Gold - Digigold or coins?

lohr500

I'm not sure if the spread on Britannias is always as big as it is now. It is why I have gone down the digigold route with Royal Mint, other than buying a single Britannia for novelty purposes.

Adyinvestment

You have to shop around, Chards are buying them back today at over £1522

Kondongo

Adyinvestment said:

You have to shop around, Chards are buying them back today at over £1522

Thanks for that information.  I checked on their website and they also give advice about posting to them, which I found very helpful as I had some concerns regarding sending coins in the post. I know from experience that when using POspecial delivery and asking for insurance, the PO understandably asks what the contents are.  Saying' Oh they're very valuable gold coins" somehow causes me some trepidations (not implying PO aren't trustworthy) but saying 'it contains numismatic items/collectables'  gives a veil of esoteric vocabulary security, even if it's illusory! https://www.chards.co.uk/blog/sending-gold-and-silver-coins-by-post/272

Qyburn

Kondongo said:

Actually, countering all Government advice, we've already weathered one storm (Arwen),  

Which part of Government is advising people not to be self sufficient?  Our L.A. has a whole department on what they call "resilience" and have been very much advising people, households and communities to plan for and cope with these sorts of events.

Kondongo

Qyburn said:

Kondongo said:

Actually, countering all Government advice, we've already weathered one storm (Arwen),  

Which part of Government is advising people not to be self sufficient?  Our L.A. has a whole department on what they call "resilience" and have been very much advising people, households and communities to plan for and cope with these sorts of events.

Recent Government legislation has made it increasingly difficult for people who rely on domestic coal, such as in rural areas, to purchase this. "e.g "All sales of traditional house coal will be banned in England from 1 May 2023."  https://www.gov.uk/guidance/selling-coal-for-domestic-use-in-england  We have had a key Coal Merchant locally, cease that part of their business in the last 6 months, and my current suppler of loose anthracite is seriously considering his future in that part of his business due to imposed costs and restraints. 

Wood-burning stoves, have recently had a very bad press from the Climate Crisis Alarmist lobby, and now all logs sold commercially have to be kiln dried (making logs much more expensive and energy wasteful due to the forced, rather than natural drying process). See also https://unherd.com/2022/12/firewood-will-save-the-west/?tl_inbound=1&tl_groups[0]=18743&tl_period_type=3&mc_cid=c812e546ca&mc_eid=2303e8bec7  Our LA has also been pushing air-source heat pumps to everyone in my part of the county extolling their dubious virtues given the poorly insulated 'heritage' housing in this area and the fact that 0 degrees and below temperature in winter are not uncommon.

 

During Arwen, for example, the local Housing Association's row of 12 bungalows, housing elderly people were 'death traps' as that rely solely on electricity.  So no electricity means no heating, no cooking, no hot water, indeed no landline phones (all digital) now, so no calling out for deliveries, no use of the internet. The elderly residents were faced with the option of moving out to hotels or staying with relatives or friends.  One elderly gentleman who valued his independent (self-sufficiency) stayed, and refused to move.  We supplied him with our gas camping stove; extra blankets; and an old none digital, rotary dial phone, which allowed home to call out (although it didn't allow calls in).  With our diesel fuelled car we were able to drive to and from his home with food deliveries, while an EV would have simply been a stranded piece of junk. cluttering the road and hampering access to emergency vehicles and the like.

When the Government eventually introduce CBDC, we'll all have to tow the line, or else (see China and the CCP). Not everyone's cup-of-tea, but Russell Brand's 'humorous' round up of our Government's plans to phase out cash ....   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AULiB17KahU

Yes, self-sufficiency is the bane of Globalist ambitions. 

engagedandopen

I opted for Royal Mint's Digigold but I might buy some sovereigns some time.  I agree that silver coins are likely to be more practical for smaller values.

One of the reasons I haven't bought coins yet is considering how to sell them again afterwards: I don't want to walk into a local gold merchant's shop (let alone shopping around for a good deal in the neighbourhood) and, on the other hand, securely posting or couriering back to a vault has costs and risks.

Malthusian

engagedandopen said:

One of the reasons I haven't bought coins yet is considering how to sell them again afterwards: I don't want to walk into a local gold merchant's shop (let alone shopping around for a good deal in the neighbourhood) and, on the other hand, securely posting or couriering back to a vault has costs and risks.

Genuine question, why don't you want to walk into a local gold merchant's shop? It may be an analog and old-fashioned way to convert a speculative asset into cash, but holding shiny metal is an analog and old-fashioned way to invest in the first place, so it comes with the territory.
It should be possible to pay a reputable courier with an insurance policy to transport your gold who assumes the risk that the gold is lost, making it the same risk or lower-risk than hauling the coins to a gold merchant yourself.

Kondongo said:

Recent Government legislation has made it increasingly difficult for people who rely on domestic coal, such as in rural areas, to purchase this. "e.g "All sales of traditional house coal will be banned in England from 1 May 2023."  https://www.gov.uk/guidance/selling-coal-for-domestic-use-in-england  We have had a key Coal Merchant locally, cease that part of their business in the last 6 months, and my current suppler of loose anthracite is seriously considering his future in that part of his business due to imposed costs and restraints. 

People who heat their house by burning coal are not self-sufficient. They are reliant on a complex and increasingly niche network of other people to dig coal out of the ground, refine it and then ship it to their house.
Part of the reason is being banned is that if you want to be able to pay other people to supply heat to your house (which is what both people who live on the power grid and people who burn coal in stoves do) there are much more environmentally friendly ways to do it. 
Self-sufficiency would be chopping down trees (that you have grown yourself) on some land that you own for firewood.

One elderly gentleman who valued his independent (self-sufficiency) stayed, and refused to move.  We supplied him with our gas camping stove; extra blankets; and an old none digital, rotary dial phone, which allowed home to call out (although it didn't allow calls in). With our diesel fuelled car we were able to drive to and from his home with food deliveries

So he wasn't self-sufficient either, he needed your help to stay warm and fed. He just preferred relying on you over relying on the local authority, especially as you were prepared to indulge his desire to stay where he was. Which is a perfectly reasonable choice and how society and friendship works, just not "self-sufficiency".
What this illustrates is that "self-sufficiency" is largely a myth and usually boils down to relying on other people in a more obscure and expensive way than the usual one.

while an EV would have simply been a stranded piece of junk. cluttering the road and hampering access to emergency vehicles and the like.

In the early years of the combustion engine, where there weren't petrol stations dotted all over the grid, a good horse and cart would have been very useful in a Storm Arwen type situation where a car would have been a stranded piece of junk because petrol was too difficult to obtain. 

DannyCarey

engagedandopen said:

I opted for Royal Mint's Digigold but I might buy some sovereigns some time.  I agree that silver coins are likely to be more practical for smaller values.

One of the reasons I haven't bought coins yet is considering how to sell them again afterwards: I don't want to walk into a local gold merchant's shop (let alone shopping around for a good deal in the neighbourhood) and, on the other hand, securely posting or couriering back to a vault has costs and risks.

So you've bought paper gold / gold IOU?  "Oh don't worry about the security, its safe in our vault!" Sounds very scammy.

If you must buy gold, is it not best to at least buy the dumb shiny rock and own it. 

Kondongo

You make some very good points Malthusian, and thank you for replying.  To be clear, I'm not equating self-sufficiency with complete independence (no man is an island, and all that), but I do appreciate the opportunity to shape my own degree of interdependence in my local and wider communities, as much as I am able too.  Yes, I rely on my coal merchant, but having access to a fuel that allows me to store several months worth of energy, does provide some degree of control over my immediate destiny, albeit finite. "Obscure" and "expensive", relative terms surely in how they are defined by individuals.  Anyway, before returning to the key theme of this thread, I wonder if you've read:

Breaking out of the Malthusian trap: How pandemics allow us to understand why our ancestors were stuck in poverty

   https://ourworldindata.org/breaking-the-malthusian-trap

Industrialisation, even the mucky fossil fuel types (as China and India have and are demonstrating, and countries on the continent of Africa want the freedom to also avail themselves of) has benefited mankind enormously, with the much maligned England showing the rest of the world an escape route.

Back on topic: thank you for all the posts regarding gold in its various forms.  Happy New Year everyone.

Malthusian

To be clear, I'm not equating self-sufficiency with complete independence (no man is an island, and all that), but I do appreciate the opportunity to shape my own degree of interdependence in my local and wider communities, as much as I am able too. Yes, I rely on my coal merchant, but having access to a fuel that allows me to store several months worth of energy, does provide some degree of control over my immediate destiny, albeit finite.

"Shaping your own degree of interdependence" is a good way of putting it. It's the difference between the guy who has a diesel car they can use to obtain food for both themselves and others, and the guy who was one social tie away from either starving or being forced out of their home. 
A reserve of coal has great practical value as long as you have a stove capable of burning it. Gold, on the other hand (to get back to the topic), is completely dependent on a functioning society, and at a complex enough level that there are people willing to hand over currency or useful goods for shiny metal.
Society needs to be a) rich enough that people are willing to spend time smelting and reforming gold to make it into pretty trinkets or electronic components, rather than scrabbling for survival, and b) stable enough that people are willing to pay others for their gold rather than just hitting them on the head and taking it. In short, it requires the apocalypse to not happen.

Industrialisation, even the mucky fossil fuel types (as China and India have and are demonstrating, and countries on the continent of Africa want the freedom to also avail themselves of) has benefited mankind enormously, with the much maligned England showing the rest of the world an escape route.

Agree entirely. Thomas Malthus was arguably unfortunate. If he'd written a treatise at any point in previous human history on the lines of "there are limited resources in the world, therefore more people means more poverty, therefore people should have fewer babies" he'd have been entirely correct. (If we leave aside a very wonky utilitarian argument over whether it's actually better for half as many people to exist with twice the amount of happiness.) He just happened to write his article just at the very point a black swan landed and it became wrong.