Trade In Some Silver For Gold?

You want gold to be lower and you want the ratio to hit 32-33 like it did a couple of months ago. You're better off buying gold as it dips back into the 1580s.

Ed_B: I think that one could buy a jalopy with an ounce of gold to get where they need to be if SHTF. Honestly, though, I think that barter items will fare much better than gold or silver if that were to happen. One day we may see more pawn shops than banks.

Stack both metals evenly over time. You don't want to be tricked into trading 60 ounces of silver for a single ounce of gold in the future, only to find out the ratio is in the 50s later.

Premiums on the small coins are there for a reason. I would definitely prefer 10 X 1/10 over 1 X 1 if I had the equal choice - the reason being that they can be used much better in commerce. If that's all you can afford during the month then it's not truly a setback since you can't afford the full ounce. Everyone wants a bargain but the amount must be bulkier.

Not sure what that means but I was referring to people who need to buy food or perhaps medical care and do not have anything to do it with other than property.

1/10th oz. of gold or 5 oz. of silver should have about the same buying power, yet the silver is more easily divided via dimes, quarters, and halves than even that 1/10th oz. of gold, let alone the larger gold coins. But... to each their own.

Gold is less volatile percentage wise......trade some silver in and get a quarter oz gold eagle or maple.....you won't regret it and might be hooked on gold. :)

On the whole, I agree with your comments, Merlin. Problem is, there are also a lot of people out there who don't even realize that US coins no longer contain ANY silver or what an ASE is. There is a hilarious video on You Tube where a guy drives around, showing people an ASE and asking if they they would pay $5 for it even though it says "1 dollar" on the ASE itself. Most do not recognize it and none of them said that they would pay $5 for it. At the time, silver was in the $20-25 per oz. price range. Naturally, these same people would also not recognize a gold coin of any kind either because they have never seen one.

In a SHTF scenario, though, it would not take very long at all before people with no knowledge of PMs or collecting began to recognize real money when they saw it.

Heh heh... using my very best Yoda voice imitation here, "They will be... they WILL be!".

Actually, those thoughts seem perfectly reasonable to me. At a G/S of 50, we are at the higher end of that spectrum but there is no law preventing that from becoming 80 or even 100. If it runs the other way, more towards the traditional 15 or 20, then would be the time to do the reverse and swap silver for gold.

Yes, platinum is cheaper than gold now for about the 2nd time in the past 40 or so years. This is a rare event. It makes me want to buy some Pt. So I searched the 4 web sites that sell PMs and what do I find...? Very little Pt is now available. The 1 oz. bars are very difficult to find. Most dealers with whom I deal are "out of stock" or "delayed". :-/

Angel,

I am always hearing about this historic 16 to 1 silver to gold ratio, but how often in the last 100 years has it actually had a 16 to 1 ratio?