id5

I thought that the weights of UK silver pre-1947 were already posted on this site but I could only find them in troy oz so here they are in grams. All pre-1920 coin is .925 silver and post .500 silver 2.8 g Sixpence post 1920 3.0 g Sixpence pre 1920 5.7 g Shilling 7.4 g Eighteen Pence 11.3 g Florin 15.0 g Three Shillings 14.1 g Half Crown 22.6 g Four Shillings 28.3g Crown

Yes it is all about stopping the VAT Carousel Fraud. The result is that if they go over the limit then they have to register with the VAT office in the country of delivery and pay VAT in that country. Up to a certain limit it makes they product look attractive in the delivery country against local imports so they can charge more and therefore get a greater profit.

You will not need fractional gold coins for the SHTF scenario. Gold in coin or bar form is to protect your wealth for when the scenario has ended or for moving your wealth between areas. When the dust starts to settle then gold can be exchanged for assets, physical or paper cash to restart your life. When the SHTF you will want silver coin for a few months of daily living and far less than you imaging as no one will trust the local currency which will either have died of inflated beyond recognition. Stick with the legal currency from the area that you live in as it will be easily recognised and trusted. If the SHTF period lasts longer than a few months then you will need hallmarked gold chain to continue to live with. Chain gold is easily checked for purity using a touchstone, the required amount snipped from the non-hallmarked end and you get silver coin for daily living in exchange.

This just came over the ticker and I thought you guys & gals would like it. I am buggered as to how I can do a linky to the newsfeed and I have yet to see the report on the Interweb Spot gold is trading at $783.00/oz after holding a $765.60/$784.90 range. John Reade, precious metals analyst at UBS, maintains that the weekend's financial events may put an end to the recent run up in the dollar, which may send euro-dollar higher. "If this proves to be the case, recently-added shorts in the gold market will be vulnerable and if the risk aversion translates into a run into gold, we could move sharply higher," he says. UBS reiterates that their short term gold price forecasts of $850/oz for one-month and $900/oz for three months are due for a review. "In light of the recent events, we will leave these in place for now and have a look at them later in the week when markets have had a chance to trade with better liquidity," Reade adds.

Some of these questions, especially the one I have quoted above, would be better asked in the main forum as there are people with a better knowledge of detachment than I even though I follow the value of metals closely. I can tell you though that you could suit yourself quite happily for 1oz of gold but there is a major difference between a fine handmade suit and an outfit to cover oneself. You can find the stats on silver and gold stock/production on the World Gold Council website http://www.gold.org/

I have already add a few posts to that thread but I will add a post as requested and put in a few more things Due to lots of well meaning 18th & 19th century ‘amateur historians’. It takes a long time to remove disinformation, just ask the Flat Earth Society! Oh! Very good fact! but did you know that Roman coin was also subject to debasement, even at that time government was playing with the value of money and now I just feel like I am a clone of Stephen Fry

My comment was against the contents of the wiki article on the pound and sterling and the pound sterling. The pound as a word meaning a fixed weight of money had been around since Roman times. In the Anglo-Saxon period Britain used Pennies as well as units, staters, sestertii, dupondii, sceattas, solidus and a few others but not Sterling or shilling. Steoling appeared in Old English to describe coins from the time of the Norman Conquest or the word Sterling used as coin in the reign of Herny II could have come from the German area of Esterling. Therefore Sterling didn't appear until after the Anglo-Saxon period which negates part of the wiki article that you referenced and the article that you have just referenced from the Britannica. Another big problem with both of these articles is the first shilling was not minted in the UK until 1549 in the reign of Edward VI some 500 years after the Norman Conquest. At best both articles are misleading

I would ignore wiki on the origins of the pound as there are many historical references that point to its root in 'libra pundo' Your list of silver coins and weights covers the milled coins of the 1800's onwards and does not include the Four pence coin that existed from 1836 to 1888, with a weight of 1.89g being reduced to 1.87g in 1838 Three half pence that existed from 1834 to 1862 with a weight of 0.7g Eighteen pence that existed from 1811 to 1816 with a weight of 7.3g Three Shilling that existed from 1811 to 1816 with an unknown original weight but it was thought to be approximately 15g Dollar that was minted in 1804 If you want a good, easy reference with all this in try Collectors Coins GB 2008 ISBN: 0948964766 and for the more in depth The Story of British Coinage ISBN 0900652748 or A History of English Money by Albert Feavearyear 1931 There is also Maundy silver but I think I have bored you all enough so I am off to brush any dirt from my anorak

Wren has the right of it. The pound was originally Roman ‘libra pondo’ a pound by weight and where the £ sign comes from as well as lb, one was money the other weight

I think it should now be referred to as ‘pounded fiat’ or ‘pounded flat’

Oh dear Steve! You really are becoming as much of an anorak as me with this numismatic bent of yours The start of Sterling as a currency began in the reign of Henry II. In 1158 he was responsible for setting the weight of a silver penny which was effectively fixed at 22½ troy grains, just less than 1.5 grams. The name comes from either the Easterling district of Germany where they used a similar quality of silver or far more likely from the Old English Steorling which means stars, Norman silver pennies had stars on them and they were the predominat currency until Henry reformed the Mint. Hopefully this it won't be the end of Sterling

I hope FFS that it makes up its mind soon so I can work out where best to put my investments. At the moment just about every investment is like a car on knackered shock absorbers, go over a bump and everyone ends up feeling travel sick

What an interesting observation! I thought I would give it a go but not invert so I could see the mirror image I also thought I would add in silver as well I couldn't let Steve have all the fun creating graphs and pretty pictures

Oh, my word, I remember it being called that! Ex Royal Engineer myself as I could never see the point of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane. I suspect we had better not start swinging the lamp and telling war'ies or the goldbugs will get upset

I have eaten many of them, some of the menus are okay, Steak & Kidney pud was a favourite of mine but the Oatmeal Block was the best bit! Biscuit Brown was a form of hard tack and as another poster has said was commonly called BAB, Biscuit Arse Blocking. The rest taste like cardboard aka Pot Noodle or Cup A Soup. The high energy ones, Artic rat packs are far better, you even get chocolate There are many places to get them from and they are cheaper in bulk but make sure that you get the Hexamine block stove with it if you don't have a separate stove. I have seen them for as low as 5GBP http://www.armyrations.co.uk/shop/item.asp...&itemid=179 most are approaching end of life and are being sold off but would last for a few years yet as it is very hard for cardboard to become past its sell by date

A British Army ration pack is a 20cmx20cmx12cm box that weighs approximately 1.8KG, so a year’s supply of rat packs would be a cube about 1.2m on each side and would weigh 657KG. But don’t forget each one includes everything that is needed such as a hexamine power heater, can opener, matches, tissues, tea, coffee, water purifying tablets and they also last for years. Just add a laxative and you could live off them for years.

This makes sense to me as something has backed the debt, if this is the case and is what has happened and oil has peaked then what is it going to be backed by in the future?

They also seem to fear weakness in the USD. There seem to be two distinct manipulations going on in the last week, one to bring down the price of gold and one to increase the value of the USD against just about all currencies. Since the drop Merv the Swerve signalled that GBP was not going to put up much fight against inflation, unsurprisingly the GBP has fallen further.

Thats really why I wanted to do them just to see if I could repeat the effect. What I also saw that I though was important was that gold nearly always fell between the begining of Feb and mid-April and also between mid-May to Mid-June.

When I read your reply I though, ‘Nah! That can’t be, I have screwed up somewhere, I was tired must have been thinking about DOG again’. So I went and checked the data and it isn’t 20% as that was from the start of the average year and not the August. The % increases from Aug to end for each year for 2003 to 2007 are 17.72%, 12.78%, 18.31%, -1.02%, 25.48%. The average August to the end of the average year is 14.6%. I have included a graph combining the POG for all of the five years that I used as it helps to visualise the increase. My thanks for you comment on the graphs

The average % increase over the period 5/10/15 year period. For each day in each year I calculated the % increase and then averaged across the number of years. Its crude but highlights the buying periods.

Having already declared my religion somewhere as a practising agnostic dyslexic insomniac there are times when I do not lie there and wonder about the dog but sit and do some browsing or investment research. The graphs that Dr. B provided prompted me to do the same early this morning but using the actual price of gold with I think a similar result.

Those graphs are quite astonishing, I have not seen them before.

Err...you might want to be a bit careful with what you find on the web. Sterling as a currency existed from the 13th century. The relationship between gold and silver had existed for many centuries before this. Since the 1670’s various groups had complained about the bullion price, rate of exportation, state of the country coinage from clipping, etc, the Bank of England was created in 1696, as part of the ongoing solution to the problem. Newton was asked to be the Warden of the Mint after the Bank had been created to oversee the great re-coinage of currency. Later he took the junior but more lucrative role of Master of the Mint. Part of that role was report to the Lords Commissioners on the difference in prices across the globe between gold and silver, he pointed out that Johnny Foreigner was still ripping off the country by paying in silver and being paid back in gold. This information was used to change the ratio which was then enforced by Proclamation rather than the previous Act of Parliament because of the great re-coinage that was in process. In the late 1600's, governments and global banking had increased the value of silver against gold by some 25%. Even then the market was being manipulated for profit.

I haven't seen any new gold Sheqel (Shekel) coins at dealers for quite a while. They do come up but not often. To be honest with you I could get them but they would carry a premium over other coins. Personally I would buy them from the Israeli Government Coins & Medals Corp, similar to the UK’s Royal Mint, which is about as trustworthy as you can get http://www.isragift.co.il/asp/main.asp They are the selling arm of the Bank of Israel http://www.bankisrael.gov.il/catal/cataloge.htm For old Shekels you had best look at the big auction house stock such as Baldwins http://www.nobleinvestmentsplc.co.uk/onlin...ncient%20Jewish , Dix Noonan Webb http://www.dnw.co.uk/dnw/coins/coinshome.htm , or Spink http://www.spink.com/home_page/index.asp . You had best phone them up and ask them to put you on the mailing list so that when the coins you are interested in come up for auction you will be informed. With ancient coins, just like antiques, provenance is the key to a good price. There are a large number of the fake coins from the Ancient Jewish or Biblical era in circulation.