What About Precious Metals?

With WWIII and Financial Rug Pulls on the Horizon, everyone wants to know.

The US dollar is being murdered and replaced with the nextgen weaponized fake-money formerly known as CBDC and now called QFS (Quantum Financial System). Savers will be wiped out, after all how else would you “Own Nothing and Be Happy”? People who have access to the new “money printing” will benefit. Everyone else will be diluted to poverty.

What should a saver do? One thing is certain, you need to move out of fiat money, it’s heading for oblivion. In Weimar, as related by the book “The Penniless Billionaire”, German people with savings accounts in Marks were destroyed by the rampant hyper-inflation. One elderly woman ignored the pleas of her banker to move her 1m Marks (a substantial fortune at the time) into other currencies and the final letter to her from the bank said “We liquidated your bank account and bought the postage stamp on this letter for 1m Marks”. You’ve been warned.

US Mint gold and silver coins are legal tender and because they are pure or nearly pure precious metals, they will hold their value. They will always be worth the minimum of their legal tender value.

Assuming you don’t want your savings to go to zero, you need to carefully consider your options. We don’t give financial advice, but will relate history and you can decide what you want to do for yourself. The escape in Weimar was equities (stock market), gold/silver and currencies that were not being destroyed (GBP, USD, etc). What are the likely escapes for people today? I’m not certain about the equity market because it’s now been converted to “beneficial ownership” via DTCC so you don’t really own the shares in a company and there will likely be a rug pull there, too. Other fiat currencies all have the same problem. That leaves precious metals that are outside the banking system or (better yet) in your hands.

Why are Precious Metals Highly Valued?

They are heavy and shiny. People are attracted to shiny objects and gold and silver have always been valued. They feel different. The secure warehouse manager in Iceland wanted to hold a gold bar we were moving back to the US. “It feels warm and soft”. People who are more sensitive feel something special about gold and silver. Buddhists believe gold is from a Buddha body and silver is from Bodhisattva bodies. The sound from gold and silver is pure. This is where the song “Silver Bells” came from and also the saying “it rings true”. When you drop a pure gold or silver coin on a desk, you can literally hear this. People used to test the purity of gold and silver by biting it because it was soft. The real thing would get physical marks from the bite and people knew it was the real item.

Start with Food

Let’s say you haven’t prepared at all. Start with the most basic thing: food. Everyone needs a food supply to survive. You can’t eat gold or silver, so my best advice is to start by stacking cans of tuna and other long term food. Canned foods will be able to be traded, even for quite valuable items. Hungry people during the height of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia (The Killing Fields) traded one ounce of gold for two cans of tuna. If you can’t afford gold, go with tuna and you could call canned tuna “poor man’s gold”. People in that situation might get feisty, so you’ll also need some security to protect your tuna. Handguns and rifles brandished appropriately can dissuade roving bands of marauders.

Tuna will last at least 5 years (and way longer), regardless what the “Best by” printed date says (Google):

A good rule of thumb for canned seafood, such as canned salmon or canned tuna, is that it can be safely kept in a cool dark pantry for 5 years. But really, as long as the seal remains unbroken, a tin can last nearly indefinitely.

Food rations from the British Port Lockroy research station, which operated until 1962. Everything stored will last longer when stored at a lower temperature, like in a root cellar or in the Arctic. Heat is the enemy of food storage. Photo: Jason Auch/Creative Commons

Just about any tinned seafood or meat will do, start with what you like to eat. (SPAM, chicken, beef, etc). Other canned foods like veges, beans, etc. won’t hold up as well, but they can be eaten well past the expiry. Remember, if the can’s seal is intact and there is no bulging, it’s probably good to eat. Tinned fish from an arctic expedition that was over 100 years old was still edible (by a cat):

Research indicates that canned meat can last over a hundred years. In 1815, Otto von Kotzebue of Russia took some canned meats with him on two arctic expeditions. One can of veal remained unopened and ended up in a museum, where it remained untouched until 1938 when it was finally opened.

The veal was “chemically analyzed and found to have kept most of their nutrients and to be in fairly perfect condition.” According to the cat that ate it, it was also pretty tasty!

People ask “how far past the expiration date is food still good”? The answer to that question depends on how hungry you are, assuming the seal on the can is still good and it is not bulging. Starving people used to literally eat their boots.

Which format is best for precious metals?

My recommendation is to go for legal tender coins from whichever country you are in. I’ll use the USA as an example. There are two main classes of gold and silver U.S. legal tender coins:

• Pre-1965 silver dimes, quarters, half dollars and silver dollars (aka “junk silver”)

• Recently minted American Eagle gold and silver coins.

Both are legal tender. The pre-1965 coins are familiar to anyone and the legal tender value is stamped right on the back. Worst case scenario is that silver quarter will always be worth at least 25 cents. You have a floor of value, and you don’t have that with bars of precious metal. It also depends on what you can afford. If money is tight, start with junk silver dimes and quarters, which you can buy at a coin or pawn shop.

“Junk” silver coins are pre-1965 and contain 90% silver. Kennedy half dollars from 1965-7 still contained 40% silver.

I do not like bars, they are not going to be trusted in a grid down scenario (so they will trade at a discount). Even though you get more metal for the Federal Reserve Note, it’s not easy to “make change” with a bar. Are you going to chip off a piece of the bar? This is a problem even with large denomination coins — people literally would saw a $20 gold piece in half to get two $10 to make change — that’s where the word “sawbuck” came from. Pieces of Eight were 8 Spanish reales, coins made with silver from mines in South America that were cut into 8 pieces. Two pieces was a quarter of those coins and that’s the origin of our nickname for a quarter dollar (“two bits”). Large bars are hard to handle and if you are storing “good delivery bars”, the weight varies (~70 lbs for the 1000 oz COMEX silver bars!!) and you’ll need to have the bar assayed if it ever left the trusted vault, it will sell at a discount. Large bars are generally for industrial users. Maybe you could make a large silver bell from a few good delivery silver bars…

There’s a reason the off brand “rounds” are cheaper…they are not a trusted brand. It might look like you are getting more metal for your money, but when it comes time to sell/trade your metals, won’t the same premium or discount apply? You need something known and trusted, in varying denominations that are widely understood; that is legal tender US coins. Stick with the brand and have a mix of gold and silver so you can “make change”. If you want to buy a case of food and all you have is a one ounce gold coin and the seller doesn’t have change, that case of food might cost you an ounce of gold.

As for collectible coins, unless you are a coin collector, I would avoid them. You will need to find another collector who appreciates their value above the gold legal tender value. In a grid down environment, you are going to be dealing with “cash and carry”, not collectibles. The notion of pre-1933 gold coins (when FDR illegally and unconstitutionally stole everyone’s gold) having more value than other gold coins is not worth worrying about, imo.

Here’s another story. I was in Burma in 2009 before it started to open up for tourism. We brought cash with us (USD) and exchanged for the local currency or bought things directly using USD. No one wanted USD bills that had even been folded once. They only would take crisp and new bills — nothing that was even slightly circulated was accepted. Change was scarce, too, and sometimes, they would make change with pieces of candy. That’s where this goes in a grid down scenario, unless you want to go into The Beast system. As long as you take your shots, eat their GMOs and only say good things about Dear Leader, you’ll get your monthly ration on your phone wallet with The Beast. I’m assuming you value your soul and want to have options. You will want a long term food supply, source of clean water and a way to make your own food…and some precious metal as an insurance policy. That will afford you an option.

Never store anything of value in a bank. They can take everything with the stroke of a pen (or a click). When one of my relatives who lived through the Great Depression passed away, my mother was cleaning out his home in Milwaukee. She found cash, uncashed checks and coins in books, cookie jars and on shelves. She should have looked at the walls, too. People who were robbed by banks never trusted them again and they stored money like squirrels save nuts. People today have forgotten these lessons.

Digital Gold

Physical gold is “in your hand”, but how can you trade over long distances, electronically? You’ll need Digital Gold. There are a number of options here, and some are in development. Gold is still relatively unregulated and there is a large network of gold dealers and pawn shops — they will provide the bridge to physical gold. This will be the last place for safety, imo. Here is what you should look for:

1. No KYC (hand in your ID, phone number, email, etc.) ever. Privacy.

2. Gold stored is in legal tender format (in US 1 ounce Gold American Eagles)

3. Gold stored in audited, privately owned vault outside the banking system.

4. Gold stored in U.S. state with the best asset protection laws.

5. A way to add to and remove your gold from the vault (usually via a gold dealer). You need both issuance and redemption. Digital gold that does not have a way to redeem for specie (REAL GOLD) is Digital Fool’s Gold.

6. Cryptographically secure blockchain for vault’s ledger on a private blockchain you can access via your wallet.

7. Inside a Private Membership Association (PMA), which is inside an operating LLC and a Trust. This provides transparency, privacy and security.

This field is still developing and I don’t have any recommendations for Digital Gold at this time.

The bottom line: start with your food supply, then expand to PM you hold yourself and finally Digital Metals, in that order.