What is the value of gold if our current way of life changed for the worse? It could be any precious metal. I see people trading guns for bullion both ways and many other examples involving the hoarding of these metals. Why? If I am hungry and I have a can of beans and some old hard tack and you have a pound of gold I will tell you to stuff the gold up your ass if you wanted to trade. The only value for these metals that I can see is to be melted down for something useful(bullets&blades). If China comes and takes over America, they won't give two squirts about how much gold you have.
I'm just curious about peoples reasons behind the collection of precious metal other selling for current market value and buying useful stuff with the money. I prospect a little with out much success but would sell what ever quantities I could find. I wouldn't store it in any bulk form.
I think the currency in a bleak future would be addictive drugs, bullets, and food in that order. Just sayin'. Feel free to enlighten a poor hick from the hills.

If SHTF and someone says heres some gold for food I'll laugh golds only worth the value placed on it by the market to me its a waste for a prep but to others it has its place and value
So I don't knock thoughs that aquire it

You are thinking about the gold in the wrong context.

Gold and silver is not going to be used immediately after SHTF.  That is why so many people recommend getting food, water, firearms and ammo, etc. before getting into PM's.

PM's are there for when the survivors form some semblance of civilization once again. PM's are a vessel to hold wealth in troubles times, wether it be financial meltdown, or war, or any other kind of situation not invilving 80 percent or more mass die-offs of the population.

Should someone only stock PM's for TEOTWAWKI? Of course not. However, once you have all your basics covered, it certainly does not hurt to have some small stash of PM's around, in case you need them for barter later on down the line.

No matter what happens there will always be some sort of currency and precious metals will be part of it. If you don't accept the currency of the time you'll just have to barter for other goods.
We could always go back in time and use salt for currency.

A lot depends on what you think will happen.

If you believe in a total meltdown of the entire world, that there will be no further commerce, that all production of everything will cease, then you are correct, gold and silver will have little to no value. (Mad Max scenario)

If you believe that hyper-inflation, economic collapse, the dollar becomes worthless, etc. and that eventually another medium of exchange will replace the dollar. (i.e. we start using the yen or create a new currency (Amero, etc)).
Then gold and silver will be used to buy the new currency.

Personally, short of a full-scale nuclear exchange, I have a hard time believing the entire world will be thrown back to the stone-age.

More Hillbilli ramble.

How would one determine how to barter with gold? Coin, dust, ingots. How much gold for a bushel of wheat?

Market crashes and yoy have 4 pounds of gold. How do you save your house from Mr. Banker?

Just curious about PM and how they grease the machine. Thaks for chiming in!

No one will know until if and when the time comes.

these are just not easy questions.  It might be easier if we were talking ounces of silver

Very true. Just a subjective thread I suppose.

The world will lean towards a currency in the TEOTWAWKI.  Gold and silver will have their place IMO.  Before that happens, look into naked short sales of silver involving big banks and the decline of the dollar.  It does make sense that if silver bond holders want the metal and not the dollars then those banks could not possibly provide the bond holders with all the silver they would owe.  In order to fill those contracts they would have to lure it out of the hands of the public by offering high prices.  Again, this is my opinion.

I would recommend buying smokes and silver.

Since we are just fantasizing:

I have a mortgage on my home. As this point in time a mortgage is a written contract.
The contract that states that I agree to pay $XXX for my home.

If the market crashes and the dollar becomes worthless....

Lets say hyper-inflation kicks in and gold goes to $10,000.00/ozt.

According to your post I have 4lbs of gold. (and boy do I wish I did )
Gold is traded in troy ounces (ozt.) with 12 troy ounces to the pound.

So, I have 48ozt of gold which I can now sell for $10,000.00/ozt = $480,000.00
I still owe $30,000.00 on my house, so, it would be fairly easy to pay off my loan.
I would only have to sell 3ozt of gold.

If I purchased that gold at todays prices ($1368.40/ozt) I would have paid off the $30,000 debt with $4105.20 in todays dollars.

One thing that always troubled me was how conditioned Americans have become to plastic and "e-money".  Here's a tin-foil fantasy for you:  A law is passed making all financial transactions not involving gov't insured debit cards illegal.  It would be justified based on counterfeiting concerns, "terrorists destabilizing our fragile economy"... maybe just some class warfare bullshit about "keeping the fat cats from hiding their ill-gotten loot and avoiding their 'fair share' of taxes".  Whatever.  Then they'd market the ease of use, ultra-modern feel, no more loose change, ease of personal accounting, blah, blah, blah.  Then a few tiny bits about fines and jail time for people accepting any non-electronic form of currency.  No need to manage mass confiscation of shiny metal when they can halt commerce by putting all the risk on buyers.

I have some PMs (bought much cheaper years ago) and will buy some silver here and there but only when I have attended to other preps and only in amounts that wouldn't make me want to puke if I couldn't find someone to buy it.

I have thought about that myself. (sounds eerily like the 'mark of the beast')
However, things like this have been done before.
I seem to recall gold being made illegal to own and everyone had to turn it in....... maybe I just dreamed it.....

Well, that was the idea but it was done half-heartedly - EO6102.  Not enforced much then effectively repealed in bits and pieces during several later administrations (I think mostly Nixon and Ford).  That's why I consider them not making the same mistake twice.  Why waste time, money and PR credit finding it and taking it from a large population (sellers) when they can just regulate a smaller one (buyers)?  And why risk exchanging it for a foreign currency when 1. the only accepted currency is a card and 2. the only place to get said cards (aside from the countless 15-year-old hackers who would bypass any security and make their own) would be the local treasury office?  Just think!  You wouldn't need cash registers, armored cars, tellers, exact change....

No, I am in agreement with you.
I was just using that as an example of the government doing such things in the past before someone jumps in and says... "oh, that ain't gonna happen here"

History has an odd way of repeating itself.
I can see something like that happening for the public good and to stabilize out of control inflation.
Maybe they will be E-dollars instead of Amero's.
Sheeple would probably accept that pretty easy.
Welfare and food stamps have already gone that way.

All societies eventually get to the point where direct barter with real goods is unwieldy.  How many times do you want to drive that bull to the trading post hoping that maybe, just maybe, this time somebody will have some muslin fabric to trade and they really need a bull?  Wealth has to be represented by some token that is recognized as having a set value by all the trading parties, easily transportable, and not easily reproduced/forged.  There's a reason precious metals and jewels have filled this role since pretty much the beginning of history; there is no reason to believe they won't assume the same role again if the current currency breaks down.

In a complete, utter, zombie apocalypse collapse, gold is probably just another shiny metal to most people.  

But in the span from "normal" to "tear around the desert on a dune buggy with a hockey mask and a bullhorn", there is a lot of room there where people may not accept money in certain forms, or from certain nations, or when the money you do have changes value wildly from day to day.   This is where the shiny stuff becomes useful.  

You can't eat it, but you have a window of opportunity to trade it for things you can eat (or shoot, or burn, or whatever).

As a side note, changing currencies to a "new" currency with an exchange rate that screws over the little people, or that offers them a limited opportunity to exchange their money for the new money, is a well established dirty trick in the world of banana republic government finance.  It's happened quite a few times in the last decade or two, and if history shows us anything "it can't happen here" is utter BS.

How about we hit this subject up again in, say, March.  

So if the dollar isn't backed by anything other than a promise, what's the actual value of precious metals (any) right now?  I've felt like the "value" of precious metals is overinflated.  I agree that in a world of no currency, food and the like will be king.
Another hillbilly thought

I will sell you, right now, ten frozen, naturally-raised and home-processed chickens, plus 10 ears of frozen home-grown corn on the cob, for one ounce of gold.  Shipped to your door by Fed-Ex, in a dry ice-packed cooler.
Deal?

(offer's open to anybody, btw )

That's a lucid and well thought out answer.

I just want to let you know reason and logic will not work in a gold thread on this forum.

It's been tried many times to no avail. But nice try
 

You won't get any arguments from me for any of that.  I have no faith in the dollar; in fact I'm convinced it's headed for an inevitable collapse.  I do know the value of real food, and that's why I try to produce as much of our own as I possibly can.  But I also recognize that the likelihood of me raising exactly the right crop to be able to trade for exactly the goods I may eventually need is pretty low - as has virtually every merchant before me - and therefore a trade medium is necessary.  It's not even a theory - it's been the case with, as far as I know, every society that has ever existed on the planet.

So, to the extent that I can, I do both.  I raise and preserve a lot of food, and I buy small amounts of PM's when I can afford it.  I also buy tools, books, seeds, and other "infrastructure" items, stuff that may not be easily replaceable later. My retirement strategy, in fact,  is to buy what I need to live, not stash the money it may take to buy it later.

I can't really speak to the desirability of gold but apparently, a whole bunch of people consider silver to be desirable. So far, the US Mint has sold almost 4.6 MILLION Silver Eagles. And, the month is only half over.

I tend to think of gold as a compact medium for the storage of wealth. I tend to look at silver as a potential alternative to paper currency. So, SHTF, barter will occur first, then use of silver, then gold-backed paper currency issued by a real government. My prediction is that IF the dollar collapses, fiat currency worldwide is kaput, period. All countries will have to have some kind of backing for their currency at that point.

As for personal use and/or how much of either you should have, consider these questions:

(a) How much of your "wealth" do you want to reduce to a compact medium (gold)? Your house will still be your house, you (in theory) should still be able to live in it (if you can afford to pay the taxes). Your other assets like cars, cows, tools, etc. will still have value to you. It's really only your paper dollar-based assets that you need to consider how much of to convert to a more tangible store of wealth. That means, how much of your bank account savings, CDs, stocks, bonds, etc. do you think are at risk if the dollar continues to get ink-jetted into oblivion? If you think quite a lot, maybe you should consider taking some profit from your stocks and, instead of converting to cash, convert to gold. I would hesitate to try to covert IRS/Roth/401K monies because of the tax penalties associated with doing that.

(b) How much "money" do you think you may need to keep you and your family fed, clothed, sheltered, etc. for some reasonable period of time should the dollar collapse? Obviously, there is a "continuum" of choices between putting up stores of beans, boolits, band-aids, and other preps, some cash for emergencies, and something like silver that could be used to procure needed items at some intermediate stage after the initial SHTF. How much do you need? Balance in all things is wise. Whereas you might have stored items for 3, 6, or 12 months, how long would it take to get a functioning economy again? If you mis-estimated how much of something you would need, isn't it better to have a method for getting it (other than giving up some other stored prep as a barter)?

(c) How much current money do you have to convert to either? If you're living paycheck-to-paycheck, concentrating on getting positioned for an interruption in income should be Job 1. On the other hand, if you look at buying silver or gold as an "investment" - you should seek advice from someone more qualified than a random internet poster like me. You could have done a lot worse over the last year with silver turning in an 82% increase (from Jan. 3-Dec. 31) and gold did pretty well, too. Gains in price, like those in stocks, only benefit you when you sell. However, unlike stocks, at least with gold and silver, if the price goes in the toilet, you still have the gold and silver - with a stock, it can become worthless <cough> GM <cough>.

Just my thoughts, YMMV, this is not advice as I'm not qualified to give any, batteries not included, void where prohibited, all other disclaimers here.

Buy some extra beans and rice.  When gold goes to 10K per ounce, that's when you get your gold with your extra beans and rice.

Now that IS fantasyland.
I'm callin' The Disney Co. - possible copyright infringment, etc.

A friend of mine noted many local convenience store owners are from cultures that have historically placed a high value on precious metals. He felt gold and silver metals might have immediate use if we had a currency crisis.  I don't necessarily want to be buying my last minute preps at the Kwik E Mart from Apu, But If I'm stuck in BFE and need fuel to get home, a little gold or silver would probably get it done.  I may pay a premium, but it beats walking.

I like this thread. There are some smart people on the web after all. How about silver? It is being snatched up pretty quick. Why? Easier to obtain/cheaper/more useful? The value concentration is larger/heavier than gold.
How would one cut a chunk off a ingot? Maybe with a hack saw? Would it be like a western and the store owner gets out his scale and weighs your dust?
What about gems? Does the Wifes two carat rock count for something ( I traded a S&W Scandium 1911 and 36 grams of gold for it back before the "gold rush" happend ). Does a big chunk of natrual precious stone have more value then a smaller cut one? Are diamonds forever?
It's pretty cool to see you guys respond. I see everything from technical money market post to zombie blurbs. I think the survival threads have less donkeys then the rest of the site.

The value of precious metals is that $2,000 worth of even the cheapest precious metal takes up far less space than $2,000 of toilet paper and cans of beef stew.  Start adding zeros to that and you'll see where this is going.

In all probability, nothing catastrophic is going to happen.  Nothing, ever.  So, you've got to think about what your estate settlement is going to look like after you've passed.  There's your house, there's your stuff, there are your savings and investments, and precious metals make up merely a slice of the last mentioned.

Statistics are only applicable over a broad data set, and the quality of life for modern man has always been a moving average.  Life can really suck for a few days if you find yourself outside of the std-deviation.  Life could really, super duper suck if we find ourselves in some six-sigma event.  Prepare accordingly.

No, no, and no.

Gemstones are a terrible way to "store" wealth.  First off, their "value" is far more arbitrary and cartel/retailer-manipulated than PMs.  Second, ordinary people have no clue what makes a $10,000 diamond worth more than a $100 diamond, other than size (not that they'll have the ability to measure size weight in your typical mounted gem anyway).  Third, cheap glass-fakes and quality lab-fakes abound.

I'm not saying the ones you already have are absolutely worthless, but even in perfect circumstances before SHTF you won't get anywhere near what you paid for them.  When the day comes when you NEED to trade them, you'll get even less.

They're pretty shiny things that have some utility to us insofar as they make chicks squeal and go "ooooooh" but beyond that they're useless, and IMO, a foolish thing to stockpile.

Diamonds do make chicks squeal. Proven fact. Her diamond is real and big. My buddy owns a jewlery store and I moonlight there when he needs me. He did in fact predict silvers rise and made some nice cash on that. Pretty smart guy. That's some of the orgin of this thread. I'm great friends with a pawn-broker as well. I just got back from there as a matter of fact and someone was trying to by up coins(silver&gold) while I was hanging out. I have heard all about how "they" control the amount of diamonds on the market to keep prices up. My Dad used to call them Arizona sex stones and finally told me what that means after alot of pestering. His response was " It's just a fucking rock" and I agree but they do make the Wifey happy. I figured the trade of a nice 1911 and a obnoxious bracelet from my flashy days was very acceptable. I try not to pay retail for anything.