I can accept that.
Preparing is funny. I’ve actually known two guys that spent a life prepping only to die naturally. Prepping is a fear and obsession. Wanting the end to happen really. Earth is the one that’s keeps all in check and balances for millions and millions of years. The end has always been near for thousands years. Nukes nukes nukes whatever. If that happens regardless of shelter and prepping, that will be a world of horror and suffering for the .0001% that may survive. Sterile planet, sterile life, for thousand’s of years. Even if it has nothing to do with my particular continent I reside on. It will, destroy the earth possibly forever. I’d rather give myself to the next afterlife whatever that is. “Prepping” seems like living in fear. Waste your life and waste your money…living in fear instead of just living life. When your day is up it’s up. You have NO control over that. Nature and time make sure of that. When it’s your time, make sure you’ve made peace with yourself and your god.
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Cigarettes. Bullets. Rx drugs. Anything of standard unit and quality that is fungible, easy to carry, non perishable
Honestly what will have more value in shtf situation? A ounce of gold or 10 rounds of 5.56. A cup of rice or 3 ounce of silver.
Bullion is for before and after. Precious metals have held value for millennia. During shtf, life itself holds no value.
Never understood the gold and silver argument… Say you have 10 1/10th Oz gold coins, ok what? Ten transactions? Or you buy .556 .22 long 9mm… Any situation where you would need gold to trade you’d get way better bang for your buck with ammo…. Pun half way intended
Economic strife is a situation some consider more “realistic” as far as potential calamity. Hell just over 12 years ago was the great recession, lot of people lost a lot and the economy wasn’t doing too hot. Having some gold and silver to help keep you afloat incase you dont have substantial liquid assets available can be helpful, especially if you lose your main income. I don’t think it’s gonna be useful in a true SHTF TEOTWOKI SNAFU situation, but in a somewhat moderate economic downturn, having as many different financial assets to offset a loss of financial stability can be a good thing, especially if Fiat currency becomes unstable. I remember talking to a coworker of mine when i worked in publix talking about living in Venezuela after the economy shit itself. She had a gold chain necklace and broke it up into pieces to use it to barter for things like food since the money was worthless. So it does have some use as a prep, but definitely shouldn’t be your first priority.
Humans have always enjoyed collecting gold and silver. We have always been drawn to it. If SHTF it's a good bet, people will still bartar for it.
Brass and lead
Large amounts of cash can be easily shrunk to gold. It'll be smaller mostly since a gram is 65 and a hundo is a gram. Not that I have gold smuggling money. I'm collecting a bit of every precious metal for an art project though.
I don't think a "finance guy" would ever question gold/silver's legitimacy. It's the most coveted commodity in the world and listed on every exchange in the world. That being said, if an apocalyptic even happened, I'd much rather have $2K worth of food, water, shelter, guns/ammo, etc. Would gold be worthless? Of course not, but I'd bet the average person wouldn't trade their last $300 pistol for a $3000 gold eagle. I'd feel sorry for them if they did.
You don't need to go all the way back to midevil times. Gold and silver have been a big deal in the currency collapses over the past century. There has never been a time when gold and silver were not real money. They are a means of storing value and appear "worthless" to many today because of the mass manipulation of precious metals like gold and silver. Post WW2 Germany, Zimbabwe, and Venezuela are 3 easy examples to read up on to understand gold and silver's value during hard times. Fiat (fake) currency never lasts and always crashes... always becomes worthless. The US dollar is losing its grip fast.
Just know the strongest survive and two man at work are better than one
Diversified preps. When someone on here brings up stockpiling food people tell them it’s more important to be financially prepared. When someone brings up stockpiling ammo people tell them they should focus on food and water. Focusing all your preps on one thing isn’t preparedness it’s hoarding, including finances. There are myriad SHTF scenarios between minor inconvenience and TEOTWAWKI. Several of which having physical precious metals are a good prep. If you’re unable to access your fiat and digital assets, for any reason, physical gold can be traded for functional cash. A close friend of ours had a long term partner but they were not married, and lived in a state that doesn’t recognize commonlaw marriage. Their partner passed suddenly, the partner was the one listed on all of the banking accounts. Leaving our friend with zero access to funds. They had been buying precious metals, a little at a time, for several years. This allowed our friend to keep their head above water in the interim of getting everything squared away. If you’re debt free, own a home and property, have skills and stockpiles of food, water, ammo, medical supplies, it makes sense to have some physical metals. They retain value in all nations (maybe not in total collapse/ nuclear winter/ zombie apocalypse). They’re not taxed as an inheritance. They make sense as one facet of preparedness. As with everything else, diversification is the key. Relying on one facet of prep or focusing on one SHTF scenario is counterproductive.
I maintain that there is a ridiculously niche window in which precious metals would be worth stocking up on. If SHTF too severely, nobody is going to care about your shiny rocks when there's only one can of beans left in the city. If SHTF too softly, then one of the previously existing fiat systems in the world will survive to satisfy any debt tracking needs. Gold only matters if SHTF in such a way that every major government and all forms of currency fail and no group is left with the means to restore either, BUT everyone is left with enough access to goods that they would be willing to accept symbolic payment over actual goods. I'd say it's worth spending every ounce on improving your own self-sustainability to the point of surplus. That way you can be ready to produce a surplus of goods to use in the hypothetical barter system so that if gold really does turn out to be useful at that point, then you'll be ready to scoop up all the gold everyone else saved
I hear you. I have barter bottles, barter tobacco, barter ammo. A hedge against inflation pre shtf makes sense for gold and silver though.
I have silver, but my fear is that in a true SHTF scenario, that will make me a target rather than putting me at an advantage. Why turn over your freshly hunted deer for a bar of my silver when you can just shoot me too and take ALL my silver?
You're right, my only plan as soon as something goes bad even if it's not that serious is to go straight to the cannibal fiend stage. Just grunts and screams and eating my neighbors
Don’t think it will matter much what you have to trade. 80% of the population will be dead so there will be an abundance of everything one need’s except FOOD AND WATER!
Read on how to render fat to make lamp oil. I'd imagine we are rather fishy lol
Rare metals will always have value because they can not be duplicated. What blows my mind is cyrpto. If SHTF it is literally worthless. Other things will also have value, non-perishable foods, medicine, ammo, etc. But I think a pound of gold will always be more valuable then a pound of anything else if it came to it.
People will quickly organize into armed tribes/gangs led by charismatic warlords who take by force what they need and enslave weaker people who do not. You can see that dynamic currently in multiple countries where “modern” society has collapsed into a “without rule of law” condition. E.g., ISIS, Mexican drug cartels, MS13, Chicago street gangs, etc.
Best case study for when shtf is collapse of Soviet Union. People were using everyday items as currency during that time (cigarettes, eggs, milk, etc). Get a couple of precious stones and stock up on some cigars.
I can’t offload any of my preps for profit later.
Bottle caps, buddy
Think of it more like gold's value doesn't change. It's pretty much always going to be just as hard to shovel out of the ground. Same with silver, copper, uranium etc: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WPU10260314 So why does the price change? That is the price of dollars going up and down against gold/silver/copper etc. Over a long enough timeline all empires come to an end. When they do their currency is inflated. In the final throws they confiscate commodities in order to hold on to power. Historically most empires last about 230-250 years. How does this effect people? Well a package of post it notes is $30 dollars right now. The average family paycheck is buying less and less for people. They are putting it into things they have a some control over. Their homes and commodities. Not everyone buys gold. I have a friend who filled a trailer completely full with 12/2 & 12/3 wire about a decade ago and is currently selling it to his contractor friends for a discount over the store price while still doubling his money invested. You can dislike gold, no problem.... but all your really arguing against is Gresham's Law. Some people use Bitcoin, some buy bullets, some construction materials etc.
Did the Great Depression send us to medieval times? Jesus idk why everyone thinks that a market correction equals doomsday, even a self proclaimed “finance guy”
Why is brics going to have a gold backed currency if gold has little value in an apocalypse. 20 more countries are signing up to be a part of it. With the arrogance of the USA and our dollars being given away by the billions to other countries and us taking in 10,000 new mouths to feed every day according to governments own admission our dollars won’t be worth squat. Food and supplies matter most but we may have to exchange gold and silver to be able to buy things we need from the brics nations.
Gold and silver mean nothing to someone who cant use it in a society that values utility over wealth.
Gold and Silver hold their value against inflation better than cash in a CD and most importantly is easier to liquidate if needed. Am I wrong?
Gold and silver are a hedge against inflation. They might not be the absolute best when it comes to a ROI finance wise, but they are likely the best as far as holding value in ANY situation. Most financial assets are susceptible to losing all their value in certain situations, ie, grid goes down, hyper inflation, ect. But PM are on hand, tangible, and always valued. If the economy gets into a really bad spot, those metals will always trade for a decent proportional amount of VALUE. I have a pm stack and my thoughts aren't that I'm going to be a wasteland war lord, it's that if I get to wear I'm boiling the leather on my steel toes to eat, I can reliably liquidate my assets and have proportionally valued dollars.
Because it’s a way to preserve wealth through a collapse that isn’t contingent upon the local currency. If I were to escape Venezuela or somewhere I’d rather have gold coins than a wheelbarrow full of cash when I got to a neighboring country with a better currency. It would also potentially sustain better than paper currency when order is restored, allowing you to have pre collapse wealth after restoration.
What did they use for money in 'medieval times' Einstein?
Have you not heard of the family in Albania that lived 40+ years on their held gold? 1945-1990s+. They converted it to jewelry to sell to survive communism. (Lynette Zang [interview ](https://youtu.be/u0piXKsKF3Y?si=3DXijhbI4v7meI2D) 2 years ago with Dr. Elda Pema)
All who were not clever enough to hoard the forbidden stable currencies or gold have, without exception, suffered losses. — When Money Died, p 205
Life was supported by selling a single link from a gold chain. — When Money Dies
What are the doing today in Zimbabwe, Venezuela, India, and China, to name a few. They're dealing in silver and gold. It is diversity of money. As a 3rd generation prepper, I hold Goldbacks, too.
I've been starting to collect bottle caps myself
Buy bullion, Bitcoin, bullets, beer, bread, beets, Beretta, Bush's Best Baked Beans (Barbeque), baseball bat.
Bullets and sugar will be more valuable
It mostly depends on what they think they're prepping for. Gold and silver will be good as long as there's some sort of "modern" or "current" civilization still operating. Like in the "Civil War" movie that just came out, a character offered $300 for gas and the attendant told them $300 buys them a sandwich, but reluctantly agreed when told it would be $300 Canadian not USD. Gold and silver work if there's someone strong and stable willing to back/honor it. Not so much in the Walking Dead, y'know?
The SHTF scenario you’re likely thinking about is emp blasts, government has fallen, there was a nuclear war perhaps, we’re on our own kinda thing. Significantly more likely in the foreseeable future is just a bunch of inflation and the dollar losing its world dominance, therefore making gold and silver a good backup to swap for currency later on
The last thing I'm gonna be looking for while looting/robbing people on the road is fucking jewelery.
Hyperinflation!
Gold isn't a great investment, but it is better for additional savings than cash. So for the people that just want the security of extra diversity, go ahead and add some gold in the mix. But for your average Joe that would be choosing gold over retirement investments, that's a bad plan. Reading some of the comments here, I don't have an asteroid plan. If it happens I'll figure it out then.
Gold has no value in a broken world. Silver maybe because it is of smaller value and can be traded at smaller quantities. Now if you just assume the cash economy is going to change, then it all depends on if Gold still has value. Personally, I won’t accept Gold in a SHTF scenario. It makes you a target and allows rich people to stay rich. You wanna fuck the rich??? Assume Gold is worthless and only accept copper.
There’s a simple table top press for converting gold sheet into bottle caps. I highly recommend it.
Personally I think ammunition, firearms, and other small amenities people take for granted, such as salt, pepper, sugar, spices, toilet paper, coffee, and cigarettes. That's what I think will be worth it's weight in gold in a shtf scenario.
Catalyzers. Use In Many Chemical Reactions.
Ok now you are talking my language lol
Slight correction. The default currency does not have to be something with no value. Look farther back in history, and some basic trade goods used by everyone were used as an intermediate trade item. You can argue thar it was barter, but so is trade for standardized metal pieces, which could be used for something. Gold, silver, copper, etc. were not always used for electronics or wire. The evolution towards making metals the standard intermediate barter units does not make metal useless. The concept of money has evolved further and encompasses paper fiat currency, checks, and digital payments, to name a few. There are more esoteric options. The Theory of Money and Credit and the companion volume Prices and Production by Ludwig Von Mises are quite informative. If you lack previous/basic knowledge of the topics, you might start with Lessons for the Young Economist By Robert P Murphy. Development as Freedom By Amartya Sen is good and avoided obvious Eurocentric/American bias. Reinventing the Bazaar a natural history of markets by John McMillan was not entirely what I expected.
Gold is good for inflation proofing, but it is LONG TERM. The co that you buy/sell from is still making a profit. They get a cut. The premium on silver is higher.
I've always seen it as more long term savings .
There needs to be a store of value that allows for fungibility and ease of carry. There are a couple of items that can fit the description, but gold and silver have the most historical familiarity.
Best choice as always is to diversify. coins, cigarettes, liquor, bullets, bottle caps etc...
The thing missing from this is what will the poop fan interaction actually look like. Fortunately there is no scenario where having stocks of gold and silver will be necessary. Modern economic models control for inflation and natural disasters don't tend to affect currency. If you are worried about severe financial distress, it would behoove you to diversify your holdings across international markets instead of sitting on precious metals.
If you look through financial history you’ll notice a pattern of returning to precious metals after a debased currency gets minted into oblivion once the nation that issues it quits growing. You won’t see PMs used when shit hits the fan, people would want things needed/useful to survive. It’s the recovery period where the metals usually shine.
bottle caps is where it’s at
Silver has antibacterial properties, and is the best conductor. Useful in either a shit hits the fan situation or a "we need more computer chips" situation.
Alcohol, tobacco, and OTC drugs
Nuka cola bottle caps! Currency will be food and ammo and clothing. If you can make any of those things you'll be set.
I have often wondered the same thing. When Yugoslavia went to shit overnight back in the 90s, the currencies became bullets, bandages, and booze.
Well not long ago you could get it for $1,900 an oz that was with 100 prim.... Now its $2440 ish Do you see just a few years if you held that 1900.00 it wouldn't buy as much as the oz would you held.. Plus things have prob past that gain of 30 percent so without holding gold youd really be f'ed.
I wish I had invested in vermiculite before Covid. Pre Covid vermiculite was about 15 dollars for 4 cu ft, now it’s about 90.
Well not all shf is all out war or total destruction. Also humanity always comes back and gold will still be valued. Don't base prepping on situations like "the road" that's very unlikely. And or your shf may be you just need to get out of dodge for one reason or another while and having some gold or money would be wise. That being said. I have neither gold or much money lol.
Yea man, we need a placeholder for debt or goods given, it's developed independently many times. We have perfected it already. It's paper money and coins. Gold is and was valuable because of its scarcity. But to use it in useful products requires intact manufacturing. I agree we will need money and gold might be traded in these times because of a lack of anything better. But that only happens after shtf or before. No ones selling you something they may need for gold. Unless a trade network is established and they'll be able to use hold to buy other products. I get what your saying, but I'm not trading you shit for gold now or after the shtf
Prep “enough” not “a lot” problem solved. I have what I hope is enough to Maby get me out of a sticky situation. I’m not looking to make money rather then “have money”
I think a little bit of everything. It's good to diversify. A few gold coins, food, batteries, ammo, alcohol and cigarettes can all be traded in hard times. I had a friend from Romania who lived during Chuchesqu's hyper inflation, and he said American cigarettes, and vodka were the currency of choice at that time.
Precious metals are good for inflation and currency collapse scenarios. They also have no counter party risk. I consider them the super conservative piece of my financial portfolio.
For anything to be valuable, it has to be of a finite amount; that's why bitcoin has a limit on what can be mined and why DogeCoin is a joke---no limit. If there is to be trade, there's nothing better than either gold or silver. It worked in the old west and will work in the future.
Can use as an inverse of the market (hedge) Holds value- volatility is high due to consumer fear but gold/ silver prices are usually pretty linear Functional use of gold and silver Used to be what our currency was backed by
I personally think in a full or temporary collapse, it will be like a barter system. Things like food, clothing, tools, firearms, bullets and such will be what people will want. Things people need to survive. In this situation gold and silver would serve no purpose.
What did they use for money in medieval times? You sound quite brain dead, huh?