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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1772 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 1, 2026

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Is right now (after a historic crash) a good time to buy in on silver and gold? The underlying logic still seems sound (needed for electronics, inflation/weakening USD, increased international drama)

Periodically when I have the extra cash in the bank and the extra room on my credit card, I buy an ounce of gold at Costco on my way out. I wouldn't want to buy gold futures, as the value of the gold to me as an inflation/TEOTWAWKI hedge is minimized by having intermediaries between me and the gold.

If you have significantly higher value assets than I do, that probably becomes impractical for storage reasons.

I'm not sure what's the point of buying Costco gold tbh. It's overpriced (usually not by a lot, but noticeably), if you'd want to sell it you will inevitably pay a commission, you need to store it somewhere in secure place and not lose it, and frankly excluding the scenario where the civilization collapses, I do not see any advantage over holding gold-linked assets. At least I don't run a risk of losing those if I move...

Am I missing something important here?

I use my costco rewards credit card for 2% cash back, and my costco membership gives me 2% cash back. The markup over spot is typically 1%, and I typically just don't buy it when the markup is higher, but the highest I've seen is 4% over spot which is effectively nothing with the cash back and membership.

Frankly, I don't see the point of gold-linked assets outside of short term gambling. Half the point of goldbugging is what if civilization collapses. I want to have my gold, not a piece of paper that tells someone else that I have the rights to a piece of gold, in that case I'd rather have other assets anyway. My safe is protected from fraud, embezzlement, mismanagement on the part of the asset managers. It is protected from a hostile banking system or government entity freezing my access to it. It is fairly opaque to outsiders how much I have at any given time, it can quite easily be given to someone or spirited away with minimal paper trail.

There are, obviously, risks. Theft, fire, loss. These can be minimized but never eliminated. What I think still makes physical gold appealing is that those risks are uncorrelated with the risks tied to other assets, other than I guess a fire at the property. I'm not advocating for keeping all your assets in your home or office, but I find it gives me peace of mind knowing that I have negotiable assets on hand that don't depend on a financial system that is rapidly turning into a cross between a casino and a social credit panopticon. Much like with crypto, if you don't have the wallet it's not really yours.

Frankly, I don't see the point of gold-linked assets outside of short term gambling.

As I noted in other comment, my gold investment produced a solid 11%/y over the last 10 years. No civilization collapse, no drama, just buy and hodl. I don't think embezzlement and fraud will be an issue for funds like GLD. But if you feel touching physical gold makes you feel better, sure, why not.

Much like with crypto, if you don't have the wallet it's not really yours.

I'd argue it's not like crypto. In crypto, math is the only thing you can rely on. In traditional assets, the legal system is the thing you rely on - if, say, Fidelity suddenly decides to zero-out my account, I rely on US legal system to make me whole. If US legal system collapses to the point bank accounts are irrecoverable, then we're in the prepper scenario, which is properly served only by a bunker with multi-year stock of basic vital supplies. Having couple of bars of gold won't do - you will just get bonked over the head (in the best case) and relieved of it at the first opportunity.

I find de-banking to be a significant enough risk to outweigh the downsides of physical gold. Not enough to build a bunker, or to put my entire net worth in physical gold, but enough to have a few thousand dollars in solid assets that can't be frozen or confiscated with a few keystrokes. The functioning US legal system is the risk that physical gold hedges against, it could be targeted against you for a variety of reasons.

I do find it funny when my father asks how we would prove his stocks belonged to him if Fidelity's "computers crashed." Dude, if Fidelity suddenly and irrecoverably lost all its data, a little stock certificate isn't going to save you, ammunition will be the new currency.

FWIW: I think a big part of this disagreement likely goes back to living situation. If I lived in an apartment and worked in an office building I would probably feel differently.

For United States, we're not there yet for confiscatory debanking yet, all the debanking cases I've heard of were of the sort "take your money and gtfo", not "we will now take your money". If the US ever gets there, and you upset people that want and are able to disconnect you from financial system, your only alternative will probably be cash, but how long can you hold out on your gold reserves, without the ability to hold any non-shitty job (there are probably jobs that don't check IDs but I don't think there are any non-shitty ones) and without access to pretty much any place that checks ID. But yes, for this scenario having a substantial gold reserve in small denominations would work, if you know people who would buy it from you without turning you in.

That said, if you look the part, probably moving to California and pretending to be illegal immigrant would also work. You may get yourself an entirely new identity eventually, get a bank account and even vote (which ironically wouldn't be illegal if you were a citizen before).

if Fidelity suddenly and irrecoverably lost all its data, a little stock certificate isn't going to save you, ammunition will be the new currency.

That said, internal corruption is also a plausible scenario. It's not hard to track if the company is willing, but large bureaucratic corporations are very lazy so it's not impossible that they may refuse to deal with the problem until given the undeniable proof it exists. So downloading statements once in a while and keeping them somewhere on the backup drive may not be a bad idea.

... ammunition will be the new currency

It seems like in any event where physical gold is more valuable than paper gold, ammunition (and food/tools/etc) will be more valuable than gold.

I highly doubt this. Gold has always had value, and in any future primitive society would retain that value.

I agree; gold's value is societally determined. In cases of societal collapse, your gold will just be taken off your corpse by a spike-covered guy driving a car that's also covered in spikes.

Someone buying physical gold should really be buying bullets, vitamins, and canned protein.

Yeah I mean if you're serious prepper, with the bunker filled with canned food, gas and ammo, then having one shelf there dedicated to gold and silver makes total sense. If that's your model of the world, physical gold fits it well. But doing just physical gold without anything else is just a recipe for losing money, IMO, if you're doing it for the financial reason.

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