Metals, a Hedge or Investment Depending on Your Views... or a Sucker's Bet?

[Don Alaska]

I was surprised to find out how scummy the Royal Canadian Mint is.

They are not allowed by charter to produce coinage that isn't sold in Canada, but they use the loophole of putting a few on the market there and listing small mintages on their web site.

The "scam coins" are private mintages of "premium" coins for U.S. based "Gold IRA" custodians. These guys use celebrities and such to advertise converting IRAs to their gold-holding IRAs. If you pressure them hard and resist their high-pressure sales tactics most of them will invest your funds into solid investments like U.S. Mint Eagles, but they upsell you hard into these RCM private "premium" coins that often have enormous markups on them. AS much as 175% in at least one documented case!

All perfectly legal under current lax regulations. Sadly, your IRA immediately loses a huge whack of value, and that's before they start assessing custodial fees, Even if you take delivery of the coins down the road they are very hard to sell on the retail market as unknowns. They fetch far back of spot, and go right into the scrap pot for melting if you can get a coin dealer to buy them.

Many of these companies have been sued and put out of business, but the principals walk away scot free and soon pop another one up. Even the endorsing celebs (Glen Beck, Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, and many many more on the left as well) play dumb about it all and take the fat checks.

While what is sold to Canadians is often of good quality no matter what it is--food, drugs, etc.--what is marketed outside the country often isn't. It is sad that we cannot trust our closest (in culture) neighbor.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

In the wake of the Fed cut and announcement of "not QE" (wink, wink) gold and silver have made some moves. Gold in particular seems to have broken out of the recent pattern again.

 

[Don Alaska]

In the wake of the Fed cut and announcement of "not QE" (wink, wink) gold and silver have made some moves. Gold in particular seems to have broken out of the recent pattern again.

They are definitely doing something shady. Word is they are buying up any large bond dumps to keep stocks and bonds from collapsing. We may be in for a bumpy ride. I hear projections of $120 silver by the end of the year. We'll see....

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

Today I looked over some of the 70s Eisenhower Dollar coins. While most of them in circulation were metal-clad coins (like dimes and quarters today, with no silver) some were produced in 40% silver like post-84 Kennedy Halves. Many were proof strikes, and originally released in proof coin sets sold by the US Mint. A lot of those proof sets have long ago been broken up with each different coin going its own way. Many were spent at face value!

The coins I looked at were all 1971s. These have the eagle landing on the Moon on the reverse side, which you might remember. Some were still-shiny proof coins, a few were probably BU (Brilliant Uncirculated) when released but have aged a bit to AU (Almost Uncirculated) condition. The proofs I looked at were a bit nicer than this coin:



I didn't see any of the Bicentennial Year examples though. These have a different reverse-side image and are still more collectable today.

They were on sale for $20.50 each.