Gold: Past, Present, and Future

I think we missed the point here:
The fact that we’ve ended up doubling down on real estate again, simply because there aren't any better plays on the table, suggests we're running out of steam. It might be time to circle back to Zlatan Ibrahimović's golden whale. 🤣

Anyway, I remember it like it was yesterday—I've been stuck hovering around the real estate market for more years than I care to admit.

Found dead, leaving behind $7 million in gold and cold hard cash stashed in his garage

I’m betting there are plenty of folks on this board who have the exact kind of "potential" to pull something like this off 😁

wearyotter36 said:A 2.5% fixed rate???
Take it immediately if anyone offers you that—even if you have to move your money to another bank just to put it in a CD at 4% or higher. 😂

I'm looking into buying more, stacking cash, but this garbage keeps climbing.
Just waiting on when that dip/correction/manipulation/Ben—whatever we're calling it—finally happens so we can all fix our stacks. 😉

We’re just at the beginning of a two-to-two-and-a-half-year wave here. If you actually have physical metal on hand, go find a decent broker and split your buys three ways into mining ETFs like GDX, GDXJ, and SIL. If you’re leaning more toward silver, skip the GDX or toss in some SLV royalty plays. Then, you just sit tight until 2015. Or, if you want to get reckless—which could be incredibly lucrative if you don't mind the gamble—you take a "casino approach" and buy options on GDX with the furthest expiration dates available (I think we're looking at 2014 for now). Just don't bet more than you're willing to lose. The upside there? You could easily see 10x or even 15x returns over this 2.5-year stretch.

quiettrucker12 said:We’re just at the beginning of a two-to-two-and-a-half-year wave here. If you actually have physical metal on hand, go find a decent broker and split your buys three ways into mining ETFs like GDX, GDXJ, and SIL. If you’re leaning more toward silver, skip the GDX or toss in some SLV royalty plays. Then, you just sit tight until 2015. Or, if you want to get reckless—which could be incredibly lucrative if you don't mind the gamble—you take a "casino approach" and buy options on GDX with the furthest expiration dates available (I think we're looking at 2014 for now). Just don't bet more than you're willing to lose. The upside there? You could easily see 10x or even 15x returns over this 2.5-year stretch.

If you are set on using ETFs, then for silver, it would definitely be AGQ (x2) or USLV (x3).

Someone actually went and filled those 10 oz PAMP gold bars with tungsten.
Some trader down in New York City decided to drill into a few of them—only to find out the gold was basically just a thin veneer.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/tungst...welry-district

Makes you wonder how many of these "gold" bars are actually just gold-plated junk. I mean, a 10 oz bar isn't exactly huge, right?

Isn't that just amateur hour?
If the mass was supposedly 10oz, they should have checked the dimensions, calculated the volume, and then basically used math to figure out the weight—you know, like you don't have a scale sitting right there.
I'm no expert, but I highly doubt two metals with identical dimensions would actually weigh the same. We're talking about grams here—even tenths of a gram matter.
...
Either someone got seriously rich off this, though I'm pretty sure tungsten or Wolfram isn't exactly cheap.
Nice little hustle, LOL.

Tungsten, or what some call Wolfram 🙂
Since tungsten has almost the exact same density as gold, it makes for a pretty perfect tool for counterfeiting.

wearyotter36 said:Isn't that just amateur hour?
If the mass was supposedly 10oz, they should have checked the dimensions, calculated the volume, and then basically used math to figure out the weight—you know, like you don't have a scale sitting right there.
I'm no expert, but I highly doubt two metals with identical dimensions would actually weigh the same. We're talking about grams here—even tenths of a gram matter.
...
Either someone got seriously rich off this, though I'm pretty sure tungsten or Wolfram isn't exactly cheap.
Nice little hustle, LOL.

Given that tungsten is sitting at around a dollar and fifty cents, I'd say they made a pretty decent chunk of change. 😁

wearyotter36 said:Isn't that just amateur hour?
If the mass was supposedly 10oz, they should have checked the dimensions, calculated the volume, and then basically used math to figure out the weight—you know, like you don't have a scale sitting right there.
I'm no expert, but I highly doubt two metals with identical dimensions would actually weigh the same. We're talking about grams here—even tenths of a gram matter.
...
Either someone got seriously rich off this, though I'm pretty sure tungsten or Wolfram isn't exactly cheap.
Nice little hustle, LOL.

That whole volume trick isn't foolproof either, because on average, you can still fudge those numbers.

For example, if you have 1 kg of gold with a density of 100, you could mix half a kg of one metal with a density of 90 and half a kg of another with a density of 110, and on average, you’d end up with the exact same volume.

At the end of the day, digital gold is the safest bet since it's always 100% pure. 🙂

Casey Price2 said:If you are set on using ETFs, then for silver, it would definitely be AGQ (x2) or USLV (x3).

Here’s the reality check: if you already own physical silver, stop looking at ETFs altogether and just pick up some mining stocks instead. AGQ and USLV are leveraged instruments. They suffer from decay, which makes them terrible for a "buy and hold" strategy. Even without the decay issue, they're risky enough as it is.

Sandra Sullivan said:That whole volume trick isn't foolproof either, because on average, you can still fudge those numbers.

For example, if you have 1 kg of gold with a density of 100, you could mix half a kg of one metal with a density of 90 and half a kg of another with a density of 110, and on average, you’d end up with the exact same volume.

At the end of the day, digital gold is the safest bet since it's always 100% pure. 🙂

It is extremely difficult to create an alloy with a density precisely matching gold. A group of relatively rare or radioactive metals—like osmium, iridium, platinum, or lanthanides—has a slightly higher density than gold, while tungsten has almost the exact same density:
http://www.lenntech.com/periodic-cha...ts/density.htm

Based on this list, you would have to mix osmium or iridium with tantalum just to achieve the correct density. Considering an ounce of osmium runs $960 and iridium is $1,460, the tungsten option is significantly cheaper.

However, there is one critical difference between gold and all these potential "substitutes"—gold is the most ductile of all metals. From a single gram of gold, you can draw a wire three kilometers long. This is vital because you simply cannot replicate something like this through forging with tungsten:
http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/1915austrian4ducats.php

In any case, I prefer coins over bullion for that very reason. It is easy to manufacture a fake bar out of tungsten, but a coin is much, much harder to fake...

As for digital gold or oil, it should be obvious that we are talking about futures contracts. They are essentially a type of bond where someone claims something will be paid at a certain price later, even though the actual physical product might not even exist. People buy gold specifically because there are no obligations involved; you own a set amount of gold, and that is that. Furthermore, your Forex account can go under right along with the brokerage firm. Haven't you heard of MF Global?

Stick to coins or small certified bullion; don't go trusting any random street dealers.
Then again, even with those, you've got to watch out for scams—like how some series from Krugerrand after, what was that date again, 🤔 say, click...

Yes, there have been issues with counterfeit Krugerrands too. You can actually order molds online to verify the exact dimensions of a Krugerrand, then put it on a digital scale. Only a legitimate Krugerrand that hits every single specification for both dimensions and weight should pass that test.

That is precisely why I prefer the four-leaf clover gold coins. They are only 0.7 millimeters thick, which makes them incredibly difficult to replicate using any other alloy. Most fakes are easy to spot... they usually weigh about 1.5 to 2 grams less if the dimensions are identical, and the craftsmanship is subpar. Once you set an original next to a fake, even a layman can see the difference.

// Minted coinage was born out of the necessity to exchange specific amounts of precious metals without being cheated. The ruler's likeness serves as a seal of quality, the inscription denotes the exact amount of precious metal the coin should contain, and the reeding on the edge—along with other engravings—exists specifically to prevent someone from filing down the sides to steal metal.

Japan just kicked off their QE 8 (yeah, eighth time in a row) 😁

http://www.jsmineset.com/2012/09/20/...r-the-markets/

Jim's taking a crack at the whole QE3 situation...

quiettrucker12 said:Here’s the reality check: if you already own physical silver, stop looking at ETFs altogether and just pick up some mining stocks instead. AGQ and USLV are leveraged instruments. They suffer from decay, which makes them terrible for a "buy and hold" strategy. Even without the decay issue, they're risky enough as it is.

I personally held AGQ for several months and managed to make a decent profit. So, I am not sure I agree with that assessment.

Go ahead, feel free to pitch your favorite brokers... Which ones are you actually using, and how much do you actually like them?

I’m looking at shifting my cash allocation—planning to bump my gold holdings from about 20% up to double that. Right now, I’m holding physical bullion, which I'll probably try to offload right before or after the peak (though we'll see if I can actually time that correctly 😬).

So, I'm thinking it's time to move toward more "paper" assets—you know, the digital stuff 🙂...

What are you waiting for?😉
I picked up some extra mux at $4.42—now it’s already sitting at $4.86... (that’s just a 7 or 8-day jump)
Sold my SLW position at $24.60—it's up to $40.28 now
AGQ was at $41.00; currently at $60.36

I realize they lack any real intrinsic value😂—but it doesn't matter... they look great in the portfolio😍

Gerald Chavez7 said:Go ahead, feel free to pitch your favorite brokers... Which ones are you actually using, and how much do you actually like them?

I’m looking at shifting my cash allocation—planning to bump my gold holdings from about 20% up to double that. Right now, I’m holding physical bullion, which I'll probably try to offload right before or after the peak (though we'll see if I can actually time that correctly 😬).

So, I'm thinking it's time to move toward more "paper" assets—you know, the digital stuff 🙂...

Are you talking about the peak expected around January 2013 (somewhere near $3,000)?

dustyheron5 said:What are you waiting for?😉
I picked up some extra mux at $4.42—now it’s already sitting at $4.86... (that’s just a 7 or 8-day jump)
Sold my SLW position at $24.60—it's up to $40.28 now
AGQ was at $41.00; currently at $60.36

I realize they lack any real intrinsic value😂—but it doesn't matter... they look great in the portfolio😍

Well, I'm just waiting for next week.😁
I've set aside some time over the weekend to dig deeper into brokers—which is why I asked about them in the first place 😉.

Mark Thompson6 said:Are you talking about the peak expected around January 2013 (somewhere near $3,000)?

Heh, if I knew exactly when and by how much it would rise, I'd be up 102–104% in gold (which would put my current position in the red)😉...

Honestly, I'll sell my physical holdings once I'm certain there's no more upside left—for instance, when the Dow Jones/gold ratio hits ~1.5:1, or once everything in the world finally settles down😬...