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Notes -
I've tended to be skeptical of the idea, primarily because it's only protection against a very specific type of economic collapse. The kind where something has gone sufficiently seriously wrong with conventional fiat currency that it's dramatically lower value, but there are still sufficient goods available on the market to purchase from people who actually are willing to sell them, and those people are willing to accept precious metals in exchange for them. And have infrastructure to do so, including to weigh and value those metals and store them in such a way that they can't be easily stolen.
If I was going to hoard anything, I'd store primarily actually useful goods, such as non-perishable food, water filters, soap, medical supplies, tools, ammunition, fuel, etc. Those are extremely useful in any type of collapse or catastrophe. If it's one where people actually are exchanging precious metals, you will soon have all you could ever want when all of those people come to buy actually useful things from you with chunks of precious metal. Assuming you think the future is bright enough to actually accept such trades.
Cash is probably also more useful. In any of the much more plausible types of short-term disasters that have happened semi-recently, having at least a few thousand in cash lying around would likely prove very useful, because virtually everyone you might find selling things will be willing to accept it. Most of them probably wouldn't have much idea what to do with precious metals.
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