! – If you are a gambler and are trading the ups and downs of daily, weekly or even monthly prices then you really aren’t paying any attention to the big picture and, unless your name is Soros or Hunt, your chances of not getting skinned alive are worthy of a shake down by any good Vegas odds maker. You will lose! Oh, sure! You may be ahead today but, over time the game is rigged against you. You are playing against the banks, sovereign governments and very savvy insiders in the various gold pits. Even the infamous Hunt family discovered that! No matter how much money you have nor how skilled you are at acquiring gold or silver, the establishment will beat you!

What it comes down to is, how do you perceive gold and silver. Do you see them as trading vehicles; as  hedges or, do you see them as the ultimate money?

2 – If you see gold and silver as the ultimate hedge against financial chaos then the day to day price shouldn’t matter. Unless you are psychic and can foretell the exact onset of the financial turmoil, you will want to have a good quantity on hand at all times. Oh, I’m well aware of the 1933 confiscation of gold by Roosevelt. I’m also aware of how the government stuck it to the people! After the willing populace no longer owned any gold, Uncle Sugar immediately doubled the price! God bless ‘em! Could that happen today? Anything is possible and, if Washington can find another way to confiscate our wealth, then they will! All the better for the “all caring”, “all beneficent”, “all knowing” Nancy Pelosi’s of our great land to redistribute wealth according to some (election) formula only they are privy to. After all, we cannot be trusted to do what is best for us, we need the high minded oversight of those all caring defenders of socialism.

For your own defense let me advise you to buy bullion coins (Krugerrand, Maple Leaf, American Eagle, etc) in all the various denominations as well as silver coins from the dime to the dollar. After all, it will be hard to buy a loaf of bread with a gold coin valued at $2,000 – $3,000 apiece. I mean, how do you make change? Throw in a jar of peanut butter?

3 – Then there are those of us who love the beauty and rarity of old coins in and of themselves. For collectors there are many benefits over and above being a hedge against inflation, monetary collapse, economic melt-down, war, etc. There is the intrinsic value of the gold and silver, certainly, but there is also the high probability of appreciation no matter what the price of gold and silver. The rarity of any given coin adds to its desirability and the small circulation assures a constant and ready demand for top quality coins. Unlike baseball cards, Lladro’s, Hummel, Velvet Elvis’ or other collectibles, you have two additional safeguards:

A – The coins are gold and silver and will always have, at the very least, the value of the precious metal from which they are minted and,

B – they are sovereign currency, that is, they have a face value that must be redeemed at that value by the nation who minted it. Of course gold and silver would have to be directly linked to swine flu, or some other fatal malady, for the coins to drop to such drastic lows.