Category Archives: PMs

Ammo, silver, safety PIN

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Hardigg cases still available.

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The ammo situation may have officially jumped the shark. I saw a store selling, with a straight face, 7.62×39 ammo at the mind-numbing, sphincter-widening, reality-distorting price of $180 for 150 rounds. Do the math...if you dare!

On the other hand, I went to an auction today and paid about $52 for 1000 new .38 Spl cases, 500 new .38 nickled cases, and 1000 fired cases. So, that was kinda nice.

I am still amazed at the utter dearth of .22 ammo in circulation. No one has it and when they do they want prices for it that would make you think it was Weatherby ammo or something. Moral of the story here is that it doesn’t take a war, zombie apocalypse, 9.0 earthquake, or anything like that to turn off the ammo faucet. All it takes is a few tens of millions of people suddenly thinking “Hmm..I might wanna go to the store and stock up”. Me and the missus, we’re totally unaffected by this because we stocked up years ago and can ride this out quite nicely. Prior planning preventing predatory pricing purchases.

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Silver continues to sit around $25 which, to me, means it’s time to buy. I’ve been unloading stuff on eBay and concerting the proceeds into rounds and Eagles. You guys know that i buy my stuff from the Metals Pimp, right? Well, check out these blog posts ( here and here) where someone in our rarefied field of interest did some business with him and reports back on his experiences. I don’t talk my buddy up because he’s a friend of mine, I talk him up because I actually see how he runs his business, watch him bust his hump to make deals go smooth, and know he doesn’t sell stuff he doesn’t have. It also doesn’t hurt that when I tell him I want some silver or gold to ahve in my safe for when the economy collapses and things go Mad Max, he doesn’t look at me like I’m insane. He just nods and asks “So..generics or Eagles?”. If you’re buying, he should be your guy.

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I’ve got a stack of storage food sitting here that I’ve been meaning to write up a review on but have just been too busy with my ‘civillian’ life to get it done. I’m hoping to get it taken care of soon, as well as some other more useful on-topic posts that have been sitting in the drafts folder for a few weeks.

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And if youre anything like me (and I really hope youre not..you can do better!) you probably have too damn many bank cards in your wallet and too many PIN’s to remember. Rather than remember PIN’s I create a mathematical formula using the numbers on the card, that way no matter how many cards I have I only have to remember the formula, no the PINs. Before you do something you think is clever, read this:

Falling knife

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In case you missed it, PM’s crapped the bed the other day as gold tumbled like Ted Kennedy in a tasting room. I’d read a week ago that Cyprus might dump it’s gold to finance it’s bailout and I was wondering if that would have an effect on the market. Can’t say if it did or didn’t, but it’s certainly getting mentioned quite a bit in the ‘why is this happening’ articles. A more interesting theory is that this is a manipulation of the market to bring the price down so that when Cyprus dumps it’s gold it can be had at a bargain price. Hmmm.

The Metals Pimp says “Don’t try to catch a falling kinfe”. While that’s awesome advice in the real world, what does it mean in this regard? Beats me. Let’s go look:

As the phrase suggests, buying into a market with a lot of downward momentum can be quite dangerous. If timed perfectly, a buy at the bottom of a long downtrend can be rewarding – both financially and emotionally – but the risks run extremely high. This term implies that the investment will never be a good one again. Examples of stocks that have plummeted are plentiful; a widely-held stock can drop precipitously as the equity ownership is reduced to nothing.

Hmmm…Well, Im one of those black-helicopter whackos who think that gold will never be worth nothing, so Im not really worried about the last part of that definition. Way I see it, it means wait till something hits the floor before you try and catch it. Of course, determining when it has hit that floor is what makes the difference between winners and losers.

Personally, I’m gonna lean towards ‘buy some now, wait a while, buy some more’ and lather-rinse-repeat.

The economy simply is not getting better the way we’ve been promised it would, unemployment continues,  meaning that more .gov handouts will be necessary to keep the unemployed fed, Obamacare is going to exacerbate the unemployment situation, and inflation is virtually a certainty….why would you think gold is going to drop to a fraction of what it is now and stay there?

Tangibles, man. That’s where the cash needs to be. Gold, paperless handguns, land, that sort of thing.

The Metals Pimp

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Every time I post about  gold-n-silver someone usually comments about “where can I go to get a fair price and ……”. So, I’m making this post and will wind up just putting a link to it in any post I make about gold/silver since folks always seem to want to know a good source.

So… my buddy runs Montana Rarities. He buys and sells gold and silver, as well as, sometimes, doing trades for them as well. (As in, you trade ‘x’ amounts of one metal for ‘y’ amount of the other.) He’s very knowlegable, a straight-shooter, and is far more easygoing and fair than a lot of people I’ve seen in this business.

When he started this business and was looking for ideas, I suggested a subscription plan where a person could set up a repeating transaction once a month and acquire gold or silver. He drafts your bank account for, say, $200 every 15th of the month (you pick the amount and the day) and on the 15th of every month he sends you $200 worth of gold or silver (whichever you specified) at whatever the rate was on that day. Basically, set it and forget it. Here’s a link to the page describing how it works. If you want to sock away some metal without the hassle of following prices, and dealing with shipping and credit card numbers every month, it’s the way to go…a fire-n-forget way of accumulating your stash of metals.

Is he a good value? Well, certainly he’s the best deal in town here. Is he the best on the itnernet? Beats me. I suppose if you order 5000 ounces at a time from APMEX you might get a better deal, but if youre going to be doing a bit less volume than that I’d stack him against anyone. In fact, I usually give him a huge ration of crap about how his premium percentages are smaller than pretty much everyone’s.

Now, sure, I’m biased. I’ve known him for years, and watched him start this business from the ground up….back when a $300 sale was reason to celebrate. Nowadays a $5,000 sale barely raises his heartbeat. Why? Mostly because a lot of those $300 sales turned out to be guys ‘testing the waters’ to see if he was a good guy to do business with. Once they did a few ‘nickle-n-dime’ sales with him and realized how great he was to deal with, the real money started changing hands. Can;t buy that kinda customer loyalty, ya gotta earn it.

Anyway, before you go plunk down your slowly dissolving greenbacks at one of the big-name guys’ websites, check him out and see if you cant get a better value from him. Even if the prices ‘tween the two are virtually the same, you’ll probably get much better customer service from him.

Speaking of silver….

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My metals-dealing buddy  stopped by the other day and handed me a silver Eagle. Not known for his boundless generosity, I inquired as to what I had done to deserve such a coin. He said that “one of your readers” contacted him to do some purchasing and said to send an Eagle in my direction. Of course, he won’t tell me who it was since that would violate the customer/metal-pimp confidentiality clause. So, whomever it was that put that Eagle in my pocket, mucho thanks! After the economy collapses and I use it to procure desperate coeds to work in the Lingerie Proving Grounds I will be reminded of your generosity.

Oh yeah, silver is down…….

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I’ve been so wrapped up with the gun stuff going on (and rightly so, I believe) that I completely overlooked the fact that silver has dropped below $30 and is, at this moment, right around $28.75…time to buy!

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I’m fortunate that I have a buddy in the gold/silver biz (and, wow, has he been busy lately or what!) so he only gives me the mildest of dirty looks when I ask him to drop by the shop with just one or two silver rounds or Eagles for me. (Honestly, I prefer the rounds for the better value but the Eagles are probably more ‘recognized’.) It sucks that between the sputtering economy (and how are those job numbers these days, anyway?) and the gun control shenanigans it’s mighty hard to decide which direction to point my disposable dollars at. (Although, after typing the term ‘disposable dollars’, I think I’ve figured out where to point that wallet.)

Really, the ‘investment’ plan is really the same as it’s always been: gun stuff, metals, food. (Not necessarily in that order.)

I realize that there’s a certain demographic (a short-sighted one, in my opinion) that says “If you cant eat it or shoot it whats the point of it? When we’re all living in caves and eating our children no one will want your Eagles!” and thinks buying this sort of thing is a waste of time. That’s cool, I can respect that..I disagree with it, but I respect that you have an opinion. So take your money and buy more mags, ammo, land, guns, food, fuel, clothes, meds, household supplies, tires, and tools…because while we can disagree about the metals thing, I think we can agree that there’s virtually no point in holding onto anything more than a small amount of cash when it’s looking more and more like the only economic courses available to this country involve bank runs and inflation.

Silver > $30

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Well, that was fun while it lasted.

I can’t tell the future but, hey, it’s an election year with a lot at stake. Might be some folks are stocking up against the possibility of continued economic fail.

Of course, it could also drop back below $30 as people see ‘$30′ as their ‘sell trigger’ and unload a buncha the stuff. Who knows?

In the meantime:

More fun with fractions

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Remember those pre-scored silver bars that let you ‘make change’ in 1/4 oz. increments? Turns out there’s also a version that does it in 1/3 oz. as well. My buddy the precious metals pimp got a bunch and brought a few by to show off. While I’d seen the 1/4 ones before the 1/3 were something completely new.

Really, it would seem to me that it makes far more sense to have something like that with gold.

Birthday continued………

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Yay silver! A thoughtful gift from my buddy the PM dealer. Survivalist silver…..pre-scored so you can ‘make change’ o those transactions where a full ounce of silver is just too much.

ETA: It occurs to me that I should probably put some sort of link to where you can get some of these if youre so inclined.

It rhymes with ‘ilver’

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My buddy the precious metals pimp (“You cant spell ‘pimp’ without ‘pm’”) came by today and flipped a silver eagle at me. Apparently someone in the viewing audience bought some silver from him and said to push an ounce in my direction.

So, thank you very much to the benefactor who has enabled me to add to my stockpile against that upcoming rainy day. After a tough day of beating back the infected unded it’ll be nice to be able to unwind by trading a silver coin for some refreshments and adult entertainment. Much thanks!

Come to think of it, my birthday is next month (on the seventh). Time to update the Amazon wish list.