Gold Sold From Vending Machines In Germany 472
There are fewer hassles for an adventurer or business traveler bigger than lugging around bags of silver and copper pieces. Luckily TG-Gold-Super-Markt has installed gold vending machines in 500 locations including train stations and airports all across Germany. The machines charge about 30% more than the current trading price for gold, and are updated every few minutes. All are closely monitored by cameras, and like 3rd and 4th edition, electrum pieces are not accepted.
Im sorry (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Im sorry (Score:5, Informative)
When Inflation hits hard and money turns to useless paper, gold or anything similar is how you preserve your assets.
Germany after WW1 actually saw this (bread costing million one day and 10 million the other day, but exactly same amount of barter currency. It made helluva lot sense to spend 1000 on gold because withing year those 1000 were only good as tinder and would buy one something like one grain of wheat while gold kept value much, much better.)
Remember that money nowadays that is unbacked is just piece of paper without government enforcing it as legal tender as it is.
Gold at 30% extra is swell deal if you are faced with possibility that your cash would be worth 50% less tomorrow.
Re:Im sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to buy gold at any reasonable rate, you pretty much have to do it well before you actually need it(or you have to be buying in some other apocalypse currency, like dog food or ammunition).
Re:Im sorry (Score:4, Funny)
apocalypse currency
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter
Re:Im sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to buy gold at any reasonable rate, you pretty much have to do it well before you actually need it(or you have to be buying in some other apocalypse currency, like dog food or ammunition).
See. I don't understand the gold bugs. Most of their hyper-inflation apocalypse scenarios they state that gold will be the new currency, but time and time again nations that have went through hyper-inflation have reverted to bartering instead.
When people are in times to need, they look to commodities with utility rather than value.
So in the wastelands in the future people will value gas, water, canned food, guns and ammo and not a pretty metal.
Secondly, if anarchy does set in, you can always use your gun to take someone else's gold if you wanna bother lugging that around.
Re:Im sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you'll notice though that much like the gold mentioned in the article, people are stocking like CRAZY on ammunition right now. Prices have doubled (or more) in the last 6 months. You have about a snowball's chance in hell of finding any common pistol ammunition on the shelves right now (9mm, .45acp, .40s&w, etc) - people are literally waiting at stores as the boxes are unloaded and buying it all up immediately. All the local stores have had to put a per item limit on customers just to try and keep the speculators from buying it all.
Even if you reload your own it's tough times. To load a round of ammo you pretty much need a case, a primer, powder, and a bullet. Cases are reuseable. For slower rounds bullets can be cast at home out of scrap lead (I've got about 400 lbs melted into lead bars if needed). Powder and primers usually must be purchased (you can make black powder at home, but it's usually poor quality and most loaded rounds use smokeless powder rather than black powder anyways). Like the loaded rounds though, the primers have become rarer than hens teeth. When they become available people are buying them 10,000 or more at a time.
I think overall, be it gold or ammo or canned goods, a lot of people are dumping a lot of money into supplies that they feel will see them through some tough times.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Mostly in the south, out of fear of the black president.
Irrational knee jerk reaction.
Plenty of Ammo here on the west coast.
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Your political diatribe didn't actually answer the question asked. (Plus [citation needed].) One other answer, currently score 0 troll, did say without citation that 2 wars were using up a lot of the bullet supply, which might be true.. maybe the supply is truly more fixed than us non-gun owners know.
Re:Im sorry (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, he did answer the question, if you're sharp enough to catch it.
The current administration--along with the Congressional leadership--has shown itself to be hostile to the idea of us mere citizens owning firearms. Demand is through the roof as some of us--the ones who believe that the government is answerable to its people--are stocking up in case of future interruptions in supply. Modern marketing methods include the "just-in-time" supply chain; with the incredible spike in demand, not only are the ammo manufacturers unable to keep up, but their suppliers are unable to keep up with their demand. Metals suppliers--lead, copper, zinc--chemical suppliers--powder and priming compounds--etc. The entire supply chain is thin right now.
Now, the ammo manufacturers are doing the best they can. By raising prices, they're able to pay higher prices to their suppliers, increasing the quantity of raw materials supplied. By doing so, they have been able to increase production somewhat, but that has limits. The factories are running at full capacity. The only way to increase production past that point, assuming the availability of input materials, is to expand the production line. That would require the manufacturers to take out loans. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned "leaders" running the show, it's by no means certain that the manufacturers would be able to sell enough ammunition to pay back those loans; said "leaders" are working on any number of laws to restrict ammunition sales (see, for example, microstamping, limitations on purchase quantities, and so forth). Considering the political risk, banks are (quite wisely) reticent to loan large sums of money to engage in such ventures. Throw in the fact that everybody knows it's a bubble, and will inevitably burst, and even if the manufacturers could get the money, they know that the increased demand probably wouldn't last through the payback period on the expansion. In fact, this is already starting to happen, proving the wisdom of riding the storm out without expanding facilities.
Does that answer your question more clearly?
Re:Im sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry... Maybe it's cause I'm from Europe, but what does guns have to do with government being answerable to the people?
If they don't answer, you'll shoot them? Hell, in Norway we got 1.5 million weapons with a population of 4.7 million. Yet we don't go around having wet dreams of a future where the government becomes totalitarian so we can shoot people we don't like in an excuse of a revolution.
We got the 11th lowest murder rate in the world. I think you guys just need to stop being so angry at the world.
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I think it's because the war of independence -- where the citizens of North America took up arms against the then government and won their independence -- is a significant part of the identity of many North American citizens. Also don't forget that the founding fathers made it very clear that all citizens must have the right to possess arms, for the explicit reason of being able to overthrow a future corrupt government. While one hopes that would never come to pass, it's still an important part of the very
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think it's anger, I think it's fear. Here in Oz we have bolt action rifles and shotguns for sportsmen, "self defence" is not a valid reason for obtaining a shooters license. Even before our strict gun laws very few people owned hand guns, I can't imagine living in a country where fear of your fellow countrymen is the norm.
As for our government, they are too disorganised to run a totalitarian state, if they tried most of the victi
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Dude, you should not even dignify him with a response, he so just wanted to take a shot at how US is so crap, and his nation is so great because they don't use their weapons, they also sit on the side lines, when dictators are busy using the new genocide weapons they bought on their own population.
He forgets his nation went through a transition with the similar problem back in the dark ages, seeing as his nation is 1000s of years old, and ours hundreds.... I would say we did pretty good for ourselves so far
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Re:Im sorry (Score:5, Insightful)
Gold at 30% extra is swell deal if you are faced with possibility that your cash would be worth 50% less tomorrow.
No it isn't, because one of your other options is gold without the 30% premium. If you don't like fiat currency, fine, invest in whatever you like. But why you'd pay a premium over the market value is beyond me.
Vending machines work for candy bars. I'm willing to pay a markup because I want my snack in my hand right now. What could possibly be the urgency with gold?
(Yeah, yeah, hyperinflation in post-WWI Germany or late '80s Argentina or current Zimbabwe. You think what Zimbabwe needs are vending machines for gold?)
Re:Im sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
The term "market value" for gold is idiotic to begin with. Market value for what? Gold smelted into 1000oz bars? Gold minted into pretty 1g wafers with a fancy design on the face and fluted edges to prevent dishonest vendors shaving some off? Gold in the form of a promissory note from a bank that holds the equivalent in metal in their vaults? Gold in the form of a promissory note from an institution that holds only a fraction of your gold but claims they are "good for the rest?"
Each of the above will command a different premium over the spot price you see quoted in your newspaper ... and some of those premiums might even be 30% or more depending where you buy.
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No it isn't, because one of your other options is gold without the 30% premium
Only if you're buying in large quantity.
For example, spot price of gold is currently $936/ounce. More readily purchasable gold bullion coin (using the 1oz Canadian gold maple leaf as an example) is currently priced at $1078/ounce, which is a 15% markup. and now consider these are selling in 1/30th that quantity and the markup is higher. Compare a 1 kilo (32.15oz) bar of gold, which currently costs $31,396, or $976/oz, which is only a 4% markup.
As usual, buying in bulk is cheaper, provided you have the mo
Copper is King! (Score:4, Funny)
Copper currency is good because the copper has an intrinsic value.
So I am hoarding Pennies, pre 1982 pennies, made a machine to sort them out of the regular pennies and go to bank to buy all of the pennies that they have then sort out the pre 1982 pennies and cash back in to new pennies for older unsorted pennies. i figure a couple thousand dollars of copper in pennies (which I won't melt, but will hoard) are less of a rip off than buying gold. Copper is always useful.
I am also hoarding quarters, nickels and dimes as well just not in as high quantities as pennies. My goal is to get a few barrels of pure copper pennies. Them be really good barter tokens in an apocalyptic world.
Gold, pfaw, gold is for the elite asswipes who will rule the post apocalyptic fiefdoms, I am into copper cause I am going to become a mid class merchant who bakes bread, gets fed and maybe sells goods to the elite. The elite are goign to be involved in wars and stuff and probably be dangerous, I am going to be a merchant.
Re:Im sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
Meanwhile, back in reality, paper money is gaining in value as prices fall.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aE9AA32hx8ek [bloomberg.com]
So go ahead and buy your vending-machine gold (instantly losing 30%) and keep talking about hyperinflation as the recession eventually ends and gold crashes back to pre-recession prices.
Re:Im sorry (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Im sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a panic sparked by a fear of a coming currency collapse - quite a reasonable fear given the current rate of US government spending, but still a very low probability event. However, while hedging against the chance of the dollar collapsing (and taking the Euro with it) makes sense, it only makes sense to pay a very small premium to hedge against this unlikely event.
Some see this hedging going on by central banks and other who buy and sell gold by the ton, and overreact. Physical gold coins are a total ripoff right now (and entire industry has emerged to exploit the panic), and, seriously, if society collapses to the point that legitimate "intangible" gold (such as GLD shares) become worthless, you don't want gold coins, you want *guns*.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
you want *guns*.
And ammo. Lots of ammo.
Ouch (Score:5, Funny)
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Sell signal (Score:4, Insightful)
If this isn't a "sell" signal, I don't know what is.
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If this isn't a "sell" signal, I don't know what is.
If you happen to be a investor on the stock market, you can buy ProShares UltraShort Gold (ETF) on ticker GLL [google.com] which is a leveraged short fund on gold. I've been thinking on putting something in it but Gold has been dropping due to the unexpected dollar strength so its a bit high right now.
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I should start a fund to make it simpler.
Poor kids (Score:5, Funny)
From TFA: "Because of the crisis there is a lot of awareness of gold," he said. "It is also a great gift for children for them getting gold is like a fairytale."
Imagine... you hand them a gold bar for those 250 bucks and they try to unwrap it for a few minutes before they realize, nope, it ain't chocolate.
Truely the gift of a wealthy sadist.
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Imagine... you hand them a gold bar for those 250 bucks and they try to unwrap it for a few minutes before they realize, nope, it ain't chocolate.
[inspecting the repossessed Key to the City] ... Well, why was it wrapped in foil?"
"These look like teeth marks."
"I thought there was chocolate inside.
"It was never wrapped in foil!"
Different (Score:2)
Gold is the currency of the future (Score:2, Interesting)
Gold holds its value like nothing else and if you're brought up to court by the RIAA it's going to be a lot harder to take your gold than it is for them to change the sign on your bank balance.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Cash is going away because it's terribly inconvenient compared to electronic methods. So now you're this theoretical criminal who deals in gold. How you going to use that gold for anything other than paying another criminal, since nobody else is going to want to take your inconvenient gold, except maybe if they charge you a ridiculous surcharge. Sure, they'll be some places that pop up and advertise heavily that you can pay with gold, no problem, no extra charge. But guess where the first place is that
Re:Gold is the currency of the future (Score:4, Interesting)
No, really honey, I was just buying some pens [penisland.net] and fishing tackle! [bigalsonline.com]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If gold became a serious black-market currency, it would be tagged with trace impurities. I wouldn't be surprised if much of it already is. It's already possible to tell which mine gold came from. (see gold fingerprinting [wikipedia.org])
World governments already have buy-in from printer manufacturers to tag all printouts for the purpose of tracing paper-money fraud. It would be even easier to coerce gold refiners to do the same, given that governments are such large consumers of gold.
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Don't forget to tell the people buying now, 10 years down the road.
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Yeah, and guess what? If you bought in the late 70's, you STILL haven't recouped your investment. ~$750/oz in 1980 equates to ~$2100/oz adjusted for inflation. Gold reached its all time high a year or two ago at... ~$1000/oz. Oops.
So yeah, in the short term it's possible to make money with gold. But again, talk to the people who bought and held 30 years ago how their investment is doing.
Know your target audience (Score:2)
The machines charge about 30% more than the current trading price for gold
Yeah, that seem about right, considering the level of logic in most of the "we must return to the gold standard" posts I've seen. They may actually manage to make this a viable enterprise.
I now present several guest posters who will now provide examples of just the posts I mean.
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We must go to a monetary policy that is disassociated from politics. This makes a gold standard better than our current policy. The problem with the gold standard is that it is linked to a single irrelevant commodity which will cause confusing and disrupting fluctuations in prices/salaries that we don't need to put up with.
The monetary policy needs to be driven by math (a computer) that tries to fix against a good CPI chart. When the economy is expanding, the money will inflate; when the economy is contr
The machines charge 30% MORE than trading price? (Score:5, Interesting)
Am I missing something? Is there really such a demand for gold on the street that the convenience of being able to purchase it from a vending machine warrants a 30% markup? What possibly could justify an individual purchasing gold at a 30% markup in small quantities?
I'm not an economist (not that they have really have a good track record lately) but this seems like a ridiculous scam.
"Because of the crisis there is a lot of awareness of gold," he said. "It is also a great gift for children - for them getting gold is like a fairytale."
Somehow I think little Jimmy or Susy would have prefer a Playstation or a bike or something.
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gold doesn't rot so i'm sure you could find a few people who thought this would be a deal worth having at some point.. it would be different if it were some perishable item that is time critical, with something like this it's just a matter of waiting for the right peopel to come along.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
We are at the beginning/middle/end of a gold bubble, just like we had a .com stock bubble in 1999/2000 and a real estate bubble from 2001-2007.
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indeed, taking a look at the price of gold lately and it is quite clear that it is way over-valued compared to its history...
Re:The machines charge 30% MORE than trading price (Score:5, Insightful)
Relative to what? Suppose I was in London with ten sov'reigns bright in my pocket in the year 1709. What could I buy with them? Suppose now I am in London with ten sovereigns in 2009. What can I buy?
One thing hasn't changed: London was and is a colossal trading centre, so if it exists and I have the money I can buy it. But everything else is completely different. What if I want a passage to Boston, in the colonies - and back again? Well, in 1709, my sovereigns might buy my passage, several weeks on a sailing ship in dubious conditions. Just. The cost of such a trip was many months' pay for a labourer - people would indenture themselves for years in exchange for their passage. What if I want the same in 2009? Why, I can get from London to Boston and back again the next day if I wish it, and I'll have ample change left over for shopping while I'm there.
The same goes for almost everything I might seek to buy. What if I desire personal transport? How many horsepower can I get for ten sovereigns in 2009? A hundred or so? How many horsepower can I get in 1709? One or two? Or contrariwise: what if I would hire myself a servant? Ten sovereigns will get me a labourer for six months or so in 1709. In 2009, ten sovereigns for even two months' work would be a low wage.
Economy and society and technology have changed so much: how do you compare the value of those sovereigns across the centuries?
Oh, of course: some things don't change so much. Always there is demand for beer, and beer changes little enough. When I go into an alehouse, and order whiskeys and wines of the best, what can I have? Well, a pint of London porter was 3d a quart, or a penny and a half for a pint, or 160 pints for a sovereign (this being back when a sovereign really was worth a pound, not just having that nominal face value). Nowadays, a sovereign sells from the Royal Mint for £200, and a pint of porter - Dublin porter more likely nowadays - is something like £3. That's 67 pints for a sovereign.
So to my mind, where it really counts, on a London street buying beer, the value of that sovereign has fallen substantially in the three centuries gone by.
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We are at the beginning/middle/end of a gold bubble, just like we had a .com stock bubble in 1999/2000 and a real estate bubble from 2001-2007.
Well, which is it?
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From my understanding of these things, 30% isn't out of the ordinary for "limited edition" gold coins (y'know, the ones they make 5,000 of because they don't think there's 6,000 people stupid enough to buy them), or other sources of non-investment gold.
That means your average fool on the street will probably see it as about what they'd expect to pay...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Am I missing something? Is there really such a demand for bottled water on the street that the convenience of being able to purchase it from a vending machine warrants a 10000000% markup?
In all seriousness, this will be a boon for privacy nuts, the very rich, money launderers, and anyone else too lazy to buy direct for cheaper. Keep in mind that tax evasion is something of a national pastime in Germany.
This is targeted at doomsdayer types (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't a rational thing. It is to get the people who are doing the "OMG the economy is going to collapse!" thing and don't know what to do. They see this and go "Ahh I can buy gold, gold is always safe!" It isn't targeted at rational investors, or even rational survivalists for that matter. It is targeted at alarmist doomsdayers.
Actually, this is targeted at illegal immigrants (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The machines charge 30% MORE than trading price (Score:4, Informative)
One gram of this gold is actually worth less than the market price for one gram. When you take your gold bars out of a professional gold vault, they cease to be "Good Delivery" [bullionvault.com], which means they lose value to other traders since their purity is not guaranteed to the same standard.
Real gold traders always keep their gold in a vault, or move it between vaults. This is extremely expensive - but gold bars are expensive - $400k each! So it's not just a 30% markup - it's even worse than that. Confidence trick.
Extension of a "scam"? (Score:2)
Is this the next level of the Cash For Gold commercials that seem to be everywhere? Buy gold off of people at a ridiculously low price,s melt it down, resell it at a stupidly high price, and the keep repeating the cycle.
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Awesome, I've been meaning to get those lead weights out of my car.
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Is this the next level of the Cash For Gold commercials that seem to be everywhere? Buy gold off of people at a ridiculously low price,s melt it down, resell it at a stupidly high price, and the keep repeating the cycle.
I think we finally uncovered Ron Paul's endgame.
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Heh, just on BBC Breakfast this morning there was a feature about the new craze of 'Gold Parties'. Along the same lines of Tupperware and Vibrator parties, bored housewives are now having get-togethers to sell their spare gold jewellery. A company valuer weighs the gold and gives the party attendee 70% of the current price, with the party host receiving a nifty ten percent of total money taken. So if the same companies that are setting up gold parties are then selling off the gold in bars from vending ma
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Get rid of your old, unwanted or discarded girls for cash!
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Well, that sure beats the UK Prime Minister's approach, which is to tell the world several months in advance that he's going to sell of a fair portion of the UK gold reserves.. Then when he's successfully crashed the market price, sells at a ridiculously low price.. Now everybody wants it, so adding to the UK reserves will cost a hefty sum!
Interesting but inherently flawed! (Score:5, Insightful)
This is certainly an interesting concept but I have a handful of concerns -
1. Why as an investor would I pay a 30% premium to purchase physical gold?
2. Assuming I would I then have to worry about keeping the gold physically secure once I take possession of it.
3. I run into issues when trying to sell the gold after I've taken possession because how can anyone be sure that I haven't tampered with the gold? How do they know that 1oz is still 1oz? What if I drilled and filled it?
There are many other ways to purchase gold as an investment that eliminate the above issues. Gold ETF's are one. They are easy to trade and move in and out of. There are services that will let me purchase gold and store it at their locations, and will certify the amounts as to avoid purity issues as well as security issues.
If you truly believe that the world economies are going to collapse why bother to buy gold at all? You should be buying guns. Believe me, you'll need them to protect more important things like your family and your home.
Interesting idea but only suckers will buy from them. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The purity issues are easy to deal with. They are standardised coins such as Kruggerands (South Africa), Maples (Canada), Eagles (US), Sovreigns (UK) etc. People can weigh the coins and get the volume very easily. If the density is correct, it is made of gold.
A lot of gold ETFs, particularly the ones that don't charge you for storage, don't actually hold any physical gold to back up your investment. Instead they match your investment with people who are short selling gold. It is very similar to the way
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Re:I always wondered about this one. (Score:4, Informative)
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3. I run into issues when trying to sell the gold after I've taken possession because how can anyone be sure that I haven't tampered with the gold? How do they know that 1oz is still 1oz? What if I drilled and filled it?
What are you planning on filling it with? And isn't detecting this sort of thing simply a matter of knowing the purity (and thus density) of what the gold is supposed to be, then measuring the actual density? It's not like you're the first to think up the idea of tampering with gold (remember the story of Archimedes?)
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I think you'll find a candy bar or a soda in a vending machine is typically 30% to 60% higher than supermarket prices. People pay for convenience.
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Re:Interesting but inherently flawed! (Score:5, Insightful)
Whiskey is another good investment if you have such expectations. Good whiskey is difficult to make, in high demand, keeps well, and takes a very long time to make if you have only primitive equipment. (Consider the problem of seals in the still, and making pipes that don't leak lead.)
You'd probably want to make sure that it was securely packaged, and that the caps of the bottles were upright and not exposed to moisture. Doing such in the current environment is easy. After a collapse, much more difficult. And you can buy an extra liter of whiskey a week without anyone raising an eyebrow. (Try doing that with guns and ammo. And ammo doesn't store as well.)
Another good investment would be a medical degree. That one's more time consuming, but after a collapse doctors, those who know more than what drugs to prescribe anyway, will be extremely valuable. Nurses too.
Or you could apprentice yourself to a blacksmith. That would be a really valuable skill. But you'd better learn how to handle and recognize scrap metal.
Horse handling probably won't be worth bothering with in most areas for a few generations. Most of the horses will be eaten. Archery would be worthwhile, but learn to fletch your arrows at the same time. I doubt that you could learn to handle a longbow well, but it would be a good idea to learn how to teach the use of it. (Supposedly one needs to grow up with a longbow to learn it's proper use.) Having a few compound bows would be a good substitute, but you won't be able to replace them. So also get a few regular bows, and learn how to make them from wood. And which wood. (Yew is likely not to be available, so learn what's available in your area.)
Guns are a strictly short term answer. (So is whiskey.) Both only buy you time to establish yourself in a community...and you'll NEED a community. Self defense by an individual is a recipe for dying out within one generation.
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Whiskey is another good investment if you have such expectations. Good whiskey is difficult to make, in high demand, keeps well, and takes a very long time to make if you have only primitive equipment. (Consider the problem of seals in the still, and making pipes that don't leak lead.)
You'd probably want to make sure that it was securely packaged, and that the caps of the bottles were upright and not exposed to moisture. Doing such in the current environment is easy. After a collapse, much more difficult. And you can buy an extra liter of whiskey a week without anyone raising an eyebrow. (Try doing that with guns and ammo. And ammo doesn't store as well.)
Another good investment would be a medical degree. That one's more time consuming, but after a collapse doctors, those who know more than what drugs to prescribe anyway, will be extremely valuable. Nurses too.
Or you could apprentice yourself to a blacksmith. That would be a really valuable skill. But you'd better learn how to handle and recognize scrap metal.
Horse handling probably won't be worth bothering with in most areas for a few generations. Most of the horses will be eaten. Archery would be worthwhile, but learn to fletch your arrows at the same time. I doubt that you could learn to handle a longbow well, but it would be a good idea to learn how to teach the use of it. (Supposedly one needs to grow up with a longbow to learn it's proper use.) Having a few compound bows would be a good substitute, but you won't be able to replace them. So also get a few regular bows, and learn how to make them from wood. And which wood. (Yew is likely not to be available, so learn what's available in your area.)
Guns are a strictly short term answer. (So is whiskey.) Both only buy you time to establish yourself in a community...and you'll NEED a community. Self defense by an individual is a recipe for dying out within one generation.
I would think carpentry and farming are two of the most universally needed fields. People need to eat and have shelter, so those are really useful.
But all this talk of collapse is bullshit anyway.
-Taylor
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Basic carpentry is pretty easy. And that's all that one needs when there's no new lumber.
Farming is good...but what's your water source? The area that I live in is a natural desert, which is watered with water from the mountains. The pre-tech people who lived around here subsisted largely on hunting and acorns (ugh!). You need to check out the area you live in to see whether or not it will support farms. (There are very good reasons why the Nile and Euphrates valleys were places where cities got their
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I don't know about the lead, but leave some fish out and that should lure away the seals.
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Mead requires honey. Honey requires bees. Bees are currently in trouble. Also, beekeeping in a time when there aren't suppliers for the equipment is going to be much more difficult.
OTOH, if you DO successfully keep bees, they not only allow you to make mead, they provide the highly salable honey. (I don't know that much about beekeeping in low tech environments...just that it was a late development in northern Europe.)
Beer's good though. It's one of the earliest ways of providing safe water used in Eur
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Saltpeter's easy. Sulfur's the hard part. And getting the mix right. (You need more than just the right proportions. Grain size needs to be right. Meal powder means that all the components need to be ground VERY finely, and then you only have meal powder. To turn that into gun powder you need to moisten it, work it into cakes dry it and grind it back to powder of even grain sizes...without setting it off.)
(You don't need all that if all you want is firecrackers. And cannon are slightly more forgiving
Re:Interesting but inherently flawed! (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, you're right- the chemistry part of things could cause problems for a lot of people. But on the other hand so could soap-making. Me, I'm not a doctor or a chemist, but I can treat wounds and make helpful things like gunpowder and soap. You don't need a PhD to do those things- our ancestors did them thousands of years ago. What I like to see are people getting out of their element and learning a skill or two that they don't need but might prove useful. CPR class is an obvious example, but other really good experiences can come from craft fairs, boy scouts, summer camp, etc. Sometimes even just reading a book on a whim can give great insight when trouble arises (am I the only one who read a book on knots on a whim?)
It's sad to think about, but I'm pretty sure that in the event of a great disaster, our population centers would display markedly greater mortality per capita than other areas. From a survival standpoint, the center of New York City is about as bad as things get.
So anyways what I mean is, your original post was correct in that skill and knowledge may become the most valuable currency of all.
-b
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Shit, you're right. Someone could have tampered with the gold - alloyed it with some cheap metal perhaps, taken the rest of the gold for themselves. How can we tell whether the gold is in fact truly gold?
I'm going to have to go and think about this. It's time for my bath anyway...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Why as an investor would I pay a 30% premium to purchase physical gold?
Agreed. Investor premium for gold should be 7-13% above spot depending upon the product. Anything more than that is a gold dealer taking advantage of an inexperienced buyer.
Assuming I would I then have to worry about keeping the gold physically secure once I take possession of it.
Among the convenient properties of gold is that a large amount of exchange value can be stored in a commodity which is quite compact. At the current price of ~$970.4 per troy ounce a 1 kilogram bar with a spot price value of $31,198.36 only takes up 4 1/2' X 2" X 3/8" or 117mm X 53mm X 8.7mm. There are not many other valuable exchange co
WoW? (Score:5, Funny)
Did anyone else read just the headline, and figure that some enterprising RMT had come up with a vending machine selling World of Warcraft currency?
Man, I need to interface with the real world more often.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, at first I was like "cool, I might actually get to see some other people that play too!" and then I was like "oh wait, it's in Germany, nevermind". But now you're telling me it's like the crap they use to make necklaces and rings and shit? Fuck that, who needs that?
Gold is a lot easier to smuggle through customs (Score:5, Interesting)
Been done before (Score:5, Interesting)
When I lived in Switzerland '86-'88 you could get small gold ingots from a UBS ATM on the Bahnhofstrasse in downtown Zurich. Just the sort of thing a conservative Swiss banker would do on the way home from work.
Stuck Machine (Score:5, Funny)
Eats your money (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Low markup for a vending machine (Score:2)
Where I'm at, Coca-cola sells for more than a 100% markup between a store and a vending machine.
30% sounds pretty low. Why not just sell cokes?
Insurance Scam (Score:2)
Maybe they're planning to get them all stolen at some point, claim for the gold on insurance, and then sell it anyway.
It's the only way I can see them making any money on this.
Ceiling at $980 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ceiling at $980 (Score:4, Funny)
Much better deal at money exchange (Score:3, Interesting)
Not sure about Germany or other parts of the world, but in Poland, many (most?) standard money exchange points buy and sell "gold junk", with about +/- 15% markup on the market price (the difference between their buy/sell price is around 30%, market price somewhere in the middle).
The interesting part is that this "gold junk" is usually in form of perfectly good jewelry - various gold chains, rings etc - and with a much higher actual jewelry value. So you can ask them to show what golden items they got, find something that is pretty, undamaged and you like it, and ask to have it weighted for you - you buy a quality jewelry item for price of junk. If you're lucky and knowledgeable, you may find a very valuable antique even, worth many times its weight in gold.
A clarification from someone who is kinda involved (Score:3, Interesting)
Disclaimer: I work at the ISP which is handling this from the IT pov.
TFA is wrong. While the gold is obviously more expensive than what TG buys it at, it is still cheaper than what you, as an end-user, pay for actual physical gold.
Bypassing large resellers and banks, both the online shop at http://gold-super-markt.de/ [gold-super-markt.de] and the vending machines are cheaper than your local bank or jeweler. I am not saying that everyone should rush to buy gold, but if you plan to do so anyway, there is now a discount outlet.
Re:30 Percent! (Score:4, Funny)
Captain Obvious, is that you? :)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
If gold is selling for $1K per ounce, a 30 percent increase is $300!!
We be in the wrong business!
Maybe Gold foil hats would be better.
Re:30%? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, if you try to buy physical gold in small pieces (such as the 1 gram wafer mentioned in TFA) you'll find the markup is easily 20% or more over "spot price."
The spot price you see quoted in the daily business reports is really only relevant if you're buying "paper gold" such as certificates in a common pool ... or if you're an institutional investor buying hundreds of ounces at a time.
Re:30%? (Score:5, Informative)
From kitco.com [kitco.com]:
Gold Bar 400 oz $378,440.00 = $946/oz
Gold Maple 1 oz $1,015.85 = $1015/oz
Gold Maple 1/2 oz $514.98 = $1030/oz
Gold Maple 1/4 oz $266.90 = $1068/oz
Gold Maple 1/10 oz $126.50 = $1265/oz
Gold Maple 1/20 oz $75.25 = $1505/oz
Now all you need is a smelter, minting facility, and a distribution model and you're ready to start making some easy money.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
8 oz = $162.50/oz
1 oz = $200/oz
0.5oz = $225/oz
0.25oz = $240/oz
0.125oz = $320/oz
1 gram = $420/oz
Markup is much better and the initial cost is much more reasonable.
Plus, repeat customers and no need to go "make sales". I'm not some punk on the street asking you if you want any weed.
It may not be NYC pricing (goddamn you guys get raped down there), but up here in Toronto but it's plenty for me. Almost Zero risk and I get to smoke for free
Re:30%? (Score:4, Insightful)
What's so special about gold? There's a whole lot of things you can buy bulk and sell at a considerable markup.
Some of my favorite places to visit do this with books: they buy large quantities, and sell individual copies to me at a markup.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
You should see how well this business model works with drugs!
Re:30%? (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right - because someone who reads a site on tech news because they're interested in tech has to also play Dungeons and Dragons? Are the two groups synonymous? If I see a group of people rolling dice can I go over and ask them to design the schema for my database?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Only if they are over 30.
Re: (Score:2)
For when you quickly need gold?
I'd guess people are reading the news while on their journeys (wifi, newspapers, radio, etc.) so if any bad economic news is announced, then wanting to buy gold sooner rather than later isn't necessarily so weird?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
gold never really loses value*
Sure it does. Lock yourself in a bank vault filled with gold for a year. How much gold would you trade for water on day 2? How much gold would you trade for water on day 10? How much for food? How much would you trade for indoor plumbing on day X?
Okay, that's kind of a ridiculous scenario. But I'll tell you how gold loses value: if no one wants it. The only reason gold had "value" in ancient times was because people realized that it could be used as a medium of exchange. It had no value of its ow
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Have you met any marketing departments?
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
who thought of putting latinum inside bricks of worthless gold.