wren

According to the guy's measured dimensions (thickness less than normal) and its weight (very close to normal) it would have had a density greater than gold. And yet he claimed it was 22 carat on the basis of an acid test. It did not make sense that it was a counterfeit coin.

A good reminder of how cheap, in historical terms, silver is still today.

I have a Napolean Bonaparte 20 francs (1812) which has a general dirty greenish tinge compared to sovereigns which look quite golden. I suppose this just dirt from decades of handling?

Thanks for the historical note. I notice that the article also says: So Copernicus was earlier and the Wikipedia article on Copernicus says: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus So it seems that the French philosopher Nicole Oresme (c. 1323 - July 11, 1382) was the earliest to state Gresham's Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Oresme

That's the one. Thanks very much. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ An interesting quote from a historical novel about QE1. So is this the Gresham of Gresham's Law? Link (about a possible overnight dollar devaluation): http://www.dollarcollapse.com/iNP/view.asp?ID=102

Yesterday somebody posted a link to an audio interview with Peter Schiff, but I don't remember which thread it is in (or was it at HPC?). Could somebody point me to it? An interesting point he made about the U.S. housing market is that he thinks it will not find a bottom until interest rates find a top. So on that basis the bottom could still be several years off. Today, dollar down and gold up quite a bit, but less so in euros than dollars. USD 1.4221 to buy one euro.

Nice video, but like he said he doesn't know much about gold: krugs and gold eagles are nowhere near pure gold, it's the maples tat are three nines or four nines fine and pandas three nines.

I reckon it is likely that it will reach his target of USD 1650 by Q1 2011. However, I don't see why it would necessarily reach it's maximum in H1 2011 unless gold becomes part of some international currency. Sinclair has repeatedly been saying recently that it will go to Alf's numbers (much higher than 1650) according to Armstrong's timing. For me it's not the nominal prices which are so important as the purchasing power. Do the important ratios gold/DOW and house/gold look like they will bottom in 2011? It may take a couple of years longer than that. Also I believe that commodities bull markets historically have lasted 14 to 20 years and we are only about 8 or 9 years into this one.

Probably need to clear their stock of krugs. Seems to me they have been overpriced in recent months. Krugs should be the cheapest bullion coin, but nice to see that CID adapt to the market. Was nice to hear a few days back that coin dealers are getting people selling back what they bought in the latter part of last year ("Not waiting for Armaggedon"). The market needs to shake out the weak hands. Give the goods to stronger hands. We'll look after it.

CID have another special offer on Saturday morning (tomorrow). Here's the email: They don't say which coin and at what price! I suppose this is their marketing ploy to get people to visit their site more.

The 200-day MA seems to be supporting the euro price. It shot up about 20 eurocents in the few last hours and doesn't seem to want to stay down near 9 euros. Maybe we're not far from the bottom in silver and gold at least in euros. Prices at the mo': USD 13.39 EUR 9.49

I've read only the first 15 pages but it seems like a good overview. However, nothing really new to those here who follow gold closely. Plenty of up-to-date charts and histograms. Probably a good overview for those new to gold. It shows how gold is generally in the long-term not correlated with other asset classes or even GDP, so it performs very well as a hedge against other asset classes. Long-term bullish. They anticipate USD 2300 gold in today's dollars (using the 1980 peak, inflation adjusted) in the coming years. I noticed that their discussion of gold in deflations considered only the Great Depression. Gold has a much longer track record of performing well in deflations and many who have not studied gold seriously are unaware of that important historical fact. As I like to say, gold is a hard currency, the hardest of currencies. So it's no surprise that it performs well in deflationary periods.

A special report on gold from the Erste Group. I haven't read it yet, maybe tomorrow. From July 2009, it is a 55-page pdf: http://www.bgmi.us/data/2009SpecialReportGOLD.pdf

The article tracks the amount of silver in SLV as a measure of investment demand. Investment demand held up when the silver price crashed and has since got stronger.

The following article from ZealIntelligence argues that over the last several years investment in silver rather than industrial demand has been driving the silver bull market. http://www.gold-eagle.com/gold_digest_08/wright071009.html

Unfortunately CID's silver quota for this year for selling to Finland has now been used up (2 or 3 weeks ago). So now we cannot buy silver from Finland at all until next year! They charged me 7% VAT for silver which I suppose is the German rate. I feel sorry for those in the UK paying, what is it, 15% VAT?

I've just been comparing the prices of different gold coins at coininvestdirect, and have noticed, as others have said before, that British sovereigns are among the cheapest per gramme of gold. I see though that Victoria sovereigns are now a lot more expensive than the others. Presumably they are more popular because of age? If gold does go up to something like USD 1600 or higher (which I think is quite likely in a couple of years time) it might be convenient to have smaller coins for selling small amounts. I generally avoid fractionals because of the extra premiums but sovereigns are not a bad price. The diverse French 20 franc coins are a bit more expensive per gramme than the sovereigns but not a massive difference. The Austrian 8 florin (same size as a 20 franc) is the cheapest of this size of coin. Are 20 franc coins very popular in the UK or elsewhere? I like the way that several countries had 20-franc coins with exactly the same amount of gold (France, Switzerland, Belgium, Italy and Austria for sure - any other countries?).

I found this comment about the gold/silver ratio interesting: I'm still trying to get by birdbrain around why the ratio moves as it does. That quote is from this article which is mostly about the ratio of $GOLD to CRB. The ratio seems to have consolidated in recent months. http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_08/tanashian071009.html

Do you know of any mechanism or plausible argument why the ratio should drop significantly in the next, say 12 to 18 months. Just that I don't know of a good reason to expect it. Presumably the global recession holds back demand for silver tending to keep the price down. I suppose with China's stimulus and all the bailout attempts in the West a temporary recovery in some economies in the next 18 months might be possible. Mainly it looks to me like demand should be weak and remain so for months.

All I can say to that is cheep, cheep.

The USD price is still a little above its 200-day moving average. The EUR price has just cut slightly below. A nice buying opportunity perhaps for a few weeks. Prices at the mo': USD 12.60 EUR 9.06 GBP 7.79

Some snazzy new U.S. dollar note designs on this page: http://taoeconomics.com/content/coming-soo...l-reserve-notes Wisely no one-dollar note appears in that series. That series appears in this 4th July design competition: http://richardsmith.posterous.com/july-4th...-dollar-redeign

Maybe he's wishing the price down as he begins to make his move. Over on the silver thread there seem to be a few of us doing the same with silver.

Looking at the EUR and GBP silver charts I notice that both are getting close to the 200-day moving average. Will this tend to provide some support I wonder? Current prices: USD 12.81 EUR 9.22 GBP 8.00 I'm still sticking to my plan of slowly averaging in over the summer.

Finnish sources say that "raha" ("money" in modern Finnish) originally meant "squirrel's skin" ("oravannahka"). I just found an Estonian source which says that the word "raha" comes originally from the Gothic word skraha which meant fur. http://www.furs.ee/eng/historyeng That page has quite an interesting article about the historical significance of the fur business in Northern Europe.