Back in November I had 14k to spread in precious metals and I want half and half in gold and silver and ordered from apmex and they were great.

Got 600 silver coins and 8 gold coins all 1 oz....

I think your doing right thing about putting some paper into gold for safety

I just received my well-packed shipment of silver bullion that I ordered about 3 months ago from Northwest Territorial Mint. It was made clear at the time of ordering that shipment would take this long. They had the best price I found for the quantity I wanted (I bought their "Pan American" rounds/bars) and I was very pleased with their efficient ordering process. I would order from them again.

make some calls to your local banks, there is always some juice and if you're getting a large amount, you're likely better off going to a bank where they charge a flat fee and then give you a better exchange rate.

Also, someone tell me how might I go about shorting gold or some sort of gold index if I'm in Australia? Gold strikes me as a pure Ponzi market, what with no productive utility beyond what is assigned to it by its value.

I called my bank yesterday. XE had my $5K USD worth about $7740 AUD- bank offered me $7345

I passed, but really dont know where to get a better deal.

Thank you for your trip report, I haven't ordered from them, I have heard a lot of people complain about long shipping times so i never recommended them but its good to hear that people do eventually get their items, it just takes forever... they do seem to have cheap prices though to make up for their 12-16 week shipping times.



https://www.foreignexchangeservices.com/cfx/cfx

if this lik doesnt work go to wellsfargo.com --> more opts --> foreign exchange it looks like
they will give you 7500 for 5000$ i believe butcheck yourself obv. I think paying 4-5% to change currencies is pretty standard- they have o make some profit off of it... ya thats kind of a high spread youw ere offered I wouldnt be jumping for it... but I guess if you need it bad enough you can't. i have used this service before n paid w cc for the currency but might not work you have to call them up for larger amounts

does it matter if i go for Britannia Coins or US Eagles? should i just base it on price, or a mix of the two?

should I try get some Maples as well?

many thanks for your help. I'm from the UK fwiw

ive got about 20 orders with apmex, they are good but a little expensive, i like bulliondirect.com the most, i also buy form there often

so you think these clowns in the white house know anything? all the economist who have been correct over the last few years agree with TruthHasNoEnd. i know you don't believe it because if comes from an average person but you are dreaming if you think our treasury secretary or Obamas economic team(lol) or Ben Bernake know wtf they are doing, they don't have a clue and that is why they are part of the government


if they ever spike interest rates like what had to be done in 80s look at the 10 trillion debt, these debts are out in Tbills the rates adjust. so spike it to 20%(like 80s) and all of a sudden we gotta pay 2 trillion a year in interest alone, even 10% is 1 trillion in interest

the whole system is a giant ponzi scheme where old debt is paid off with new and it will not last, at the very least at some point taxes will get to high and people will revolt

i know you don't see it now but remember me telling you this, we will have a new currency by year 2020 in America.

Do you even know why they jacked the interest rates? If you can answer this you know that a higher interest rate in a 80s scenario is not the danger you make it out to be.

If I believe:

Gold will bubble up to say $2000/oz within the next 2 years, and then
It will crash below 500 shortly after this,

What is my play?

In the 1980s inflation was running high so the fed generated a recession by tightening the monetary supply and raising interest rates. This tightening leads to less consumption, fewer jobs, miniscule pay increases, etc. I'm not sure that we will even really tighten up policy significantly again- but IF we do try it, it will go over in a much more catastrophic manner than last time because of the aforementioned government bonds in large part. Most consumers are already tapped out; they're pretty much unable to borrow whether it's @ 5% or 25% because many people in this country probably actually have a negative net worth.

I think massive hyperinflation IS a real danger no matter what we move the rates up or down to. Humans love to find patterns- and I realize that much of what is going on right now SEEMS like it is the SAME as 1970s or 1929 etc but factoring out the possibility that this will be one hundred times worse than the depression is pretty ignorant imo.

johnkane - I would go with a mix possibly, I would go with whichever one of those coins is cheapest and most popular, I figured sovereigns might be popular over in UK but really I have no idea. Just as your dealer what is the most liquid coins, I guarantee you you will not regret buying maples or ASEs or any gold /SILVER for that matter.

As i've answered before, I'm not sure where you can go to find a short but I am very curious in finding out, so please post if you ever go short gold or find a place where you can do so. If you ever do short gold for more than 2 years straight, I'd say the odds of your net worth going to zero or highly negative is very very high- so make sure you understand position sizing and the proper use of leverage, etc. Another way you could bet is to short the gold /silver mining stocks. Also you could try to sell ootm calls but I don't know if there is much of a market. It's really tough to find someone who will trust you or give you much leverage on a gold short. IE if you were selling options to buy 1 oz of silver for $25 in 2013 for $2 I would gladly buy them all IF I trusted you to deliver. However, if silver is 375 an oz in 2013, and you have no silver and not enough money to buy any silver... then I just wasted my money on the options... who is going to trust you to deliver if you are very wrong on this bet?

Also, what is your stop on the bet, ie when will you give up and admit to yourself that you're wrong etc? If youc ant answer some of these very basic questions I would really reconsider the short... it doesnt seem like you have a great idea about how markets work and I wouldn't want to see you wipe out half or all of your money doing something stupid...
do you want a bet with very very small upside and infinite downside?
or would you rather take the other side of the bet?

"You have to choose [as a voter] between trusting to the natural stability of gold and the natural stability and intelligence of the members of the government. And with due respect to these gentlemen, I advise you, as long as the capitalist system lasts, to vote for gold."
-GB Shaw

"Start buying gold now, regardless of the price. By acting now, you will not have to react when it's too late. Too late will be when the majority of the public finally figures out what is happening to paper money and frantically tries to get aboard. Remember, if you're one of the ones holding paper in the end, you will have given away your products and services for nothing."
-Robert Ringer

basically the answer infowars gave out

Personally, I find these arguments nonsense in general.

Actually, what I'm looking for is something specific based on the thesis. I'm am not saying I believe the thesis is correct (I don't know). Obviously, the strategy (ie the amount of risk to take) is dependent about how strongly I believe in the thesis.

I would never risk a large portion of my net worth on a "theory" like this -- my investment strategy is to find good companies and buy interests in them at a fair (or compelling) price. Gold is something that I find virtually impossible to value as it doesn't have any intrinsic value per se (aside from its market value as compared to currencies) and does not generate cash flow (though the mining companies do). Therefore, any investment I'd make in gold or any other commodity would be purely speculative and part of my "gambling" account.

I understand I didn't give you a specific play because to be honest I don't really know one... which is probably a good thing because if I don't know of a way... that automatically means you're waaay too lazy to find a way to piss away all of your money since you're asking on a message board about how to piss away all your money.

Here is the problem with the very small upside very little downside scenario.

Say you get really lucky and convince someone to borrow 10 oz of gold from them at 2,000$ / oz ... you sell for 20k USTP... what do you do with it??? Pray that gold random crashes 75% and you can use 5k USTP to cover your short? Sounds good in theory... Now what if gold goes up to 20,000 an ounce.. and now you have to come upw ith 200k... you already got that 20k but.... now you're wiped out... but... you just got wiped out for 200k over 10 ounces of gold... hey crazier things have happened... Now imagine you're doing this except with leverage that you don't understand?

I guess the one thing I can agree with you is in shorting gold instead of shorting silver... that would be even more painful. Going short gold right now is the equivalent of going short the stock market in 1982... your time would much better be spent nailing jello to a tree than shorting gold right now.

You're looking for some risk free trade where you don't have to take a stand here... I'm sorry but there's no free lunch... It seems like to me you are talking about a trade with *some maybe possible if you time it right upside* but going against a long term trend like this is going to leave you busto... YOU NEED TO ANSWER SPECIFIC QUESTIONS BEFORE you go into any trade. When are you going to GET OUT of gold IF it goes against you, and IF you ARE wrong? How much gold would you short right now IF you could find someone crazy enough to lend it to you? WHAT would you buy with the proceeds? WHEN will you cover? 3k an ounce? 10k an ounce? 100k an ounce?

You seem way inexperienced and in over your head here IMO. First you say that you have absolutely no idea how to value gold. And then you decide that gold is worthless because it has no cash flows.

So to sum up:
1. You have no idea at all how to price gold
2. You think you are going to be able to predict the gold price with a large degree of accuracy

There's quite a few assumptions/conclusions about me based on approximately 10 sentences. I asked a simple question and you provided me with your analysis of whether the strategy was a good or bad one -- ie. not what I asked, and then proceeded to chastise me for not knowing anything about the subject matter (which, in truth, was not really the subject matter). If I wanted to know whether you or anyone else thought the strategy was sound, I would have said: "Is this strategy sound?" Instead, I aaked a question along the lines of "If you assume X, what would you do to maximize profits?" I did not ask whether my assumption was good, bad, stupid, brilliant.

If you don't have ideas about how best to answer my question, don't answer; if you need me to clarify my assumptions, ask me to clarify my assumptions. Answering questions that weren't asked is just a waste of time.

if you think its going to 2K then tanking, obviously buy now and sell at 2K. Short gold futures at 2K and buy back at 500.

Gold rises above $1,000

In other news.

Brown flies to meet President Obama for economy crisis talks

Mini-summit announced as George Soros says ‘the world financial system has disintegrated’, turbulence more severe than during the Great Depression

What is the real story on silver???? I've been reading about all this monster short positions stuff and we use more a year then is mined and so forth. How is it possible to know for sure about the short position?

The amount they say seems so large that it's "unrecoverable". What happens if that is the case. They say silver will skyrocket. But what if those players that are short just go bankrupt and never cover? By the sounds of it it would be impossible for them to cover.

What if then 5 more "new" players jump on and start shorting a ton again. And they allow it even though they know it can never be recovered and then they go bankrupt.. how does this effect the price of silver? Does it just hold it down artificially until it blows up? How long could something like this go on for.. 1..10..100 years?

APMEX ran out of 10oz bars and aren't listing them anymore. That was going to be about half of my order!

What's the best way to buy about 150oz of silver if I don't want to buy any 100oz bars? Buffalo coins?

www.bulliondirect.com has 1oz rounds for $1.40 over spot... I've used them and they are efficient.

If I want to liquidate 10, 000 ounces (of Comex deliverable grade) in one transaction:

Who would I be able to go to for this (please be specific if possible)?

What price could I expect (how far off the market)?

What about 100,000 ounces? What about 1,000,000 ounces?n

I don't have any understanding as to the level of activity in the Gold market when it comes to large quantities actually trading hands. Having big players out there is one thing, but I have no insightt as to how active the large-scale market is. Everything I search for just brings up retail-level activity.

If you want to liquidate 100k worth of gold I think most major dealers will be able to accomodate you. This is a large transaction but i'm sure they get some larger ones as well... Expect this to get reported to the gov't etc i'm sure you realize this already. I think you can get about spot, maybe a tiny bit less. I'm assuming we're talking bars, if you have coins you will likely get over spot depending on the coin.

I think it's going to be tough to lay enough inventory onto dealers right now... most of them seem like they aren't in stock of many items. I bet they are doing a booming business right now and wish they could find more stuff to buy. I'm sure these amounts change hands every day somewhere, but there is no electronic paper record of gold changing hands - it's anonymous cash.

We agree on the prospects of economic recovery (if not deflation/inflation). Regarding silver, I am intrigued by your suggestion it is in much shorter supply than gold. Can you provide a reference? Your other arguments have merit, though I'm not sure they outweigh the negative factor of falling industrial demand for silver. Also, I think gold is still the number one monetary metal in the mind of most investors. Even if silver has a somewhat higher EV, I think it is also a higher variance play and far less convenient when storing/transporting large values. Nevertheless, I hold some silver for diversification and bartering in a SHTF scenario.

Gold and silver coins issued in various currencies should do nicely.