When did you start stacking metals?

[Kman]

5 minutes ago, Lowlow said:

Wow you are all so young.

Stacking since like .. I dunno, 1990 ?  What year is this ? lol.

What were you buying back then? and dare I ask in what kind of amounts 

[Lowlow]

Sure, okay, I'll give you kids a little primer on the 1990's lol ..

So ... gather round children for story hour lol ... so anway, way, way back in the 1990's when we were still listening to 80's pop and Nirvana and grunge music started to be a thing, there was a recession.  Actually, back up a few years before that, in 1987 there was a stock market crash, and we were all ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE we were going to die in a nuclear war, the cold war was in full swing, they didn't know what HIV was but people were dying of AIDS, all that ... then the heavy metal rockers played the biggest concert in history (at that time, look it up) and then the Berlin wall fell, .. and we were in a recession.  Bill Clinton was elected, mostly because of Ross Perot being in the race and taking votes away from Bush, and because of Perot and other people's influence and a focus on the national debt .. deficit reduction was becoming a thing, and the "Contract for America" happened.

So ... anyway ... commodities were in deflation throughout the 1990's, with precious metals leading the way, and the PM markets were full of dreary gold and silver bears.  You think you have it bad now after the 50$us/oz silver high and subsequent bust, you should have seen the 1990's after the 1980's top, everyone was convinced for a decade that silver and gold were DEE. EEE. AYE. DEE. dead.  Dead forever.  Goldbugs and stackers were tormented by the Internet Stock geniuses who would troll them mercilessly (trolling, yep, it was a word by the mid-90's), and this was before the Nasdaq crash in 2000, so bugs and silver stackers pretty much believed that they themselves were brain damaged for stacking lol.  Anyway, silver was about like 5$us/oz, and NOBODY WANTED IT.  I mean nobody.  You think nobody knows what gold and silver is now, believe me, it was worse in the 1990's, there weren't an endless stream of commercials on television trying to get you to purchase gold and silver, etc ... NOTHING.  You had to already know what it was, what it was worth, where to buy it, have a friend who knew where to buy it, etc, and this was before Internet forums and the web and Amazon, Ebay, and all that &^%# too, so it was a market mainly for rich people who already knew about it.  Later in the mid- to late- 90's you started to get the Internet as you now know it and people learned more, but back then it was a very niche market.

The exception to that is that there were a pile of survivalists from the cold war days who knew about gold and silver, much like preppers today, they were convinced then as now that &^%$ was about to go down.  It's hard to describe that, but a lot of it was Vietnam soldiers who had experienced a lot during the war ... keep in mind 1990 was only 20 years after Vietnam, it was as far back as the year 2000 is for you kids, very fresh in people's minds, and those guys were in their 40's by the 1990's.  Anyway, that whole crew knew about PM too and were active buying and selling it.  The cold war was on every person's lips.  See the movie "The Day After" for a taste of that.

So to the actual question ... what were we buying.  Mostly silver and gold eagles, but bars were available, rounds, Englehards were huge back then and are still very popular today.  You have to remember, just as you are coming off of a 50$us/oz PM high, people in the 90's were still coming down from a peak in the inflationary 80's, so a lot of the PM in circulation was minted in the 80's PM boom.  Most PM transactions happened between people, at local shops (which were very rare and usually either coin shops for old PM, or jewelry dealers), and people bought and sold precious metals at gun shows.  Banks sold silver dollars, but I don't remember if they sold gold.  Back then, back in the mid-80's at least, we didn't really have ATM cards, so people used savings books, check books, etc, and made transactions at the banks where they could purchase silver eagles, buy U.S. savings bonds, and a whole host of products that banks don't deal in now.  It wasn't until the late 80's and early 90's that people started dealing with ATM cards, Credit Cards, etc, and it was about that time that personal Credit Card debt became a thing.  Younger people might now know this, but until then there really was no such thing as credit card debt, most people who wanted to borrow money borrowed it from a bank or more often from friends and family, or they charged to store accounts.  Back then pretty much every large retailer had shop accounts where you could buy on credit, kind of like running a bar tab, and then as now it wasn't that unusual for women, mostly housewives, to get into debt at shops (that's not a sexist statement, btw, 85% of all consumer purchases are made by women today).  Back then going to get U.S. currency coins at the bank to search for silver was still a big thing too because it was still floating around in the currency, and people made a lot more cash purchases, so it was quite common to find silver coins in your change.  We also didn't have checkout scanners, so it was all done with amazing speed (and a good many errors) by mostly women working checkout registers by hand, fingers flying over buttons at fast speeds, you used to have to stand there in the store and check your receipts if you were money conscious because errors were common, but the upside was you had a constant supply of coins with the potential to find silver.  Coupons and green stamps were also a thing, again, it's important to remember that most of the people buying for their families had grown up in the 1970's and had seen real recession .. like, stand on the corner at the courthouse trying to get picked up for day work type of recession.

So anyway ... yeah, I was about your age back then, so I was like most of you and just getting started in stacking.  Except that silver was only around 5$us/oz and we were all a bunch of punk rockers listening to music and &^%$ all the time and riding around with our friends wasting our lives chasing girls and what-not.  Youtube "Violent Femmes Add it Up Live" for a taste of what that music was like.  There was a bit of a revival among men in those days, a reaction to early PC culture, much like the MGTOW and Jordon Peterson crowd today, except they cussed a lot more than you kids do, called each other worse names, and got in a lot more actual fights instead of pissing on each other on the Internet.  Attitudes for bugs and stackers hasn't changed that much ... stackers gonna stack.

I could go on about what it was like before cell phones, computers, etc, I remember it all lol ... I remember the first time I looked at an LED light, the first time I touched a digital calculator, the first video game I ever played, the first time I watched MTV, etc lol.

[Lowlow]

I just thought of something I can add to the above post that you young people will find funny, I think, and that's the REASON I got involved in precious metals, and it has NOTHING to do with what you think lol.

So ... back in about, umm, let me think, 1980 ?  Somewhere around then, a role playing game called Dungeons and Dragons became very popular.  I was young, and my friends and I played this game, and if you don't know what it is it is hard to describe, but it is basically like an acting game where you have someone who is in control of the game (the dungeon master) and the players are essentially play acting as elves, dwarves, etc, in a middle earth kind of fantasy environment around the dinner table.  Anyway, the religious right back then hated this game, it was the moral crisis of the day, what to do about D&D ... it was a moral panic similar to the way #METOO has become an over-the-top insane moral panic, people were just not thinking straight at the time, ministers gave talks at church encouraging parents to make their kids stop playing this evil game, etc.  So ... of course ... all the young boys wanted to play it.  Like kids today walk around with "Molon Labe" shirts in school because they know it pushes the edge of what they are allowed to do, this game was the same, except for a more nerdy class of kid.

Anyway, my friends and I played this game, and in the game the currency of the game were copper pieces, silver pieces, gold pieces, and platinum pieces.  THAT is where I learned about gold and silver.  In that game one gold piece was worth 20 silver pieces, and a platinum piece was worth 5 gold pieces, and I don't remember what copper pieces were worth, maybe 10 per silver piece, and then there were also electrum pieces which were I think 2 electrum per gold.  Those numbers might be wrong and I don't feel like going to look it up ... but the point is, at the time this was just a game for children, and that is the first time I had ever heard of "silver" or "gold" as a kind of currency, though I did know that U.S. currency had some silver in it.  It was only MUCH later that I found out that 20 silver to a gold piece was actually a fairly realistic Silver to Gold Ratio.

Later, when I was older and had money, I started researching gold and silver because of this early exposure to these games, that is the ONLY REASON I became interested in it.  It wasn't because of inflation, or world politics, investing, nothing like that .. it was because I thought it was COOL lol, and very few people knew about it.  By then we had all played some early video games with gold and silver coinage in them such as a game called "Gauntlet", and there were early online text based games such as "Moria" that used these currencies (which was based on Tolkien, of course, as was the game D&D).  Yes, Tolkien's books were huge with young men way before the modern movies, decades before.

So that's how I got into precious metals.  I remember the first time I held a silver eagle and thought ... WOW, so this is what silver looks like in real life lol.  And I also remember struggling with how much gold coins cost at the time, about 350$us/oz, and thinking wow they were so much easier to get in the games, they are really expensive in real life lol.

[Lowlow]

[NRSovereign]

I was born 1990 ! Lol, I got into this By looking at the 1990 half sovereign  proof back in 2016 which was the one I was given at birth ,so I blame my expensive habit on my parents lol and ended up just buying loads after that and now I am addicted lol

[montesf1030]

In October of 2016 !!! With the JM Bullion 10oz started pack !!!! Now over 3000 ounces later !!!!! And a bit of gold !!! I am hook

[STONE]

December 15th of 2015 when silver bottomed out at $13.80 Backed up the truck and had them load her up. Had been watching the price of silver for about a year or so. Told myself if it hits $17 I will jump in. Decided to wait, told myself well if it goes to $16 I will jump in. Decided to wait. Did the same until it hit $14 and dipped below. Just felt in my gut it was time. Ahhh, the good old days of $14 dollar silver...

[pho]

Bought my first silver in october 2016 after going down the Youtube-silver-videos rabbithole.
It was a tube of maple leafs at €15,99 each. They're cheaper today at €15,42... So not the best investment foresight, but have since learned that at any given date, "next month, silver is going to the moon! the price manipulation will end!" according to the youtube PM prophets

[LiX]

Stacking since the begining of this year  

[swAgger]

27 minutes ago, pho said:

Bought my first silver in october 2016 after going down the Youtube-silver-videos rabbithole.
It was a tube of maple leafs at €15,99 each. They're cheaper today at €15,42... So not the best investment foresight, but have since learned that at any given date, "next month, silver is going to the moon! the price manipulation will end!" according to the youtube PM prophets

Yes, the good old pm prophets on youtube.... just a skip and a hop away from the videos about prepping for the end of civilisation.

All together now - To Da Moon! (although i'd be content with the cruising altitude of an aircraft tbh)

[PansPurse]

December 2017... Those were the days, when prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders...

[LittleJohnSilver]

I have yet to take possession of my first bits of silver and gold, but my reason is simple - I don't have any faith that our current fiat based market is going to last. Never in human history has ANY fiat currency ever withstood the test of time as gold and silver has. You only have to look at the Roman Empire's collapse due to their massive public spending open borders policy to get an idea of how our times are almost identical to theirs. As soon as they ran out of coin (that was being reduced in value over and over again) to bribe the barbarians to NOT attack them, the Barbs promptly attacked them thus ending the Roman Empire.

Now think of that scenario only this time those barbs are welfare receivers and foreigners who have no love for the country that has taken them in. When that money runs out because it has become worthless, what do you think they're going to do? Call me paranoid, but I'd rather trust my Army instincts over my civvie instincts any day of the week. And my Army senses tell me things will get very nasty indeed.

Then there's the question of banks themselves. Go back to mid to late 2000's. Walking to work in Newcastle, I watched THOUSANDS of people queuing up outside Northern Rock branch's to pull their money out because of the crash. Even only a couple of years ago, Cypriot and Greek banks were restricting how much people could withdraw because their system was at the brink of collapse.

I'd rather plan for the worst and hope for the best, than to bury me head in the sand and pretend everything is OK.

[Lowlow]

On 3/13/2018 at 14:03, LittleJohnSilver said:

Then there's the question of banks themselves. Go back to mid to late 2000's. Walking to work in Newcastle, I watched THOUSANDS of people queuing up outside Northern Rock branch's to pull their money out because of the crash. Even only a couple of years ago, Cypriot and Greek banks were restricting how much people could withdraw because their system was at the brink of collapse.

I'd rather plan for the worst and hope for the best, than to bury me head in the sand and pretend everything is OK.

I'm amazed how short people's memories were on this point, I mean we aren't talking about something 100 years ago, this literally happened 10 years ago.  I don't know if people just didn't understand what was going on, even though it seemed like they did, or they just think it can't happen again, or what, maybe it is because total meltdown was narrowly averted, I really just don't understand.  To me it was confirmation of what I already knew about the banking system, but for someone who was clueless about it I would have thought that 2008 would have been a wake up call ... but it doesn't seem like it was for most people.

Think about our own situations, what are we going to do when it happens again ?  And it IS "when", not "if", because it will eventually happen again.  What would any of us do if the money we had in the bank was simply gone ?  Vanished, into thin air, never to be seen again.  Is it really going to make you feel any better to know that in a just world it would have never happened ?  Or that the government will eventually fix the issue so that it can't happen again ?  That's what happens every time a disaster happens, politicians promise it'll never happen again, until it happens again.

It HAS NOT been a long time since this happened, there's really no excuse for not seeing warning signs.  I had a lot of sympathy with depositors in 2008 when some lost a lot of money in the United States because of limits we had on FDIC deposit insurance when some banks went under, people with more than the FDIC limit in any specific bank lost their money, but I'm NOT going to have sympathy for them when it happens again, especially since they've been establishing what is commonly being called "bail in" rules for the next event.

Banks aren't holding your money for you - like it or not, you are an investor when you deposit money.  They have your money and loan it out.  You don't hold a receipt, you essentially hold a promissory note.  When you deposit money, you are a money lender.  Money lenders can and DO lose their principal from time to time, that's just how it works.  Be careful out there.

[LittleJohnSilver]

This is slightly off topic.

Round about 2011, I had a friend who had eventually lost their house due to the crunch. This poor sod got made redundant, found another job fairly quickly, got made redundant again, found another job......and then got made redundant for a third time. The area he lived was utterly devastated with job cuts, because the first place he got laid off from was one of the biggest employers in the region. When that happened it eventually caused a chain reaction over the next few years with other businesses closing down  due to decreased orders and money spending customers.

Got to a point where he lost his house as his mortgage only gave him 6 months worth of monthly payment protection in case of job loss. After several more months of him not being able to make any payments, he lost it.

And here's the kicker. A few years later he discovered that mortgages have some weird insurance clause that allows the bank or mortgage lender to invoke a behind the scenes insurance policy in order to fully reclaim the entire outstanding amount from their own underwriters. Effectively when they take possession of a repossessed property and then sell it on, they're getting paid twice.

So even if after several months someone gets back on their feet and clears their outstanding arrears and commences normal payments again, the bank has already cashed in that insurance policy!

Robbing Barstewards!

[RisinSun]

I've just turned 28 but i feel older when I am browsing here.

Started May 2016. Gold was £880, i got 10 gold metalor bars 1 ounce, biggest regret. Sold them after brexits high and bought on the post brexit low. I now have coins with personality, I guess I am stuck with this rather expensive hobby.