I have 7k+ worth of gold and silver coins currently in my possession (don’t trust Fiat paper currency, and growing increasingly concerned with the shenanigans of the clowns who run the financial and banking system).
I have these coins in a hiding place in my bedroom. In about 4-5 years time when I own a house, I plan to have someone drill a hole in the concrete and install a floor safe, like so:
But due to my current living arrangements, I cannot do this, or even have asmall safe bolted to the floor.
What are some other storage options in the meantime, from now until I purchase my own home? Can a safe deposit box at the local bank be recommended?
If you don’t trust the “financial and banking system,” why would you entrust your valuables to a box they own? Even if you don’t have that level of mistrust, safe deposit boxes are a lot less secure than people imagine, since they’re not insured:
This would just be a temporary measure until I can purchase my own home. They’re not perfect, and nothing is without risk, but it seems far safer than keeping it unsecured in my apartment bedroom.
If some lowlife broke in, ransacked the place, and managed to find it, I’d lose a substantial chunk of my wealth just like that.
According to that article, there are 25M safe deposit boxes in the US. And:
OK, so there are maybe 100-200 cases per year in which someone’s stuff has genuinely been stolen from a safe deposit boxes. Let’s be generous and call it 250. So if you store your stuff in a SDB for a year, your odds of being a victim in this way are about 1 in 100,000.
If you can quantify the risk of having your stuff stolen out of your home, then you can make a decision about which path to take.
FWIW, a lowlife who breaks into your place is looking for quick/obvious grabs, like laptops and jewelry; he’s not going to turn the place upside down looking for your stash of coins. I’m guessing $7K worth of gold/silver coins is not physically large, so it shouldn’t be hard to conceal this in an out-of-the-way location in your home.
Maybe you can’t attach a safe to your current dwelling, but you can still buy one and place it there without bolting it down. This one weighs 163 pounds; an opportunistic burglar will not be in a position to carry that away.
if our “fiat paper currency” collapses, what makes you think your gold and silver will save you? I know goldbugs and cryptocurrency nerds fantasize about how they’ll save the day when the “fed fails,” but lemme tell you something- the collapse of the USD would literally be a “TEOTWAWKI” event. I mean literal “people shooting each other” catastrophic. Food and ammunition will be currency, not shiny discs of relatively useless metal.
Gold and silver have been valuable to man since about the beginning of recorded history. Can you show me one example where this has not been the case? They are internationally, universally recognized forms of money. Ask Venezuelans and Zimbabweans if they would rather have a pound of their native currency or a single 1oz silver coin.
Yes, the current debt based system will collapse, as it must. And yes the US dollar will become heavily devalued, as all Fiat currencies must. It will probably be by far the worst economic crisis the world has ever seen and yes, having gold and silver doesn’t guarantee anything. But gold and silver are the closest things we have to “real” money.
But this is not the thread to discuss such matters, we can create another thread for that. I’m just asking about storage.
Shape them into horseshoes and spray-paint them rusted. The worse thing you can do is store them somewhere hidden and then die without letting your heirs know where it was and how to get it.
I would wager that the chances of a bank being robbed and your box being targeted as one the robbers decide to drill out and steal the contents of is substantially smaller than the chances of your house being robbed and the robbers stealing the same items.
Assuming you’re in an apartment, I would suggest a safety deposit box. Regarding insurance, if you want it, talk to whoever your current insurance is with and see if you can get a rider specifically for the metals and make sure it can be insured if it’s kept at a remote location.
If/when you do buy a house and you’re going to store it there the best way you can keep it protected is a floor safe, set into the concrete in your basement, under the stairs. Setting it into the concrete (or at least anchoring it) makes sure no one can pick it up and walk away and you set it under the stairs to make it harder to swing a sledge hammer at it.
And the best thing you can do to keep it safe, regardless of where you keep it, is to keep your mouth shut about it. On the internet (though you’re somewhat anonymous here), to your friends, even to your family.
A few years ago someone I know was robbed. They took something like 100k in cash from a safe in his house. Of course, this guy was famous for showing off how much money he had. I can’t tell you how many times he’d go to pay for a drink (for example) and pull out thousands of dollars in cash, flip through it then put it back in his pocket and pull a similar wad out of his other pocket and hand the bartender the money. Everyone that knows this guy knows he has a lot of cash on him and likely a lot more at home. One of those people took it. He’s lucky they ransacked his house instead of just killing him for the what was in his pocket.
What are the odds of someone stealing you coins from your apartment? Even if they are well hidden you have to tell someone where they are in case of your death. (And they in turn could tell others about their goofy friend …)
What are the odds of your coins being stolen from a safe deposit box?
The first is obviously more likely than the second.
You have to be in irrational paranoia mode to think that you won’t be able to get your coins out of the bank all of a sudden. I.e., one day everything is fine and the next day the banks are permanently closed, even to safe deposit customers. That’s pure “Wow!” thinking there.
Also note, gold coins aren’t going to be all that useful unless you have tiny ones. Silver coins are more practical in a trade economy. An old silver dollar is worth $13 melt value. Maybe a quarter of that in a collapsed economy. Good enough you can trade with and not worry too much about change (but dimes, quarters and halves help). An oz coin of gold is just too big for the vast majority of transactions. So, like I said, tiny bits of gold are best.
(And I agree with what’s been said. Gold/silver only works in a functioning economy! Either in 2020 AD or 2020BC. Once things go to pot they aren’t going to help much. Eating and surviving the mobs today is the issue.)
Sell the coins and buy a gold chain to wear. When the shit hits the fan you don’t have to go back to the apartment to retrieve your wealth, it’s on you 24/7.
Other than that, renters insurance. But make sure it covers gold and silver coins.
Finally, if $7k is a substantial part of your wealth, and you don trust banks, then I suppose that you won’t be using banks for a mortgage. Is the plan to continue to buy and store gold and silver until you have enough to buy a house? Will you eventually have $100k of gold or so in your apartment?
That’s really only bad for the people that are in a position to gain (or lose) from your death. Sure, when I die my belongings will eventually be liquidated and someone will get them. Also, I’ll be dead so it’s not really any of my concern if you didn’t know that I had a bunch of money hidden under the insulation in the attic or that I had a savings account you didn’t know about.
From that point of view, you’re in a much better position to keep your money if no one knows about it, even your family.
The other thing about telling people, even family, about all your wealth (in cash/gold) stored in your house is that it increases your chances of being robbed. All it takes is someone talking about how their brother has tons of gold and someone else overhearing it.
It’s the same reason people are warned not to talk about being on vacation on facebook. You probably trust your friends, but maybe there’s a friend of a friend that can see the post and use the opportunity.
One risk of having it in the apartment is having it destroyed in a fire. That’s also an issue in a safety deposit box, but a bank has much better fire protection than your apartment. If you keep it at home, at least have it in a fire-resistant lock box.
At the rate I’m saving, I could probably afford to pay cash for a smaller home in livable condition in a working class neighbourhood in a Midwestern City (not Chicago or Minneapolis). But I don’t want to be house poor, so yeah I’ll be taking out a mortgage. I’ll be in debt to the bank until the mortgage is paid off, and I resent that, but it beats being under the thumb of a landlord.
