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Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 25, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I know two guys who stash krugerrands in their home safes. One of them is bar none the most neurotic man I've ever met in my life.

They say they are concerned about the usual government collapse scenarios. Even accepting this as a likely scenario, I can't imagine that Krugerrands are particularly useful for exchange. A single $2000 coin is like ten months of groceries for myself at current prices. They didn't have a good response except to laugh that ten months of groceries might cost a lot more than $2000 in the future which of course totally misses the point.

I definitely did have that thought while researching this topic, hehe. I see that one can buy 1-gram gold bars that are worth roughly $100. I suppose silver coins would be much more straightforward to use in such a situation; a 1-gram bar of silver is worth like 3 dollars right now.

Generally for wealth holding in bullion you want bigger pieces than one gram, because markup rises with declining size of the piece of metal. For 1-Oz silver coins it’s pretty reasonable, but for 1/10 Oz it’s a serious money sink into premiums.

This is a good point that I had not thought of.

Krugerrands are bigger than a half-dollar coin, and made out of a soft metal, so I would say chopping them into quarters shouldn't be a problem. Still, that only gets you to 500 USD.