Buying Hard Assets For The Future

There are two schools of thought when it comes to buying and storing hard assets for the future. The first one is the one from the times of financial hardships where people would keep their cash in a coffee can buried in the back yard and then there are the people that take it a bit more serious.

These are the people that have the reasons for the first group covered, but at the same time take it to the next level. This is the level where maybe even the paper money and coinage of a country is worthless. In this group they will buy items of value with their paper money (precious metals and jewelry for example) today just in case the value of the paper money evaporates at some time in the future.

If you think about it, the second group probably has a better plan because the valuables will not normally lose their value over time and they can easily be converted back into cash when needed. On the other hand, if you had a paint bucket full of coins and paper, the local currency may have lost it’s value (like the guy that found boxes full on Confederate bills in his backyard) or at best it has rusted through and the paper has rotted and the coins rusted to the point they are unidentifiable.

When you are collecting hard assets and specifically collecting them just in case something bad happens in the future, the best items to collect are the ones that everyone knows, recognizes and will buy.

This is a very fictitious example, but if the government in your country collapsed and the money no longer had a value then you would be reduced to the value of your labor or the value of the hard assets you have stored away for this type of specific situation.

Many people like to buy jewelry and precious stones as their backup, but the value of these items is very subject to popularity and perceived quality. Gems specifically are only worth what a person is willing to pay, the gold chain they are connected to on the other hand has a pre-set value based on purity and weight.

If you have all the time in the world now to select the hard asset items you will keep for your future, why would you purposely put yourself in that kind of situation in the future? Gold and silver coins are highly recognizable and negotiable even if they are not minted in your home country.

The Kruger rand for example is the most common currently minted coin with a standard of purity and price that is internationally accepted. U.S., and Canadian gold coins are a very close 2nd and 3rd. These are not the coin collector type of gold coins that are sought after for their mint marks and rarity, these are the ones that are being minted today as a medium of exchange for a one ounce (or 1/10th ounce) piece of gold that is 90% pure.

Even if you get a really good deal on a piece of jewelry and you want to add it to your hard assets future, you may be better served to sell it at the full current market value today and buy something that will be a bit more recognizable and have a fixed value in the future.

We all hope the time never comes where we need to start buying bread and meat with gold or silver coins, but you do not want to be sitting in a back room with the butcher’s wife pulling of a few links of a gold necklace apart to feed the family.

Categories