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Comment by bsder | Hacker News Reader

I'm really left scratching my head about people who buy gold to hold physically and personally rather than as an investment.

In any situation where it might be relevant, how are you going to sell your gold?

For example, if you bought one of those bars right now, how would you then sell that bar again right now?

And, if things really are completely collapsing, nobody wants gold. They'll want something much more immediately useful--food, clothing, ammunition, etc.

I did look at this to see if it was cheaper than any jewelrymaking gold I could buy, but the prices are bang on identical per ounce.

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> And, if things really are completely collapsing, nobody wants gold. They'll want something much more immediately useful--food, clothing, ammunition, etc.

I'm not sure I buy that. Barter for an intermediary is fundamentally useful. In a case of societal collapse, people with food/clothing/ammunition--or people who can provide useful services (like driving me to the nearest border) aren't going to want more food/clothing/ammunition--they're going to want something fungible that they can trade for what they need!

So, sure, there's probably some rare scenario where gold (ideally in small, easily verifiable discrete units, not big bars) is useful.

Right now it’s not hard to sell. There are reputable gold traders who will pay cash, usually at market prices (minus some margin).

But presumably if the shit hits the fan and the USD is worthless, it’s a form of trade.

I don’t disagree not a great one. My biggest issue is if you want to buy food what do you do with a $2,000 piece of gold? Buy $2000 in food? You can’t really divide it up (a random chunk of gold is much less valuable than a minted coin).

I’d guess threat model is less “there is a zombie apocalypse” and more “you need to flee to another country”.

But then you need cold coins, not a gold bar. Or, multiple foreign currencies.

Bars can be traded for coins. There are not many who can do that, but you can find them anywhere if you look. You won't always get a great deal, but I'm confident that you can find someone who buy your gold bars for cash most places in the world.

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