id5

With your foreign currency or with your gold or silver. If you don't have this you will have to rely on your salary which means you will be very poor. Forget about trading silver chains in a supermarket - it will never happen - you will have to go through the intermediary of fiat.

You are missing why we use fiat from your thoughts. Using PM's on a daily basis still happens in a lot of non-westernised countries and has for thousands of years.

The Chinese originally thought of fiat because they had a stable political system that lasted for generations. Its purpose was never to make trade easier but to reduce loss of tax. As soon as a payment is made in weight of PM's and not the value of a token you break that key link to the government coffers, that of control of the currency. The government can monitor and control tokens but they can’t control metal that has its own intrinsic value, the black or natural market flourishes. The more stable the country the less the black or natural exists and the further the people can been weaned from metals with value.

Tesco’s, Wal-Mart and the other chains cannot react fast enough when a fiat economy is under severe stress because they are built on the fundamentals of fiat. They do not make their money by selling goods. They make it from renting shelf space to the food producers along with built in distribution and payment facilities. Their store managers have little to do with pricing as this is done centrally along with purchase and stock control. Independent stores don’t have this problem as they control the price, stock and where they purchase stock from. Look at the news footage from countries like Argentina and Zimbabwe and you can see that the chain stores have empty shelves but the independents are still well stocked.

Go to an independent and ask a non-westernised Asian or Middle-Eastern owner if you can pay in precious metals, the result may surprise you.

I have read many posts on the subject of SHTF use of silver and gold in daily transactions for groceries etc. IMO it will not happen. Of course there are many types of SHTF but short of a true Mad max scenario, government fiat will be issued and used - even if it loses half of its purchasing power every week. We have many recent examples of currency collapse and people's behavior is similar in all cases.

 

1. Those with foresight (hopefully GEI members), see the writing on the wall and exchange their fiat for precious metals and/or stable foreign currencies while it is possible to do it at a good rate.

 

2. You plan a day of spending - pay your car tax, buy some groceries etc and buy enough local currency for these purposes.

 

3. Expensive items will be sold (or certainly advertised in OZ gold/silver/Yuan) in order that the price is understood.

 

 

The point is that gold/silver will not be used for everyday transactions but will be the ultimate store of wealth - with a bonus of increasing its purchasing power several times.

In your no:2 scenario with what do you buy your local currency with?

When it gets to this stage then capital controls will be in place and unless you have already exchanged your local for a commodity or other countries currency you would have nothing to purchase local currency with. PM’s have little volume compared to value and keep for ever unlike many commodities. Bulky commodities also require storing and increase the risk of robbery on the way to buy enough local currency.

Consider gold going to $5,000, five times today’s price, and silver at a ratio of 1:20 somewhat more like its historic norm. With gold at £626 that will be £3130 an ounce or £100 per gram. So a gram of silver will be equal to £5, a fine silver 16” belcher weighs about 2.5 grams or £12 if gold was to go that high, 10 silver chains for your weekly shop.

Yes, I agree. Wasn't it you who said somewhere 'different tools for different jobs'. Great comment in relation to all this. So we should be hoarding our coppers? Actually I have been, but have felt too sad to tell anyone.

Close, what I said was 'buy the correct tool for the job' from the A Short Guide to Buying Coins thread that I wrote a while back.

Don't feel sad, I hoard all non-ferrous metals from tin cans to coin. People make take the mickey but it always may me smile when I get cash for the scrap

Thanks for that No6.

 

House prices here are still falling everyday, I monitor them on propertybee and another website that shows house price drops here.

 

I suppose I knew we would be getting a 'dead cat bounce', house prices are a bit more affordable now but still not affordable for the average First Time Buyer.

 

The only people I know who are moving are those that bought 5+ years ago, on to their 2nd or 3rd homes, maybe more of these types of homes are being sold, and not the traditional FTB homes - perhaps that is why we got such a large increase here?

 

Transaction are still heavily down and I do believe the market here is a long way from being healthy as you say, I just can't be bothered with all the ramping we are going to get from our local newspaper and their vested interest rubbish!

Look at the size of the houses for sale as well sophia, you get a lot better and often bigger size house even though the average has gone up. If they were force to quote a £perSquareMetre then we would all see it still falling.

In a SHTF scenario I am sure there simply aren't enough old silver coins around and people wont be thinking about the 'old' 5 or 10p's. ...

I do not think that there will be enough even though there are still many around. As I have said somewhere on here before, most probably in one of the SHTF or survival threads, if fiat collapses and becomes just paper then gold will be for after, during the recovery, your store of wealth. You will get paid in silver and purchase your daily goods in copper. Value will be weight and purity based and it is very easy to check the validity of these three PM’s because they have be real money for 1,000's of low tech years.

Nice graphic

Better than the one that was blocked by photobucket

The Guardian Jewellery Co

48 carver street

Birmingham

B1 3AS

0121-236-6619

 

everyone must have heard of this company even if you did'nt realise it.They are the company behind alot if not all the shopping centre WE BUY YOUR GOLD stalls and huge newspaper ads.I have spoken to people about them and even rang them to find out if i could buy from them no is the answer i got/get.No one i have yet spoken to Knows what they are doing whith their gold i have heard various rumours.

ANY BODY GET ANY INFO

They are owned by a casting company who just remelt and service the jewellery and dental industry and have been in the business a long time.

A bell is ringing.

Go and answer the phone GF and then come back to the conversation

...

The Sovereign* (8 grams) replaced the Guinea (8.4 grams) in/around 1817.

 

Both coins were the official £1 coin of their time so they are both officially worth 20 Shillings. However, the Guinea contained more gold so it became a £1+1 Shilling coin after changeover to Sovereign (0.4 gold grams = 1 Shilling).

 

Unofficially, the number of Shillings per Guinea varied depending on the value of gold.

 

* There is an older Sovereign but my knowledge of coins doesn't go back far enough.

Ziknik is correct, 1817 was the re-birth of the Sovereign and a Guinea was worth £1/1/0.

The first Sovereigns were from the reign of Henry VII, the proclimation was issued on the 28th October 1489 and the coins minted soon after.

The list of coins below are the sizes and weights of Guineas and the older Sovereigns, all minted out of 22ct gold of course.

16.0 mm 2.1 g Quarter Guinea

17.0 mm 2.8 g Third Guinea

19.0 mm 4.0 g Half Sovereign

20.0 mm 4.2 g Half Guinea

22.0 mm 8.0 g Sovereign

25.0 mm 8.4 g One Guinea

28.0 mm 16.0 g Two Pounds

31.5 mm 16.8 g Two Guineas

http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_05/zurbuchen120405.html

Assuming that these figures are correct, one obtains in ounces per month (22 working days = month):

...

We did this back in last December. In the UK in 1900 a building labourer was paid £0.21 per day and silver was £0.13 per ounce, I even produced a series of graphs which culminated in the one below.

MAYFAIR and GRANT

...

This is from their website they have only been established THIS YEAR ...

26/06/09 to be exact and the sister companies Crown Holdings Limited links to Crown Group which is an bunch of events and hospitality companies none of them have anything to do with Forex that I can see. The chairman is listed as "Russell Morgan, Chairman, founded the Crown Group over thirty years ago and has watched it grow into one of the leading independent companies within the catering and event industry."

DYOR but I am glad that I do not have a bargepole.

as they are no longer legal currency, i assume not.

CGT is not payable on any Sterling Currency and the definition of Sterling Currency is equal to that of legal tender which is coinage and banknotes defined by the various Coinage Acts. Pre-decimal silver or copper coins are no longer legal tender so you get no CGT relief on them but you still need a license to melt them down. Maundy money though which is still silver is legal tender.

Don't get yourself more than a couple of bags of these as emergency SHTF money, the reason being that if the fan doesn't get hit then you will be stuck with coin that is harder to refine than Sterling silver. The resale value of these old coins has gone up considerably in the past year or so because of the possibility of the SHTF. I suspect that as soon as the financial systems stabilise enough then the price of these coins will crash back down.

As an alternative just by some cheap silver braclets for trade rather than old coin.

Do they lend to the owner of the item only, in effect keeping it as collateral?

Some only lend to the owner of the item in the same way as a pawn shop but if the owner instructs then some do lend to others taking a cut of the interest or a fee depending on which set of laws the deal is based under.

Mr-Silver.co.uk goes TU?

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Second, I'm disturbed by this kind of thing.

...

I can understand you being disturbed by a white van man doing it, badly it seems but independant jewellers have done this for years. Many buy and store bullion, jewellery and art for their clients, some will even loan against what is stored and essentially how banks started. Its the way a big chunk of the non-western world still does business.

I have always thought that if a banking system fails and the country does not go Mad Max then this is where public banking will fall back to.

I have always had an amateur interest in silver/gold jewellery, diamonds & semi precious gem stones, which is unusual for a bloke I find.

It's not a talking point that has ever come up in conversation at work or in the pub/barbies etc.

I know what you mean GOM. When I talk about jewellery, PM's, etc I get the same befuddled look of “Err, what he saying, he didn’t mention ‘goal’ or ‘0-60’ or the weather”.

If you go to other countries the conversation is different, they are far more interested for their beauty or as store of wealth. Immigrants are also more interested in the subjects, I think that it is because they have had the levels of instability that the UK has not seen for a 1,000 years or so.

... I find it very enjoyable.

Ah! Don't forget the anorak that comes as an accessory to the book

PS: Welcome to the club

can I ask a question about this one. If you have queen vic facing you & upright, when I spin the coin around exactly, should the coat of arms be upside down,with the crown at the bottom & upside down ?

 

edit - some of the other sovs are like this also, with upside down st george .....some are the same .....h'mmm

Where did you finally order your coins from GOM, it is just that shield Victorias are more collectable than those with a St. Goerge, some years or some die numbers are even more collectable?

I presume you are not from the North then ?

 

edited - sorry guys, I know I keep going on about the North, but it's sh1te, cold, miserable & most of the people are thick......I am counting down the weeks to our relocation, ala prison style on an imaginary wall.

I hope that you end up in a place you like down south GOM because if not then I think that your long suffering wife may snap and do you in

That reminds me. Arrrrrrrrrrrr... http://www.talklikeapirate.com/

...

Thanks for that I nearly missed it. Entered into the diary, it really pisses people off in meetings and conference calls when you start talking like a pirate and given the complete loss of control from a French bloke last year who was in one of the meetings I will definitely tell everyone else what day it is on

Thanks id5, I've decided that using the chemical process of purification may be one tinker too far. However, can't get the idea out of my head now.

 

I was wondering if you could offer your thoughts on the two devices (Simplicity and electrolytic thumb cell) marketed here, http://shorinternational.com/refining.htm

 

They claim that the Simplicity can run 1 kg batch weights and can be used for gold and platinum. Are you familiar with the refining process that the Simplicity utilises and whether it would be possible to bodge a "home-made" version at a fraction of the cost?

It is a type of leaching process where they use 'safer' chemicals than nitirc acid. The kit does work but I have heard that the trick is in the preparation of the metals before you start the process. The kit it is also very expensive compared to the cost of the chemicals involved. There is a chlorine leeching process that would be very similar to the kit. I have never had the need to use it myself and I am sure that you will be able to find one on the web. Look for a process that uses sodium hydroxide and calcium hypochlorite, most of these can be brought in a good pool shop. Again, I would use a respirator and work outside as the chlorine that can come off is a not too good for you.

I've been busy today having the tooth put back in my head that my son head butted out and trying to find a replacement car as the engine in mine can't be replaced until the beginning of October... Good day so far! However the POG/POS makes everything OK... I must admit, both gold and silver doing well IMO.

I hope that the son was very young and your tooth old and weak, the alternative does not make happy families

Thanks for the warnings with regards to working with acids in your previous post. I am planning to follow the procedure outlined here;

 

http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=732873 and using broken and old silver jewellery donated by my wife.

 

I appreciate that the cost of materials will probably outweigh any potential profit from purifying the silver, but I just enjoy tinkering in the garden shed. Having said that, it sounds as though I would be well advised to undertake my experiments in the open air and upwind.

 

Hope I don't gas the neighbours...

I don't like the way the nitric is made, there are some very dangerous reactions that could occur here depending on what else is in the drain cleaner. For your own safety skip this step and buy yourself a suitable acid gas respirator and then buy yourself nitric acid here. It is not very strong but it will dissolve a small amount of silver over a few days. If you really want it to work faster then with the respirator on heat the solution gently outside in a pyrex beaker but keep organic residues away from it and do not get it boiling, this is all at your own risk not mine! Playing with acids can kill you! The rest will although I suspect that you will not recover as much of the silver as you hope.

Still waiting to see if Mr Smackdown makes an unwelcome late appearence.....

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Doesn't normally happen on a Friday, got a chart somewhere fom someone else on occurences of smackdowns but I can't find it.

GF was it one of yours?

your barbeque nights must be fun. :o

Not as much fun as one of my friends who is now an avid anti-smoker and puts out ashtrays for his guests with a bit of black powder in the botttom, now he is mad! but it is fun to watch

...Do you think that an ordinary blow torch is hot enough to melt silver? Say you have loads of circuit boards with silver on them, does the Nitric acid only affect the silver?

Silver melts at 962C and a little butane torch will go to 1300C. Nitric will dissolve the most of board, chips, silver, gold and all. It is best to either separated by crushing and floating the light parts away or burning, and then processing the residual.

...

Looking forward to getting started, will let you know how it goes.....

What process are you going to use?