by Al Doyle for CoinWeek ………
Every American should own at least a little silver. No weaseling
around, no exceptions.
What kind of radical declaration is that? If it seems like something
straight from a Ron Paul rally, keep in mind that what I’m proposing is
really a very old and proven idea.. It’s
amazing what nearly a half century can do to obliterate the truth.
Regardless of income, just about every American was a silver owner until
1965. Dimes, quarters, half dollars and silver dollars struck in a .900
fine alloy were the stuff of pocket change. Silver coinage was so routine that no one gave it a second thought. Even
though gold ownership had been largely banned since 1933, honest silver money
was a way of life, and more so in the west.
Montana residents routinely turned down $1 bills and demanded silver dollars
in change. What was seen as a convenience (paper money) elsewhere
wasn’t sought in Montana, where locals often accumulated cartwheels.
Morgan and Peace dollars were also a common item at Las Vegas casinos.
Does it make any difference if the round metal
things in pockets or purses are silver or base metal? This very simple
example will show what takes place when a nation cranks up the printing
presses and abandons sound money for an inferior product.
What would happen if your grandfather placed $2 in a drawer 50 years ago
(1963), and the money was just discovered? In this instance, it was a
new 1963 $1 Federal Reserve note (the first issue of $1 FRNs) and a
circulated, common as dirt 1921 Morgan or 1922 Peace dollar.
Those items were interchangeable in 1963, and the paper currency or the
silver dollar bought four gallons of gas during the Kennedy administration.
The same $1 would have obtained five McDonald’s hamburgers (15 cents
each) and two sodas (10 cents apiece). Round up the 95-cent total to $1 to
allow for sales tax. What
would Grandpa’s forgotten cash purchase today?
The $1 FRN
would buy a third of a gallon of gas. Using the current retail price of $33
to $35 for a circulated Peace dollar as a guideline, let’s put a $30
wholesale price on the found coin, which would be sufficient for nine gallons
of unleaded.
In this case, the purchasing power of the FRN dropped by 91.7 percent, while
the silver $1 gained 1250 percent.
When it comes to McDonald’s, you’ll have to add a little change to buy a
single item from the $1 menu to cover the sales tax with the $1 bill.
Decline in purchasing power: 86.7 percent plus the sales tax. The
proceeds of $30 from the circ Peace dollar is good for 30 $1 purchases before tax. That’s a net
gain of 3290 percent.
The obvious increase in value of silver over time (and that includes a dreary
25-year bear market in the metal) has nothing to do with being numismatically savvy or cherry-picking PQ rare coins.
The date used in this comparison is as common a lump of silver as
you’ll find.
Keep in mind that the track record of the U.S. dollar, widely ballyhooed as
“the world’s most stable currency” is much
better than what most of the world has experienced over the same period, and
it’s easy to see the perils of fiat money unbacked
by gold or silver.
Sadly,
there is widespread ignorance on the nature of money. Being convenient
and widely accepted are very important elements, but honest money is also a
store of value.
Semi-literate farmers and backwoodsmen of the 1800s had a far better
understanding of what money should be than the typical 21st century Ph.D.
That’s why early Americans gladly used and accepted Spanish and Mexican
silver reales and gold escudos in
daily commerce over dubious notes issued by local banks. The coins had
a well-deserved reputation for being the proper weight and fineness as
compared to fly-by-night con artists who issued worthless notes. Such
currency is referred to as “broken bank notes” by modern collectors, and that
term refers to the fate of the institutions that issued inflated paper as
well as those who ended up holding the bag. Even the copper coinage of
the era maintained a relationship between the metallic content and the face
value.
Who cares about silver in a world of credit and debit cards and other
electronic forms of exchange including e-gold?
Keep this rule in mind when it comes to
precious metals: if you don’t hold it, you don’t own it. An ounce of
physical silver in hand beats 100 ounces of theoretical silver when you need
the real thing right now. Imagine Jews fleeing the Nazis and offering a
bribe in e-gold to border guards. In a world drowning in lies, spin and
broken promises, silver’s old-school integrity stands apart from the herd.
If every American should own silver, what about gold? At the current
spot price of $1662 an ounce, even a fractional bullion piece is beyond the
reach of many working folks. A handful of silver dimes or a few
one-ounce rounds is something that Ralph Kramden or Ralph Lauren could afford. The current
gold/silver price ratio of 53 to 1 also indicates that silver has more upside
than the yellow metal.
While some investors buy silver hoping to resell the metal for more paper
dollars in the future, that isn’t the main reason for becoming a bullion
owner. Think of your silver holdings as financial insurance in an increasingly
unstable world.
Source: Coin Week
