With the recent prices in silver and gold I have seen a lot of discussion about owning precious metals. I was wondering what the goals were for most buyers. Are you guys purchasing metals strictly for use in a SHTF/bartering situation or strictly as an investment to be sold later for profit. I believe that it would take a huge event for there to be a need for silver or gold to replace the dollar in everyday situations.

I have 15 silver eagles that were given to me as a gift and have no intention of selling them anytime soon. I will be holding on to them for profit or perhaps to barter with in the future. Any feedback is appreciated. I have never bought silver or gold and therefore have not thought about this much.

ETA: From the small amount of reading that I have done so far, I have gathered that many people buying metals are doing so to protect themselves from  a highly devalued dollar. If metals are being bought and sold for profit are these dollars then being turned into durable goods other than metals?

I buy and hold it primarily as a hedge against inflation. It is not an investment, per se, simply a way to store $$$ that will still be worth pretty much the same after the fed gets thru making our dollar worth half of what it is worth now.

I believe the purchasing value of the US dollar will continue to decrease until the citizens demand the government stop printing additional dollars, and stop borrowing dollars to spend.  I also do not believe that a majority of citizens will demand this.  I believe that holding metals and other items that will hold their value are a better inflation resistant investment than the US dollar.  Metals and other items of value can be exchanged or bartered for other goods, labor, or current currency at any time.  This is why we have some metals.  Not much, I chose to purchase a rural property and house instead of spending the saved money on metals & other investments.  In hind site, a poor choice.

How long will metals maintain this sort of value? I don't remember when silver was $6 an oz but I do remember when it was $12 and then $18 per oz and I decided it wasn't worth it then. I am 23 now and have only been prepping for 5 years so this may help to show where my mind set was at those prices.

I am wondering if silver will drop back to below $20 an oz anytime in the next 2 years. Its time for me to do more reading and research.

My main reason is for insurance. With the run up now it appears that I am becoming over insured really quick.

I'm absolutely not an expert on this subject but my gut says NO WAY. Everyone I talked to on the subject has said it will either go up or stay the same, no decrease in value was in sight according to them. Do your homework, ymmv etc.

 

I will be doing more homework and have begun to read the Along the Watchtower blog.

For the experts,

Would $50 each for .999% silver Eagles in new condx be a good price?

How about $34 per Dollar face for a 100 90% dimes?

In today's mkt...

as long as the dollar doesn't make the come back of the century.....I think gold and silver will hold a fairly high value.....unfortunately....I think it will hold a very high value...

We think alike, sir.

PMs will go the opposite direction of the dollar.  If you think the dollar has a good future ahead of it then don't buy PMs.  

Three years ago I bought enough PMs (mix of gold and silver) to pay the bills for 6 months as my financial SHTF preps.  Now I could pay the bills for about 18 months with them.

I've made a bunch of dollars by getting in and out of PM ETFs, where you don't own the PMs, only a stock which follows PMs.  Just this Tuesday, betting that Bernanke's Wednesday speech would not be well received, I bought some AGQ, a silver 'ultra long' ETF.  I sold it Thursday for a 14% gain.  Don't mess with these 'ultra' EFTs, they can bite your butt, I just got lucky.  But it shows you how PMs allow you to protect your saved dollars from losing purchasing power.

You never realize how bad things are until you watch your EFT gaining value rapidly yet you feel sick to your stomach knowing that it's going the opposite direction of your nation's currency.

Washington has decided to devalue the dollar in order to make it easier to pay back our creditors.  You borrow a trillion big dollars, then run the printing presses and pay back your creditors with a trillion little dollars.   This may seem like a clever move but we will all pay for it for a loooong time to come.  If you have some savings it would not be a bad idea to get some of it out of dollars, and PMs are a good way to do this.

It's probably a better thing to own some than to own none.

Commodities are increasing in price due to the inflation of the dollar. Which would be easier to trade with and not lose any value due to decay or animal infestation: 100 oz. of Silver, or 1000 pounds of rice?
The rice will have to be stored correctly, kept out of the elements, kept free of hungry rodents and insects, be exactly what the person you want to trade with desires, kept somewhat temperature controlled, and be divisible so that you do not have to trade on an all-or-nothing basis.
Cotton, pork bellies, barrels of oil, bushels of corn, 8 pounds of rifle powder, 1000 primers, 100 cc's of antibiotic are all valued in dollars that are worth less every passing day. The silver is not gaining in value so much as the dollar is shedding value. All the other commodities are becoming more valuable. Trading a bolt of fabric to the doctors wife in exchange for him treating a sick child would be cumbersome and inefficient, but I bet people will trade no matter what happens.

Probably not bad. Look around and see if anyone is looking to take profits right now. Offer them the same buy price the big places do.

Good Question 1000lbs of rice or 100 oz bar of silver.
Let me say that it'll be timing.
Univerisity of Texas just took DELIVRY of 1b yes with a B worth of GOLD at the Highest price to date. 1500? an ounce..
This is a precentage of UT's 20b holdings. I've seen forecast of 5000 to 7500 an ounce of gold next few years.
Look at the dollar on the world market. Aussie dollar is above parity RECENTLY and already passed their forecast highs..

I don't have warm fuzzy feeling..
I don't belive the CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH which is not the Same thing as a BIRTH CERTIFICATE.
I don't care what the news says. . sorry  I'll step down now.
Im rolling my 401k to precious metals, this will be for a time.. prolley less than 2 years.
then I'll be looking for beans, bullets, and rice, buyem cheap ad stackem deep.
100 oz bar when SHTF will not be worth anything buying one and trading it in the near future would be good.
dimes and dollars something small change will be better during SHTF. just for bartering purposes.
By .02c worth

this is why I have it

J-

Look at the runups in the late 70s and early 80s.  We were less than ten years off the gold standard, had just experienced a tough oil embargo, and had serious inflation problems.

Today we have quantitative easing like we haven't seen since 1934.  Oil is moving as freely today as it ever has.  And, technically, inflation is at historic lows.

Arguements against:
- Now some may argue that the historically low interest rates are fueling the rise in PM through speculative purchases.  There may be something to this.
- Most people will point to the rise and fall during the 70s/80s, but just read above to see why it isn't analogous.
- Other's will invoke the housing bubble, but this analogy falls short in that houses are bolted to the ground where they're built, whereas PMs are a portable, global commodity.
- And still others will continually point out that you can't eat gold.  I try to counter with the fact that you can't eat bullets, either, but the broader implications of that brief statement are usually lost on people.

Where am I?
- Due to the recent rise in value, PMs are starting to become over-represented in my portfolio.  This is especially true for silver.
- Still, even then, my philosophy is buy and hold.
- In the unlikely event that the gold/silver ratio drops below 16:1, I will reluctantly sell off some silver for gold to rebalance my PM holdings back to 50/50 Au/Ag.

The future
- I don't know what the future holds.
- I see enough global growth and dollar devaluation to support $30 silver and $1200 gold.
- If silver begins a precipitous decline, there's the ZSL option.
[buy physical on the way up, and leveraged shorts on the way down!]
[...wheeeee!  yeaaaah!  yeeehaw!  oh nooo!  rumble rumble rumble! baaarf! ...that's the leveraged ETF roller coaster!]
- I never saw silver above $30, so I bailed out of the AGQ nailbiter, and missed out on 3x gains.

I realize I didn't really answer the OP's question....and I'm not going to.
Suffice to say that I'm pulling some cash to go look for an early production Arisaka Type 99 this morning.  If I don't find one, that cash will probably get tossed in the PM bucket.

I took money I had sitting in savings and converted it to silver. It about doubled my silver holdings. The original half was for SHTF barter, etc. This has changed now, to hedging inflation.  There are a lot of factors out there, and almost all of them point to higher metals prices. In about another month, I will finally have my target amount of silver, and am going to start on gold. I think that we are just getting started on this. In the prep world, and associated type people and places, silver is all the news. Mainstream America has absolutely no idea, other than gold is doing well.

Why?  Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve and what they do.

I buy to make money.  I have a stash that I don't ever intend to sell, but its a stash that I bought when silver was still under $20 (Some of it was when AG was at around $5).  

Now if I buy PM's I intend to move them for profit.  The market, especially AG, has a lot of room to move, both up and down.  I still think PM's will be a decent hedge against coming economic problems but I'm not buying for long term at these prices.

Then again I have an outlet to move this kind of thing that most don't.

I collected coins in the early sixties and watched the currency change. Adult renewed interest and a chance friend selling me Silver Eagles for $9.00 two and a half years ago got me started. I had never seen  a one ounce anything and thought silver dollars where big.

Now, it continues and I will help Max Keiser crash JP Morgue!

It's fun!

OP still here. Thanks for all the input and discussion. I plan to hold on the silver that I have now, and perhaps after doing some more
research over the next few days pick up some more.

What has brought me to the silver discussions is the fact that I have ~$3500 in Series I bonds that I though could be put to better use.
As of now I am leaning towards converting roughly $1500 of that to durable goods which may include silver.

I was relatively late to the metals game but still managed to buy gold from around 1000 to 1100 and silver in the mid to high teens. The why part is multi-pronged. Silver was mainly to hedge against inflation and dollar devaluation while still staying in country.

Gold is purely for getting out of the country. Only way to carry a couple of grand in the sole of a sneaker.