Hmm, pound is looking a bit scary today!

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I never knew before now that the many (or rather one or two with serveral names!) goldbugs actually held onto gold bars themselves.

That's quite cute

Adorable, ain't it?

Although I suspect "bars" is a bit of an exaggeration.;)

In fact, I suspect "gold" is a bit of an exaggeration as well.

We used to keep our very small collection of such things in a small safe at home, but moved them to a safety deposit box in a bank as the insurance cost become prohibitive.

A safety deposit box is fine if you're talking small quantities of gold, but silver is bulky when you start getting into serious money.

And there isn't a cheap way to store a house price worth of silver.....

You're talking the best part of 180 one kilo bars to buy an average house.

The kind of safe you'd need to get insurance on that is very expensive, and the policy ain't cheap even if you do invest in the safe.

I know this is all a bit of fun, but really, you'd be cheaper paying the stamp duty/buying costs on a house.

Harry_Boyle

Didn't someone post a photo of their 'hoard' and it amounted to a couple of coins and a small silver bar? Oh how we laughed.

Mr._Pricklepants

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

You're talking the best part of 180 one kilo bars to buy an average house.

For now...but you also know you will be able to buy a house with 12 oz silver soon.
domfrizby/agent47/nologo/thejoker/47th element/smeagold/etc said so.

Generali

If anyone is interested in seeing how complicated looking after gold is then a visit to the Bank of England museum would be instructive.

They have a gold bullion bar which you are free to pick up. The current value is displayed above it which I would imagine is about a million quid, give or take.

blizeH

HAMISH_MCTAVISH wrote: »

For that matter the costs of holding any serious quantity of physical gold/silver yourself are not insignificant. You're talking a very expensive safe and not terribly cheap insurance at a minimum. More than stamp duty on the average house.

I suppose you could just buy "paper gold", but the goldbugs keep telling us thats a bad idea....

Why is it a bad idea? I have some with BullionVault and it seems like it should be reliable/reputable even if things did go badly wrong with the economy. (to be fair, if things really get that bad, would people even care that much for a bar of gold anyway? I'd imagine property, land, other tangible commodities etc would be much more valuable)

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

To put the scale of the problem in perspective....

This is a 10KG coin.



You'd need a safe big enough for 18 of those, plus their packaging.

Something like this, which is Eurosafe-5 rated, 1.8m tall, and 1.2 metres wide.



It's also the best part of £12,000....

And even at that would require an expensive insurance policy to cover than much silver.

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

blizeH wrote: »

Why is it a bad idea? I have some with BullionVault and it seems like it should be reliable/reputable even if things did go badly wrong with the economy. (to be fair, if things really get that bad, would people even care that much for a bar of gold anyway? I'd imagine property, land, other tangible commodities etc would be much more valuable)

I totally agree.

But the silverbug on here repeatedly tells us that you should only trust physical you possess..... As "paper silver" isn't worth the paper it's written on.

We're making the point that securely holding a house price worth of physical silver yourself is an incredibly costly proposition.

Properly loony tunes stuff.

purch

Generali wrote: »

If anyone is interested in seeing how complicated looking after gold is then a visit to the Bank of England museum would be instructive.

They have a gold bullion bar which you are free to pick up. The current value is displayed above it which I would imagine is about a million quid, give or take.

USD 680,000 to USD 630,000 depending on actual weight.

Graham_Devon

Tommyguner wrote: »

I wonder if in another 10yr, a £1million worth pile of gold will get even smaller as the £ sterling loses even more value compared to gold?

Might do if you keep stroking it.

blizeH

Tommyguner wrote: »

Will there come a time in the future when a couple of gold or silver coins will be valued at around £1million? I would say its a certainty. As to when that is not so certain, but almost certain in my lifetime, I am still a spring chicken

These must be really big coins you're talking about.