Yup…one kilogram of fine gold. There is very little in my or anyone elses life that this will not fix, or go a long way towards fixing. It is not even as big as a PopTart, yet it’s enough to buy a brand new truck, put a down payment on a house, buy five Barrett M82A1s, or get you the best night of your life in Vegas.
Really, what you’re looking at is the most concentrated form of energy that doesn’t require lead shielding to use.
Being a survivalist, your day-to-day is a Venn diagram of gun dealers, precious metals dealers, tradesmen, and a few other colorful folks…and they often have cool stuff. In this case, a kilogram of gold. What didn’t fit in my hand was the 100 gold 1oz. rounds that were sitting next to it.
Kinda looks like something out of Kelly’s heroes, doesn’t it?
Survivalism: introducing you to new experiences since…always.
If I’m ever murdered with a blunt instrument, I hope it’s that.
How does one deal with a bar of gold if thats all you got, and your looking to buy three cans of spam and they cant make change?
I would imagine you buy something more divisible, perhaps a herd of cattle, and cut off some steaks. While a one kilo bar may be to big for a lot of transactions, I’m sure there are some transactions where it’s too small. Personally I go with 1/10 gold and 1 oz. silver.
Ah, succinct variation on internet standard reply number 6 – Can’t eat gold, so it’s worthless….
– 1kg bar is NOT YOUR ONLY ITEM OF VALUE, why not setup your gotcha question as “one virgin daughter is all you’ve got and you’re looking at a case of MREs…” or “one leatherman with a broken blade is all you’ve got but you’re looking at a case of Barretts…”
– it’s a portable and compact STORE of value- much easier to get thru a checkpoint or bury in the yard than a couple bricks of $100 bills.
-practically indestructible
– has been exchangeable for whatever is worth something in the local economy, anywhere in the world for thousands of years. NB- 1000 year old gold bars, STILL EXCHANGEABLE for local valuables.
Gold is a store of value, intended to get value thru whatever local or temporary disruption there is to the other side.
Pre-WWII gold, still worth something. Pre-WWII deutchmarks? (or reichmarks?) not so much. Pre-war of northern aggression bank notes? Not worth the paper they’re printed on, except as curiosities and under extremely limited conditions. Pre- WoNA gold? Well, I think you probably get the point by now….
And if you don’t, you never will.
nick
For additional reading see Ferfal’s account and especially his observation that you don’t have to sell a gold chain all at once, you can sell it an inch at a time.
Upon re-reading, I might be too harsh. If you question was serious, you can shave off slivers, or as our host points out, buy something else. The limits you’ve set are artificial.
Take a knife and whittle off enough small pieces to make to weight you need.
At the historically-done/practical level? You take your chisel and hammer and shave off enough slivers of gold to seal the deal. A quarter-dollar coin is “two bits” because Spanish gold coins were routinely cut into eighths to “make change” for smaller purchases.
At the modern practical level? Buy junk silver coins. Leave big bars of gold for investors playing games with the swings in the fiat-money price of precious metals.