Gold Sold From Vending Machines In Germany

There are fewer hassles for an adventurer or business traveler bigger than lugging around bags of silver and copper pieces. Luckily TG-Gold-Super-Markt has installed gold vending machines in 500 locations including train stations and airports all across Germany. The machines charge about 30% more than the current trading price for gold, and are updated every few minutes. All are closely monitored by cameras, and like 3rd and 4th edition, electrum pieces are not accepted.

Comments

Re:Im sorry

[vertinox]

If you want to buy gold at any reasonable rate, you pretty much have to do it well before you actually need it(or you have to be buying in some other apocalypse currency, like dog food or ammunition).

See. I don't understand the gold bugs. Most of their hyper-inflation apocalypse scenarios they state that gold will be the new currency, but time and time again nations that have went through hyper-inflation have reverted to bartering instead.

When people are in times to need, they look to commodities with utility rather than value.

So in the wastelands in the future people will value gas, water, canned food, guns and ammo and not a pretty metal.

Secondly, if anarchy does set in, you can always use your gun to take someone else's gold if you wanna bother lugging that around.

Re:Im sorry

[MBGMorden]

I think you'll notice though that much like the gold mentioned in the article, people are stocking like CRAZY on ammunition right now. Prices have doubled (or more) in the last 6 months. You have about a snowball's chance in hell of finding any common pistol ammunition on the shelves right now (9mm, .45acp, .40s&w, etc) - people are literally waiting at stores as the boxes are unloaded and buying it all up immediately. All the local stores have had to put a per item limit on customers just to try and keep the speculators from buying it all.

Even if you reload your own it's tough times. To load a round of ammo you pretty much need a case, a primer, powder, and a bullet. Cases are reuseable. For slower rounds bullets can be cast at home out of scrap lead (I've got about 400 lbs melted into lead bars if needed). Powder and primers usually must be purchased (you can make black powder at home, but it's usually poor quality and most loaded rounds use smokeless powder rather than black powder anyways). Like the loaded rounds though, the primers have become rarer than hens teeth. When they become available people are buying them 10,000 or more at a time.

I think overall, be it gold or ammo or canned goods, a lot of people are dumping a lot of money into supplies that they feel will see them through some tough times.

Re:The machines charge 30% MORE than trading price

[meringuoid]

According to Ray Jastram's "The Golden Constant," the purchasing power of gold has remained relatively stable over the last 300 or so years.

Relative to what? Suppose I was in London with ten sov'reigns bright in my pocket in the year 1709. What could I buy with them? Suppose now I am in London with ten sovereigns in 2009. What can I buy?

One thing hasn't changed: London was and is a colossal trading centre, so if it exists and I have the money I can buy it. But everything else is completely different. What if I want a passage to Boston, in the colonies - and back again? Well, in 1709, my sovereigns might buy my passage, several weeks on a sailing ship in dubious conditions. Just. The cost of such a trip was many months' pay for a labourer - people would indenture themselves for years in exchange for their passage. What if I want the same in 2009? Why, I can get from London to Boston and back again the next day if I wish it, and I'll have ample change left over for shopping while I'm there.

The same goes for almost everything I might seek to buy. What if I desire personal transport? How many horsepower can I get for ten sovereigns in 2009? A hundred or so? How many horsepower can I get in 1709? One or two? Or contrariwise: what if I would hire myself a servant? Ten sovereigns will get me a labourer for six months or so in 1709. In 2009, ten sovereigns for even two months' work would be a low wage.

Economy and society and technology have changed so much: how do you compare the value of those sovereigns across the centuries?

Oh, of course: some things don't change so much. Always there is demand for beer, and beer changes little enough. When I go into an alehouse, and order whiskeys and wines of the best, what can I have? Well, a pint of London porter was 3d a quart, or a penny and a half for a pint, or 160 pints for a sovereign (this being back when a sovereign really was worth a pound, not just having that nominal face value). Nowadays, a sovereign sells from the Royal Mint for £200, and a pint of porter - Dublin porter more likely nowadays - is something like £3. That's 67 pints for a sovereign.

So to my mind, where it really counts, on a London street buying beer, the value of that sovereign has fallen substantially in the three centuries gone by.