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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.
I prefer a candy bar. Gold hurts when I chew.
Actually, if you try to buy physical gold in small pieces (such as the 1 gram wafer mentioned in TFA) you'll find the markup is easily 20% or more over "spot price."
The spot price you see quoted in the daily business reports is really only relevant if you're buying "paper gold" such as certificates in a common pool ... or if you're an institutional investor buying hundreds of ounces at a time.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
I could see someone realizing that they have too much cash to get through customs buying gold.
When Inflation hits hard and money turns to useless paper, gold or anything similar is how you preserve your assets.
Germany after WW1 actually saw this (bread costing million one day and 10 million the other day, but exactly same amount of barter currency. It made helluva lot sense to spend 1000 on gold because withing year those 1000 were only good as tinder and would buy one something like one grain of wheat while gold kept value much, much better.)
Remember that money nowadays that is unbacked is just piece of paper without government enforcing it as legal tender as it is.
Gold at 30% extra is swell deal if you are faced with possibility that your cash would be worth 50% less tomorrow.
-- Technology for the sake of technology is as pathetic as eschewing technology because it's technology.
When I lived in Switzerland '86-'88 you could get small gold ingots from a UBS ATM on the Bahnhofstrasse in downtown Zurich. Just the sort of thing a conservative Swiss banker would do on the way home from work.
You can't fight in here - this is the war room!
Wouldn't it suck if the little corkscrew thing started to push the gold out and right when it's going to fall it stops and the gold just sits there. Man, that'd be so much worse than not getting a candy bar!
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.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It's a Dungeons and Dragons reference. Before 3rd and 4th editions, electrum pieces were a form of in-game currency, worth five silver pieces or half a gold piece if I recall correctly.
Long? What do you mean the signature at the bottom of every comment I post on Slashdot is too lo
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.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Actually, he did answer the question, if you're sharp enough to catch it.
The current administration--along with the Congressional leadership--has shown itself to be hostile to the idea of us mere citizens owning firearms. Demand is through the roof as some of us--the ones who believe that the government is answerable to its people--are stocking up in case of future interruptions in supply. Modern marketing methods include the "just-in-time" supply chain; with the incredible spike in demand, not only are the ammo manufacturers unable to keep up, but their suppliers are unable to keep up with their demand. Metals suppliers--lead, copper, zinc--chemical suppliers--powder and priming compounds--etc. The entire supply chain is thin right now.
Now, the ammo manufacturers are doing the best they can. By raising prices, they're able to pay higher prices to their suppliers, increasing the quantity of raw materials supplied. By doing so, they have been able to increase production somewhat, but that has limits. The factories are running at full capacity. The only way to increase production past that point, assuming the availability of input materials, is to expand the production line. That would require the manufacturers to take out loans. Unfortunately, due to the aforementioned "leaders" running the show, it's by no means certain that the manufacturers would be able to sell enough ammunition to pay back those loans; said "leaders" are working on any number of laws to restrict ammunition sales (see, for example, microstamping, limitations on purchase quantities, and so forth). Considering the political risk, banks are (quite wisely) reticent to loan large sums of money to engage in such ventures. Throw in the fact that everybody knows it's a bubble, and will inevitably burst, and even if the manufacturers could get the money, they know that the increased demand probably wouldn't last through the payback period on the expansion. In fact, this is already starting to happen, proving the wisdom of riding the storm out without expanding facilities.
Does that answer your question more clearly?
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!